Poco might be Xiaomi's India-first sub-brand

• Jai Mani, the Lead Product Manager for Xiaomi India, tweeted today morning that he’s been working on the Poco sub-brand.
• He also shared the Poco India and Poco Global Twitter accounts.
  
• There is no account for China and all the leaked images show specifications written in English, suggesting this phone is exclusively for the global market.

After much speculation about Xiaomi’s Pocophone F1, it finally seems like some answers are on the table. Today’s tweet by Jai Mani, the Lead Product Manager for Xiaomi India, not only confirms that Poco is a Xiami sub-brand but also that the Poco phones will be launching in India. It inaugurated the @IndiaPOCO user account and also spelt out that Mani has been working on this project for a while.


POCO’s user account, in turn, suggests that their introduction to the Indian market will have to do with speed, which isn’t surprising considering the Pocophone F1 AnTuTu benchmark scores that were leaked earlier this week.


Mani’s tweet also introduced the Pocophone Global account suggesting that the phone will probably launch in more countries than just India.

Here’s the thing. Most reports suggest that the Poco or Pocophone devices will primarily be premium smartphones. That in line with the Pocophone F1 AnTuTu score out ranking the OnePlus 6 benchmark according to a post on Reddit.

And ordinarily, Xiaomi’s ‘premium’ phones are normally exclusive to China. In recent times, it’s was only the Mi Mix 2S that was sold outside the country’s borders while the Mi 8 stayed.

Which is why it was unexpected when leaked images and videos of the phone showed the phone’s specifications and features listed in English instead of Chinese. That being said, if the Pocophone is a global sub-brand without a Chinese account being brought into the picture, it’s possible the Poco devices won’t launch in China at all.

Pocophone F1 - What we know so far

As per the leaked images of the phone, which includes the retail specifications, the phone runs on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chipset accompanied by 6GB of RAM and 64GB storage. Keeping in line with trends, the phone also has a notch up top leading the phone’s screen resolution to be 2246x1080.



The camera set up on the phone isn’t particularly impressive at face value. In fact, it’s identical to the cameras found on the Redmi Note 5 Pro with a rear dual camera with 12MP and 5MP sensors and 20MP selfie camera.

From the front, it looks a lot like the Mi 8 but from behind it bears a striking resemblance to the OnePlus 6.