Xiaomi's Poco unveils the £649+ F7 Ultra, with a 6.67" display, Snapdragon 8 Elite, a triple rear camera, 120W wired charging, and IP68, and the £499+ F7 Pro
Dominic Preston / The Verge :
Context & Ripple Effects
Poco began as Xiaomi’s value-performance label with the roughly $300 Pocophone F1, built around then-flagship-class silicon. The F7 line shows that positioning moving into a substantially higher price tier rather than simply repeating the original budget formula.
The launch also creates a clearer ladder beside Xiaomi’s own European flagships: the Xiaomi 15 series arrived at €999 and above earlier in March, while Poco packages the same Snapdragon 8 Elite platform at a lower entry price.
First-order effects
- Poco gives UK buyers a Snapdragon 8 Elite handset starting at £649, with premium-adjacent hardware features including IP68 protection, a triple-camera system, and 120W wired charging.
- Xiaomi can target performance-focused buyers below its Xiaomi 15 pricing without making Poco’s offer identical to its higher-priced flagship range.
Second-order effects
- Rival Android vendors in the £500–£700 segment face a more demanding specification benchmark: flagship silicon, fast charging, and ingress protection are now combined in one Poco offer.
- The split sharpens Xiaomi’s internal product segmentation: Poco must win on performance-per-pound, while Xiaomi-branded flagships need to justify their price through differentiation beyond the shared chipset.
Third-order effects
- If this pricing pattern persists, flagship chipsets may become a less reliable marker of ultra-premium positioning, shifting differentiation toward cameras, brand, software, and other hardware trade-offs.
- Poco’s evolution from the low-cost Pocophone F1 toward higher-priced devices suggests value brands can move upmarket as premium components filter into broader price bands, though buyer acceptance will determine how far that transition goes.
The trend: This is part of the broader premiumization of value-focused Android brands, which are bringing top-tier processors into progressively higher but still sub-flagship price tiers.