Xiaomi\u2019s spinoff brand POCO is back with a new Ultra phone that packs the best sounding speaker I\u2019ve heard in a phone in years. This is thanks to a new speaker system developed in collaboration with audio giant Bose. This system includes symmetrical speaker grilles at top and bottom of the phone, and also a mini woofer that produces noticeable bass.<\/p>\n
The POCO F8 Ultra\u2019s camera module houses a woofer.<\/p>\n
Ben Sin<\/p>\n
The speakers are able to produce audio certified Hi-Res and, of course, Dolby Atmos. Elsewhere, the phone is powered by the newest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, and features a new 5X Periscope zoom lens that can produce some excellent 120mm portraits, as seen below.<\/p>\n
POCO F8 Ultra 120mm portraits shot with the 5X lens.<\/p>\n
Ben Sin<\/p>\n
POCO F8 Ultra 5X 120mm portraits.<\/p>\n
Ben Sin<\/p>\n
The phone also packs a large 6500 mAh battery that can be charged at 100W, and one variant has this back material made to look and feel like denim. I find the material comfortable to hold and gives the phone a unique texture. The front side features a 6.9-inch OLED display with refresh rate up to 120Hz. <\/p>\n
POCO F8 Ultra\u2019s back side.<\/p>\n
Ben Sin<\/p>\n
The POCO F8 Ultra\u2019s 6.9-inch display<\/p>\n
Ben Sin<\/p>\n
For all intents and purposes, this is a flagship phone, and with that comes a higher price than usual for POCO. The F8 Ultra will retail in Europe starting at around the equivalent of $729, although there is an early bird deal that knocks about $100 off. But as usual, I am sure this phone will be priced a bit lower in Asia regions like Hong Kong and Thailand, where I am guessing will retail at around the $600 range. Even at $729, the specs justify the price, but people do associate POCO with high value, low cost phones, so there will need to be some selling on POCO\u2019s part. There is a lower tier POCO F8 Pro that starts at around $579 in Europe (which means in Asia will be around $450 or so), but it loses the woofer and runs on a slightly older chip, so I think most should go for the Ultra.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Xiaomi\u2019s spinoff brand POCO is back with a new Ultra phone that packs the best sounding speaker I\u2019ve…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165768,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[92127,61,60,202,35151,61899,92126,92128,80,61898],"class_list":{"0":"post-165767","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mobile","8":"tag-best-speakers","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-mobile","12":"tag-poco-f8","13":"tag-poco-f8-ultra","14":"tag-poco-f8-ultra-review","15":"tag-smartphone-speakers","16":"tag-technology","17":"tag-xiaomi-poco"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165767\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}