Introduction
Gaming phones: they're like regular phones, but more gamey. What does that even mean? What makes a gaming phone a gaming phone? More performance? Better cooling (sometimes with dedicated fans either on the inside or attached to the outside)? More gaming-centric features like dedicated buttons? A design that screams "gaming"? RGB lights? All of the above?
What is a gaming phone? And is the Poco F4 GT a gaming phone? Does that mean it's only good for professional gamers, or can regular people enjoy one? So many questions, indeed. We'll go right ahead and spoil that last one for you from the outset: of course, regular people can buy and enjoy this device; it's not like there's such a thing as "too much performance". On the other hand, going that route does require living with a few quirks, which we'll get into rather quickly once you reach the next page.
Poco's GT line does scream "gaming", but it does so at a quieter volume than other device families - think of Red Magics and ROG Phones and the likes. These are all gaming phones, but they're different, and the Poco F4 GT does seem to be on the tamer side of things, especially if you get it in any color that isn't yellow.
Gaming aside, this is also a handset that launched with the flagship chipset of its time, so it could sit comfortably in the 'flagship killer' or 'affordable flagship' category. Then is it a jack of all trades? Does it excel at any of those, or does it try to be a lot of things to a lot of people without actually being great at any?
That's what we set out to find out. We'll say it from the get-go: this won't be a gaming-focused review. None of our long-term reviews have ever been, and we're not going to start now. Most people out there aren't heavy mobile gamers, but most people out there probably wouldn't mind finding out if the Poco F4 GT, with its reasonable price, could be their daily driver. And not necessarily thanks to its gaming chops, that is. But they can definitely be nice to have.
So let's buckle up and find out what the Poco F4 GT is all about, marking the first time we've ever reviewed a gaming phone long-term, as well as the first time we've ever reviewed a Poco GT line device long-term. Lots of firsts then; let's get right to it.
Design, handling, case
Looking from afar, the Stealth Black colorway looks anything but gaming-related. It really is stealthy, this one, but only from afar. The second you hold it and look at it from that distance, you'll notice that this is no ordinary mainstream smartphone. Then again, it's not a flashy in-your-face gaming phone either, at least, it isn't if you don't go for the yellow version.
That might strike a very interesting balance for a lot of people - gamers who have an office job, for example, and don't want their choice of phone to stand out too much while still offering gaming looks and features? That's a very specific niche for sure, but maybe you can think of some others too.
The point here is that there'a theme to the design, and it's purposeful, but it doesn't go so far as to make the entire product unappealing to those who aren't in the demographic that's obviously being targeted here.
From the front, the Poco F4 GT looks just like any other upper-midrange or affordable flagship device launched in the past year or two, and that's about all we can say about that. There's a hole-punch for the selfie camera, the screen is flat, the bezels are reasonably small all-round (although the chin is bigger than the rest), and now let's look elsewhere.
On the right side is where things get really interesting because it's much more crowded than you'd normally see on a Poco. It's so crowded, in fact, that the volume rocker had to be moved to the left side, even though it's on the right side for all other Xiaomi / Redmi / Poco handsets. And that's to make way for the pop-up magnetic gaming triggers - one on the top, one on the bottom. Will gamers love these? Probably.
If you're not a gamer, will you hate them? Well, it's... complicated. The slidey bits that are used to lock and unlock the triggers are always there, looking and feeling like buttons even though they're not. Over the course of using this phone, your fingers will constantly meet them, and that may or may not annoy you.
The same goes for the volume rocker positioning - other brands like Oppo have always had their volume buttons on the left, and this is as much a personal preference as anything can be. For what it's worth, it was very easy for this reviewer to get used to the volume rocker on the left.
The trigger latches, on the other hand, never not felt in the way. An additional niggle is that any case you may want to use requires an insane amount of cutouts on the right side, which ends up making it feel rather flimsy. The one that comes in the box is thin and flimsy-feeling to begin with, and so this definitely doesn't help with that. On the contrary, it was one of the bundled cases we've least enjoyed using in the past couple of years or so.
We still very much appreciate the fact that there is a case in the box, don't get us wrong. This is a niche device from a rather niche brand, so you're unlikely to get a ton of third-party case options anyway, which makes that an even nicer gesture. We just wish Poco went back to the way it used to do cases a year or two ago, as those felt more sturdy and anything but flimsy.
Flip the Poco F4 GT over, and its rear design is a mix of two languages: the camera island's size and position seem to be copied and pasted from many other recent phones, but the LED flash design and the lines across the back want to point out the gaming-ness of the product you're looking at. And they do succeed to a certain degree, again without ending up being as shouty as some competing options.
We really like the LED flash design; it's quirky but in a cool and fun way. On the other hand, the pointless, nonsensical "freezing speediest" text on the camera island is just too much cringe. We should probably appreciate the fact that the "AI" buzzword isn't there, but in all seriousness, please stop doing this, Chinese companies. No one has ever bought or will ever buy a Poco F4 GT because of how enticing "freezing speediest" sounds, but a lot of people might buy one in spite of how bad that sounds. That's not where you want to be as a brand, one assumes.
Anyway, as our unit is destined for EU shores, there's an unwieldy amount of regulatory text on the back, while the Poco logo is weirdly subdued here compared to some of the brand's more affordable offerings, where we're used to the font being at least 3x as big. Not that this isn't a welcome change, mind you.
The glass back feels like a glass back, and because it's matte, this phone is slippery. Hopefully, you weren't surprised by that. The symmetry of the rear design lines is welcome, as are the nice little touches - like the fact that the volume rocker design mimics the center line as well as the camera island. Flat sides are a trend (thanks, Apple!), and Poco couldn't help but jump on it. We're not for or against these; we don't feel like they make a huge usability difference for devices like this since there's a lot less 'frame' to hold onto in the Poco F4 GT than in any of the new iPhones.
Overall, the Poco F4 GT feels sturdy, extremely well built, and premium, just as it should since it is playing the 'affordable flagship' game, with an emphasis on flagship. If your hands aren't small, handling it is as good as handling any mainstream device these days. Size-wise, it's very average - not the biggest, but definitely not the smallest. It does feel a bit weighty but at the edge of what we'd call comfortable still. It's got that substantial feeling without it getting tiring after an hour or two of use, but it is close - any more weight, and it would have negatively impacted the experience.
Speakers
The Poco F4 GT has four speakers, a dual one at the top and another dual one at the bottom. They're both on the right side so that when gaming in landscape, neither gets muffled by your hands holding the phone. That's a very nice decision on Poco's part, and we like this setup very much - not just for gaming, but this works extremely well when you're watching videos in landscape mode, too.
As a consequence, we've never had any issues hearing what's coming out of the speakers - it's amazing what good positioning can do, really. They're honestly not the best speakers out there, nor are they the loudest, but on the latter point, they are almost the loudest, and the position just means they're thoroughly enjoyable, whether for gaming or movies or TV shows and of course even podcasts and the likes.
Again, don't expect these to win any awards, but don't expect yourself to care that they don't. They're very good in day-to-day use, and they won't disappoint - unless you're constantly trying to use them in very loud environments, but no phone speakers can truly survive that.
We do have to note that the Poco F4 GT has a now-traditional Xiaomi / Redmi / Poco arrangement whereby the earpiece and top grille are both outlets for the same actual speaker. This means that if you're talking on the phone with the Poco F4 GT to your ear, some of what you hear from the person at the other end of that will bleed out into your environment through the top speaker grille, it's just an inevitable consequence of the setup. This is obviously not a problem in any way if you use headphones of any sort.
Vibration motor
The vibration motor is among the best out there, but unsurprisingly, it's of the 'feel it more than you can hear it' variety, which seems to have won the vibration motor wars of the 2020s for whatever reason. What does this actually mean in practice? If you aren't touching the phone, if it's not in active contact with your skin, you are very likely to miss vibration notifications even if it's in the same room as you - and especially if it's lying on a couch or carpet or a similarly soft thing. It fares ever so slightly better on desks, but even there, if you're a few meters away, game over. There's just not enough oomph in it to make itself noticed.
However, if you are touching the phone, this motor delivers incredibly "3D"-feeling vibrations, with a lot of depth. It's very versatile and a pleasure to use, but you do need to set the vibration strength to maximum; otherwise, you won't feel much at all. We're all for customization and thus aren't against that sliding scale of strength, but when only one end delivers anything that's remotely oomph-inducing, we have to wonder what the point is.
Haptic feedback settings
Otherwise, in use, it's still cool that there are small nudges here and there in the UI which use the vibration motor, but it seems like, with every few months that go by, there are fewer and fewer of these, and it's a real shame because this used to be one of the big differentiating factors in favor of MIUI in the real world.
Biometrics
The Poco F4 GT's fingerprint sensor is embedded in the power button, and it's excellent. It's easily among the most accurate we've ever used, and it's very fast too. Our first-try unlock rate is bordering on 100%, with only a few misses here and there throughout our entire time with the phone. There's really not much else to say here - this is an outstanding fingerprint sensor, and we had absolutely no issues with it whatsoever.
We wish all of them were as good as this one, especially the under-display ones. To be honest, we'd take this side-mounted sensor over an in-display one any day if it's this good. The placement inside the power button also helps tremendously if, like us, you're used to hitting that to unlock your phone. Having set the unlocking to happen upon a press of the button and not just a touch (that leads to some unintended unlocks in our experience), it becomes a very seamless process, turning the screen on and unlocking in one go.
Biometrics settings
Of course, there's face unlock too, and it's fast and works well, but it uses the front-facing camera only, which means it's less secure than fingerprint unlocking. And you also need to wake the phone up to engage it. If you do that by pressing the power button... there's no time for face unlocking to do its magic since the fingerprint scanner has already let you in. On the other hand, if you double-tap the screen to wake the phone up, face unlock will do its thing, and very quickly too. Let's also note that we checked, and it only works when your eyes are open.
Display brightness, resolution
The Poco F4 GT has a perfectly adequate display that can easily qualify as excellent for its price point. It's bright enough to be seen outdoors even on a sunny summer day, even though it doesn't break any brightness records. Similarly, it gets dim enough not to feel uncomfortable to use in a pitch-black environment, but we do wish more third-party phone makers would incorporate Google's "Extra Dim" feature in their skins already. For those sensitive to light, it would be a real boon to be able to dim the screen even further than what it's like at its dimmest setting as it is. Alas, MIUI has no trace of that feature yet, hopefully that will change in the future.
The auto brightness curve is excellent, in our subjective opinion. We only had to manually adjust it a few times here and there where it went a little too bright indoors, but even then, most people would probably have been fine with what the phone presented. It's always refreshing to use a handset with a good auto brightness curve for a long period of time, as one of the minute frustrations (having to constantly adjust it) simply doesn't feature at all.
Display settings
Resolution-wise, this isn't the top dog for sure. And yet, as we mentioned countless times already, most recently in our Xiaomi 12 Pro long-term review, we're very, very doubtful that most people would be able to tell the difference between such an "FHD+" panel and a "QHD+" one in real life, by looking at the screen at normal usage distances. And while you may feel like a gaming phone with a flagship chipset would have deserved a higher-res display, we're sure that would have driven the price up. Tradeoffs are hard.
Screen quality, Reading mode
The screen's quality is great, with the Original color mode hitting sRGB pretty spot-on, although you may struggle to get P3 accuracy if that's something you're after, as the default Vivid color mode skews whites and grays towards blue rather significantly. Using the Warm preset does help with that, but it also makes everything a bit too yellow.
Speaking of which, the Poco F4 GT's Reading mode blue light filter is probably the yellowest we've ever encountered. We're not saying that as if it's a disadvantage, but it is something you should keep in mind if you use blue light filters a lot. Most of them, if you take the intensity slider all the way to the maximum, will skew orange. Not this one, it's yellow all the way, and if you're used to others, it might seem jarring at first: it's very yellow. Then again, we got used to it in a few days, and in all likelihood, you will too.
Color scheme and Reading mode settings
MIUI's blue light filter is still the most comprehensive one on the market, with all the usual features like the aforementioned intensity slider, scheduling abilities (including sunset to sunrise as well as custom ranges), but topping everyone else with its "Paper" textured mode (with its own, separate intensity slider), as well as the ability to make the screen show "light colors" (read: somewhat desaturated) and black-and-white. It's the full package, it's a blue light hater's dream, and it's something we keep wishing other UIs would be inspired by, although this hasn't happened so far.
Refresh rate
The Poco F4 GT's display refreshes at 120 Hz. So far, so good. The way the setting is implemented, however, is highly annoying - we're happy that we only had to set this once. There's a Default mode, which does whatever it wants to the rate, and then there's Custom. Only after picking that do you get a choice of 60 Hz and 120 Hz, and what you should do is go with the latter. There's no point in buying a phone with a high refresh rate screen and then not using that.
Refresh rate settings
You must, however, note that setting 120 Hz here doesn't make the panel always refresh at 120 Hz. It's basically a setting of the maximum allowed, but badly mislabelled. Even in this mode, the phone will go lower when you play videos, inside Google Maps, and in the camera app. Games that support high frame rates do get the full 120 Hz, though, which is good to see.
Let's take a moment here and lament that Google Maps, an app that would benefit from a high refresh rate, is capped at 60 Hz. Aside from that, you'll only notice a lack of refresh rate in the Camera app, as already noted. Otherwise, this always feels like it's using the highest refresh rate, and that makes for a great user experience.
Always-on display
The Always-on display can be set to actually be always on, unlike what we've seen on some Redmi models. There are other options, too - for it to show based on a custom schedule or for ten seconds after tapping the screen. While we have, during the years, enjoyed properly always-on Always-on displays, recently we find ourselves really liking the "ten seconds after tap" option since we use the phone a lot anyway throughout the day. Obviously, you might enjoy some other setting more; the point is that there are enough options for everyone here.
Always-on display settings
That theme continues when it comes to what the Always-on Display should look like. You get a comprehensive list of analog and digital clocks, as well as various image backgrounds and the 'Kaleidoscope' option, which is always intriguing and nice to look at. Overall, MIUI's AOD implementation is still among the most customizable out there, and that's a good thing in our book - you can go with the defaults if you don't want to mess about with it too much, or you can really fine tune it to your preferences if you're so inclined.
Performance, smoothness
As a gaming phone, the Poco F4 GT should perform amazingly; otherwise, what's the point, right? We're happy to report that it does, in fact, live up to the expectations, but only as far as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 lets it. While this is a true flagship chipset in all respects and will feel like that for any sort of casual use (including casual gaming), it does have very well-documented overheating problems, and the Poco F4 GT can't escape those completely, no matter how big a cooling system it employs.
Don't get us wrong, the dual vapor chamber is huge but put the phone through a throttling test, and it drops to about two-thirds after a few (around ten) minutes, without fail. So the usual Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 thing, then. Therefore, if you are a heavy pro gamer who needs all the performance all the time, we suggest picking a device with the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 SoC inside - it has much improved thermals.
For everyone who isn't a heavy pro gamer, all of the above won't matter, as the Poco F4 GT still feels very much like a top-of-the-line device in use no matter what you throw at it - aside from throttling tests and long heavy gaming sessions, that is.
With that out of the way, let's turn our attention to smoothness, everyone's favorite subjective 'metric' that can't easily be gleaned from a spec sheet. The Poco F4 GT is among the smoothest phones we've ever used for a long-term review; in fact, it's tied with the Xiaomi 12 Pro in second place. The OnePlus 10 Pro still manages an ever-so-slight edge, but the Poco is nothing to scoff at. It's smoother than most other smartphones out there, and we've thoroughly enjoyed using it every single day because of that.
Battery life, charging
Throughout our time with it for this long-term review, the Poco F4 GT showed admirable longevity. Battery life has been excellent with our use case, detailed below. We've never reached the end of a day with no charge to spare, and we've always managed at least 6 hours of Screen-On time. On some good days, we saw more than 7 hours, and while that's not chart-topping, it's pretty close.
The best battery life we've ever seen with similar use for a long-term review would go over 7 hours of screen on time each day, and over 8 hours on some occasions. The Poco isn't quite there, but it is close, and it was incredibly consistent every day - we haven't seen any weird ups and downs. That's definitely commendable, but much more exciting than battery life is charging time.
Battery life snapshots
Even though we're starting to see more and more 100W+ wired charging systems out there in various smartphones, it's still impossible to overstate how much peace of mind these can give you - and in the Poco F4 GT's case, that's added peace of mind on top of the already great battery life.
Our typical use case involves around 12-16 hours off the charger on any given day, with primarily Wi-Fi 6 connectivity, about an hour or so of 5G mobile data, location always on and half an hour to an hour of GPS navigation via Waze, Bluetooth always on and about an hour or two of listening to music or podcasts via TWS earbuds each day, as well as about an hour of phone calls.
With this type of use, we never needed a midday top-up, but even if your use case is much more strenuous (a lot of mobile data connectivity where the signal isn't great, for example), all you need is to have the charger and the cable that come in the box with you. Zero to full takes an insane 17 minutes if you tap the Boost button after you plug in, and around 20-21 minutes if you don't.
This is so fast that it's impossible not to be around an outlet for at least that long at some point during the day, so 'range anxiety', if we may borrow a term from the EV space, should definitely not be a thing at all with this phone. If only things were similar for cars... But we digress.
There's no wireless charging because some corners had to be cut to achieve this price point, but with wired charging this fast, we can't say we missed it.
Updates
Poco is part of the Xiaomi family; as such, all our usual software-related niggles for Xiaomi and Redmi phones, unfortunately, apply here too. We're talking about update cadence primarily. Our Poco F4 GT European review unit currently runs MIUI 13.0.7 based on Android 12, and it's got the August 2022 security patch level.
We won't bash Poco for not having issued an update to Android 13 already - few companies that aren't Google have. Plus, as usual, we have to note that MIUI is such a heavy skin that most UI changes that Google introduces in every new Android iteration don't even make it through, at least not without some significant changes. That's all fine and dandy. But a security patch level that's more than three months out of date? That's simply unacceptable.
Current software
Xiaomi, Poco and Redmi simply have to get better at this. We understand that it takes a lot of work to issue monthly security updates to all devices. Fine. But at least the flagships should. And, let's not forget, the F4 GT is currently Poco's top-of-the-line. And yet it sits there awkwardly in the corner, hopelessly out of date. No bueno, Poco, no bueno.
As for that Android 13 update - it will probably happen. At some point. In 2023 most likely. Should it take less for the brand's current flagship device to receive the latest version of the underlying OS? Definitely. Will Xiaomi, Redmi and Poco ever care enough about this to invest the necessary resources into making big updates happen faster? Well, you know what they say - never say never. But based on how things have been so far, it's unlikely. That investment needs to come from somewhere, and constantly having the cheapest handsets compared to their competitors is not a recipe for big bulky profit margins, is it?
So here's the tradeoff - you pay less for a Poco than for a similarly-specced Samsung, sometimes significantly less, and you get less in the way of software updates. Fair? That's your personal call to make, but we wanted to point out the situation as clearly as possible.
MIUI 13
Now that that's out of the way, let's turn our attention towards MIUI 13, as it lives and breathes inside the Poco F4 GT. It's... MIUI 13. It looks like MIUI 12.5, which looked and felt identical to MIUI 12 before it. We've been saying this for a while now - MIUI already needs a new coat of paint. There have been many years of incremental improvements now, which we have appreciated, but it's starting to feel a little stale.
Of course, we say this as phone reviewers who've already seen MIUI 13 on a dozen or more devices. If you have zero experience with it, you will definitely not feel tired of it for sure. But even on a more objective level, the design language has been the same for a while now - maybe it's time for a refresh? Even Apple kind of, sort of did that when it debuted the Dynamic Island this year.
Settings
Functionally, all the bits and pieces you expect in a modern Android skin are there. There are parts of MIUI that are incredibly customizable - like the Reading mode blue light filter and the Always-on display, which we've already talked about, for example. There are a lot of features built-in, and as a consequence, some of them might be hard to find for a casual user who doesn't spend hours digging through Settings figuring out what's where.
Launcher, recents
The launcher is the traditional Poco fare, with an assortment of options baked in, but not so many that navigating its Settings ever gets overwhelming. We always thought it strikes a good balance between not being overly simplistic (looking at you, Google) and not being overly confusing (something a lot of third-party options can be guilty of).
Launcher
There's an app drawer, of course, as you'd expect in 2022, and it even comes with some rather neat options, some of which we enjoy very much (app suggestions at the top), others we've never seen the point of (app categories) - but you might, and if you do, they're there. We like that there's an option for an A-Z scroll bar, as this is, in our experience, generally the fastest way to get to any particular app in the drawer, way faster than searching or manually scrolling, though keep in mind that this applies for those who have 200+ apps installed like we do.
Launcher settings
One word of caution if you're copying your data from another device - the Place new apps on the Home screen setting seems to have a random default behavior in the latest builds of MIUI. Sometimes it's off by default, as it should be; other times, it's on - and if you don't check, you might end up with hundreds of apps automatically added to your Home screens once the data copying process is over. If you like your device to be as close to an iPhone in user experience as possible, you'll love that. Otherwise, you should take a peek at the launcher's settings as soon as possible when setting up the phone for the first time.
Recents
This MIUI build thankfully comes with the option to show your recent apps in a horizontally scrolling list, although it's not enabled by default. MIUI still insists on a vertically scrolling two-column list by default, and if you love that - great. Otherwise, like us, you'll immediately switch to the other way of doing things since it's definitely the more familiar one, given how every other skin out there employs a similar mechanism.
New Control Center, Dark mode, RGB LED
As with all recent MIUI releases, this one too, incorporates the "new" Control Center, a pretty blatant ripoff of iOS' identically named feature. Despite the lack of originality in its design, this works very well, but while we did initially try it on for good measure, we went back to the 'old' way of doing things eventually. It just makes more sense to us to have access to both notifications, and Quick Settings toggles in the same screen - not to mention that because the Quick Settings occupy the top part of that screen, notifications are actually easier to get to without complicated finger gymnastics.
Control center settings
Swiping down from the left for notifications also makes little sense to us since we're right-handed, but if we were left-handed, we'd probably hold the exact opposite view. As it is, between notifications and controls, we need to get to the former much more during the day, and swiping down from the left is just more uncomfortable if performed with the right thumb while holding the phone in the right hand. You, of course, may disagree, and that's why you can go with the new system if you prefer it.
Naturally, there's a Dark mode too, and it's a simple on/off affair here, with no fancy 'degrees of darkness' options like in ColorOS and its derivatives. Still, it works well, it can be scheduled (either with a custom interval or from sunset to sunrise), and theoretically, it can even be forced onto apps that don't have one of their own. In practice, however, there's only one app you can do this to - Amazon Shopping.
Dark mode settings
That's great because that app is, in fact, in dire need of a dark theme, but back in the day, features like this one used to work with every app - not anymore, for whatever reason, and the selection always seems to be incredibly limited. We don't know what's going on here, but we can assure you that Amazon's wasn't the only app we had installed that didn't have a dark theme of its own.
Since this is a gaming phone, it couldn't do without some RGB LED action, and in fact there are two LED strips inside the camera island, which can be set so that they light up when charging, as well as for incoming calls and notifications.
LED settings
The LEDs can be used on a custom schedule, and they also work while gaming in conjunction with Game Turbo if you want them to - though if you're gaming, you're not actually going to see them, so this is more in order to let other people around you know you have a gaming phone, we reckon. Game Turbo, by the way, is also where you do your custom mapping for the pop-up triggers.
Gesture navigation, other gestures, pop-up trigger customization
Gesture navigation is present on the Poco F4 GT as you'd expect, and it works great, as it's always done in MIUI. You can optionally remove the pointless white 'pill' bar at the bottom if you don't enjoy seeing that particular eyesore very much.
There are other gestures present too, and we'll get to those in a bit, but first, let's just acknowledge how the Gesture shortcuts menu in Settings contains both gestures and button presses in a rather confusing fashion.
Gesture navigation settings
That nitpick aside, this is one of those menus that we assume most people never get to, but it has some neat things inside. You can set Google Assistant to come up with a long press of the power button, set the camera to launch upon a double press of the power button or the volume down button or both, and make the LED flash shine like a torch with a double press of the power button.
Then there's the option to double or triple tap on the phone's back for specific things - like taking a screenshot, accessing the Control center or notification shade, opening the Calculator app, going into Silent mode, and so on. The same list of things can also be set to occur upon a double tap of the fingerprint sensor.
Gesture shortcuts settings
These are all undeniably niche features - but once you know they're there, they may prove useful to you in day-to-day life, which is why we wanted to shed some light upon this menu and its contents. You can even assign the pop-up triggers some functions upon double pressing as well as pressing and holding. It's a more limited list that you can pick from here, though - you can start the camera, record video, record the screen, record audio, turn on the flashlight, go into Silent mode, and toggle vibration.
Why are the options here more limited compared to what you can pick for tapping the back or the fingerprint sensor? Who knows. Why these features specifically? Again, who knows. They're clearly a tiny subset of what the phone can do, and we can't say we fully understand how they were chosen, but it's still better to have these options than not to, we reckon. And since none of these are on by default, it's not like they're getting in the way of ease of use out of the box or anything like that.
Pop-up triggers settings
Going back to the triggers, you can assign them one of four sound effects that will go off every time you unlatch them, and a color animation to go with that, just in case you need to broadcast the fact that you own a gaming phone across the room without uttering a single word.
Bugs
Unfortunately, our time with the Poco F4 GT was not bug-free, as we encountered a few issues. This is sadly becoming a recurring theme with devices from the Xiaomi / Redmi / Poco stable, and we're hoping the companies are planning on improving software quality control in the very near future - it's definitely needed.
Especially as updates are few and far between - it usually takes many months for a new one to appear, which means, at a minimum, that's how long you'll have to live with any new bugs any one of them might introduce. This is yet another reason why issuing more updates would be advisable, but so far, the three brands go their own way in this regard.
Before we start, let's just note the usual caveat - depending on how you use your phone, you may care a lot about one or more of these bugs, or not at all. We're listing all of the issues we found in order to give you an accurate idea of what it was like living with this phone. If you don't care about any of them, great! But if one or more is important to you, then you may want to wait until future updates hopefully fix them before you get this handset.
The most important bug for us was Do Not Disturb (DND) mode simply not working as it should. We had the same thing happen during our time with the Xiaomi 12 Pro, which we've also recently reviewed long-term, so this seems to be a rather prevalent problem in the latest builds of MIUI 13. We'll summarize the problem: DND mode should silence all notifications and allow only those 'interruptions' you set. We did our usual setup, scheduling DND for when we're asleep and allowing only calls to come through - and yet we still heard every single notification. There's not much more we can say about it - it simply doesn't work.
Do Not Disturb settings
Next up, sound quality over Bluetooth. There are some serious issues with the Dolby Atmos implementation in this phone, and unfortunately, we can't tell you exactly what they are. But what we can say is that we've never, ever had to fiddle with Dolby Atmos settings in any phone with Atmos support before. It's generally on by default, and we left it like that, not ever touching the defaults, and everything was great.
We initially went the same route on the Poco F4 GT, but the music sounded terrible on an assortment of Bluetooth speakers, headphones, and earbuds. For lack of a better word, it was much more tinny than we're used to getting from any phone. And also much quieter. Note that we hadn't changed any settings on the speakers or earbuds since way before we started using this phone.
Our music listening experience was impaired by whatever bug causes this sound that's tinny and lacking any sort of depth. So then we started fiddling with the Atmos settings (for the first time ever, on any phone), and we eventually realized that Voice was the best preset for our ears, paired with a Custom EQ that has all the levels at the top. The latter helped with the volume, but even with these settings, the quality still wasn't the same as what we're used to. It's a weird feeling being accustomed to music sounding a certain way on certain speakers and headphones, regardless of which phone is being used, and then getting a device that just changes that significantly for the worse. Your mileage may obviously vary.
Dolby Atmos settings
While roaming, we've had issues with the Wi-Fi Calling Quick Setting randomly showing up in the first (leftmost) position, even after we repeatedly manually moved it somewhere else. We assume this happens every time the phone connects to a different network (which tends to happen often while roaming), but it's completely unnecessary behavior and thus, in our eyes, qualifies as a bug.
The pop-up app selector that shows up when you try to open a specific file type seems broken, as tapping the More option doesn't actually give you an app list as it should. Instead, it randomly picks an app for you and instantly opens the said file in that app. This was maddening at first, since our desired app was never on the initial screen, but it seemed to fix itself over time without any software update. So with that in mind, you may or may not ever encounter this.
Finally, a small niggle: if you enter the Mute/Silence mode, an icon shows up in the status bar, letting you know it's engaged. That's all good, but the icon is on the wrong side of the status bar. It's right next to the clock on the left side, which is where notification icons normally live - and this may make you feel like there's constantly a notification waiting for you even when there isn't. We're unsure why all the other system-related icons can live on the right side of the status bar, but this one can't - and the same goes for the NFC icon when that's on. There's ample room for both on the right, no need for their placement to be confusing.
Camera
Gaming phones generally don't excel in the camera department, as the resources are spent elsewhere - RGB LEDs, insane cooling systems, the "gaming look", that sort of thing. Or maybe gamers simply don't care about cameras? That seems to be the thinking of smartphone makers, at least. We can't attest to that, but we wanted to mention all this so that you have reasonable expectations going into this section of our review.
Let's just say it outright: the Poco F4 GT's cameras will never compete head-to-head with the flagships out there in terms of raw image quality. There's just no way that can be achieved at this price point while also giving you all the gaming bells and whistles.
With that out of the way, let's quickly mention that the Camera app is the same MIUI fare present on seemingly all Xiaomi and Redmi and Poco devices, so if you've ever used one, you'll feel right at home. And even if you've only used other brands, camera apps these days are so similar that you'll have no issue adapting within minutes.
Image quality
Now, onto our samples. The Poco F4 GT's main camera is a 64 MP unit that isn't the biggest out there, and it doesn't have optical image stabilization (OIS) either. The latter means very long exposures at night require very steady hands or will end up producing blurry shots. The software knows this, so auto shots with Auto Night Mode are incredibly quick. Even manual Night Mode shots are among the quickest we've ever seen.
But let's start with daytime samples. The main snapper here is capable of outputting good images that aren't amazing but still perfectly commendable. Detail levels are good, noise is kept to a minimum (although it can creep in from time to time), dynamic range is pretty average, and there's a good amount of contrast.
Daytime samples from the main camera
Colors can get excessively saturated, more so than what flagship devices usually do - this has been a recurring theme, where seemingly the lower a handset's price point, the more extreme the color rendition. Anyway, most people like pop in their colors, so while these aren't natural by any stretch of the imagination, they may be pleasant-looking to your eyes. We think they are just a tad over the top, but if they're just not over the top enough for you, turn on the AI toggle. You'll either be impressed or disgusted by the results, but one thing's for sure - it definitely elicits a strong response.
The 8 MP ultrawide seems like a run-of-the-mill offering with no autofocus - so no macro shots from it. There is, however, a dedicated 2 MP macro shooter, which we have yet to use because its output is way too low-res to be usable in most scenarios. If you simply must have some samples, check out the ones included in our regular review of the Poco F4 GT.
Anyway, back to the ultrawide. Its daytime shots are perfectly average, just as the hardware implies they would be. Detail levels are decent, dynamic range is passable most of the time, and colors are acceptable but can veer too much into magenta sometimes.
Daytime samples from the ultrawide
Hit the 2x zoom button in the viewfinder, and you'll be presented with images that look acceptable on the phone's screen but nothing more. Sure, they may do for a quick social media share here and there where quality isn't of the utmost importance, but otherwise, this camera system definitely invites you to 'zoom with your feet' whenever you can. It's not surprising as there's no dedicated zoom lens on the Poco F4 GT, nor is there any fancy "Super Res Zoom" employed here - it's just a crop from the center of the main sensor.
Daytime zoom samples
At night, the auto mode on the main camera with Auto Night Mode on produces nicely looking shots with good dynamic range, similar color pop as during the day, good amounts of detail in well-lit areas, and low noise. On the other hand, shadows are pretty dark and lacking in detail.
Nighttime samples from the main camera
Enter manual Night Mode, and you're going to get much sharper images with a good boost in the shadows, which get crisper-looking as a consequence. The differences between Auto Night Mode and Night Mode are consistent, so we recommend going for Night Mode whenever you have the time (provided you've got the steady hands required for the capture). On the other hand, Auto Night Mode is a definite plus for auto mode, so we'd leave that on for when you're in a hurry.
Night Mode samples from the main camera
The ultrawide, at night, is predictably bad. Auto Night Mode doesn't work for it, so it's underexposing a lot while also severely blowing out highlights. You'll only find these usable if you like the 'atmospheric' look, or whatever you may want to call it.
Nighttime samples from the ultrawide
Manual Night Mode does help, as it brightens things up, but at the expense of general softness all-round. We'd recommend steering clear of the ultrawide in low-light conditions, but if you insist on using it, Night Mode is the way to go - provided you have steady hands, as the capture does take a few seconds each time.
Night Mode samples from the ultrawide
The 2x shots at night are also devoid of Auto Night Mode functionality, resulting in shots with blown highlights and very dark shadows, which is far from ideal. If you peek closely, you'll also find a 'watercolor effect' hard to miss.
Nighttime zoom samples
That, unfortunately, doesn't go away when employing Night Mode, but at least it restores highlights to a degree and punches up the shadows somewhat too. Unfortunately, it also sharpens everything way too much, so it's all tradeoffs. We'd recommend avoiding the 2x mode and simply 'zooming with your feet' if need be, and it can be done. Otherwise, it's impossible to tell which is the better 2x mode to use, as each has its own unique disadvantages.
Night Mode zoom samples
Selfies are good, if not outstanding. During the daytime, you get great dynamic range, pleasing (if not entirely natural) colors, and accurate skin tones. Detail levels are okay but not great; if you zoom in, you'll see plenty of softness and a lot of sharpening liberally applied. But if you don't pixel peep, these are mostly very usable.
Portrait Mode shots come out with good subject detection, although separation does sometimes fail here and there. At night the screen flash is your friend, as it's not as bright as many others we've used so far. This means that while your face might not be as brightly lit as on other phones, you can still discern your surroundings in the pictures since the face's brightness doesn't drown out everything else around it. Capturing selfies with the screen flash is an exercise in patience (and holding still), however, and if you do move even a little bit, some blurriness will inevitably make it through.
Selfies: Portrait Mode off/on during daytime, Screen flash off/on at night
Overall, the Poco F4 GT's cameras are average. The high point is the main snapper, as expected based on the specs, but even it is far from flagship performance. That's not to say it produces bad images - it doesn't. They're good, but could be better. So this phone is definitely not the one for you if cameras are of utmost importance in your view, but for a casual shot here and there from time to time, the job is done well enough.
Conclusion
The Poco F4 GT is the first 'gaming phone' we've reviewed long-term, and going in., we didn't know what to expect. Would it be cumbersome to use for non-gaming things? Would it skimp on other features in order to bring people the all-important gaming stuff like RGB LEDs and pop-up triggers, and a huge cooling chamber on the inside?
As it turns out, yes, but to a certain extent only. The latches for the pop-up triggers may not bother you at all, or it may constantly feel like they're needlessly cluttering the right side of the device. This can be especially true if you aren't a 'pro gamer', and thus don't really have a lot of actual use for them. But if you do game a lot, they are a welcome addition, and you probably won't mind their presence and the resulting relocation of the volume rocker to the left-hand side.
As for skimping on other features to present you with a full gaming package, the cameras are decidedly average, and that's one area where this happened. Otherwise, not so much.
The Poco F4 GT launched with what was then the top-performing chipset, and it even paired it with a huge vapor chamber for cooling. That, unfortunately, wasn't enough to fully alleviate the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1's well-documented overheating issues, and there's still a lot of throttling here in intensive games, and it starts after just a few minutes.
So the weird part about having the first gaming phone in for a long-term review is that, if you think about it, it kind of fails at being a great gaming phone because of all the throttling. It's not bad - don't misunderstand, but if you're all about the pro gamer life, you should probably pick a phone with the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 inside or get a snap-on cooling attachment. Otherwise, the Poco F4 GT will suit you just fine if you are looking for a high-performance device for anything but intensive hour-long pro gaming sessions.
Literally anything else you throw at it - it flies - including casual games. As a funny but welcome side effect of the throttling, it never gets uncomfortably hot either. It's tied with the more expensive Xiaomi 12 Pro in second place in our subjective smoothness rating, and it's cheaper than the first-place OnePlus 10 Pro too, so if you look at it in terms of smoothness bang-for-buck, it's the clear winner.
Software has been a mixed bag. On the one hand, MIUI has a very unique design language and neat flourishes here and there in the animations and the vibration nudges it employs extensively. On the other hand, feature categorization in Settings seems to be almost random at times, and the Settings menu itself is huge and hard to navigate. We also think the skin might be overdue for a new coat of paint, but you may disagree.
Similarly, we feel like the software support - when it comes to updates - is severely lacking. One update every few months just isn't matching some of Poco's competitors, and it all gets worse still because the updates are far from bug-free. So if you get a new bug, you're stuck with it for months on end.
Speaking of which, there are a few bugs in MIUI as seen on the Poco F4 GT, which we were baffled to encounter. So we're left hoping that Xiaomi, Redmi and Poco will, in the very near future, invest more in software quality control while realizing that may mean the current price points might be unsustainable in the long run. It's all a game of tradeoffs, after all.
Battery life has been great - not the best we've seen, but not very far off either. And even if your use case is much more intensive than ours and you need quick top-ups during the day, that won't ever be a problem, thanks to the insanely fast charging. It's still shockingly amazing to this day to see a device go from zero to full in under 20 minutes! The fingerprint scanner is one of the most accurate we've ever used, the vibration motor is among the best too, and the speakers' performance is greatly aided by their gaming-friendly positioning (which we'd wager is also very much media consumption friendly as well).
The screen is very good, but not among the top ones out there - understandably so, at this price point. The resolution similarly isn't as high as you'd get on proper flagships, but we really don't think anyone would actually notice the difference in real life without intentionally going and looking for it. While the Poco F4 GT does look like a gaming phone upon close inspection, if you get any color variation that isn't yellow, it won't really stand out from a distance - and that may be something you appreciate.
The bottom line is that this is a very good phone, just not one that excels at its unique selling point. That's a very weird position to be in, for sure. We'd recommend you look at this as a very decently priced handset with a flagship chipset and consider the gaming bells and whistles as quirky bonuses on top of that. You also need to be able to live with the definitely not-amazing camera system. That said, average cameras are pretty much par for the course in the 'flagship killer' or 'affordable flagship' space, and the Poco F4 GT is probably best described as a flagship killer with a gaming twist.
It's perfect if you want to feel different but not so much different that it gets uncomfortable. It delivers nicely in some areas (performance before it throttles, battery life, screen quality, handling, speakers), greatly in others (smoothness, charging speed, the vibration motor, the fingerprint sensor), and not so much in some others still (camera image quality, sustained performance). It's definitely a quirky package, but some people are quirky people with quirky needs, and if yours match what the Poco F4 GT can offer, you'll have a great time with it.
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