Poco F8 Ultra Review: You’ve never seen something like this before

Introduction

The Poco F8 Ultra is here, and I think it’s fairly safe to say – when you look at the rear – that you’ve never seen anything quite like this before. 

But is there more to it than the rather divisive finish on the back? The spec sheet and partnership with Bose indeed suggest so, but we all know that there’s way more to a phone than its spec sheet.

Design

• Denim look, but not a denim feel
• Flat edges and rounded corners
• IP68 dust and water resistance

First, we really do need to talk about the design of this phone, because it’s something else. This particular model is the Denim Blue variant, and you can tell immediately why it has that name. That blue textured finish on the back is designed to look like denim jeans. 

You might assume then that when you run your fingers along it, or grip it, that it feels soft and comfortable like thick, hard-wearing cotton. But you’d be very, very wrong. While it looks like denim, it very much isn’t. Instead, it’s made from what feels like a textured, rubbery silicone-like material. 

If I’m completely honest, I’m not a big fan at all. Of either the look or the texture, but you might feel different and decide it’s the best thing ever. Personally, I think if you’re going to put a textured coating on the back, it needs to be softer and more like a fabric or leather. 

There is a plus side to this finish though: it’s very grippy. Even with wet, oily or sweaty hands, you’re not going to struggle to keep hold of it. 

Other details are fairly similar to what you’ll see on other big flagships this year. The solid chunky matte aluminium framing has a similar finish and shaping to the latest iPhone 17 Pro series, as does the big rectangular metal camera island. 

That bump this year also includes something new: a round speaker grille emblazoned with ‘Sound by Bose’. It means instead of having just the usual two stereo speakers, there’s also another firing out of the back to add a little more immersion to the experience. More on that later though. 

Otherwise, it’s a fairly weighty device, but nothing out of the ordinary, and carries the typical IP68 water and dust rating to ensure it’ll survive your everyday. 

There’s a new ultrasonic fingerprint sensor onboard this year too, and it’s very good.

Similar to the Oppo Find X9 series, when you set it up, all you have to do is hold your thumb or finger down – swipe it around for a couple of seconds to capture the whole print – and you’re done. No repeatedly tapping or lifting. And, it works well, unlocks quickly every time, even if it’s a little wet. 

Screen

• 6.9-inch AMOLED panel
• 2000nits in high brightness mode
• Bose speaker on the rear elevates the audio experience

At 6.9 inches, the 120Hz AMOLED panel on the F8 Ultra covers a large surface area and boasts a number of top flagship specs.

It’s bright too, and able to reach up to 2000 nits across the panel in high brightness mode, or peaks of 3500 nits. Usually that would be for small bright spots in HDR videos, but Poco claims that up to a quarter of the display can reach this level at once. And it can drop as low as 1 nit in dark environments to save battery. 

It’s a genuinely brilliant display for media consumption too. The brightness helps ensure it’s visible and clear in most conditions, including bright environments. And the colours and sharpness are great too. It’s vibrant and rich without being excessively oversaturated.  

There is the odd occasion when warmer tones in the red, pink and orange spectrum seem the tiniest bit boosted, but not enough to make scenes lack any authenticity. But even if you’re not a fan of the default colour tuning out of the box, you can adjust them in the settings menu to make them more to your liking. 

It’s when it is combined with the speaker that any media or gaming experience is elevated. And I think – if anything – that’s the magic sauce that makes this phone different from pretty much any other. 

The expansive, edge-to-edge display with great colours – combined with immersive, clear and loud speakers – means whether you’re bingeing your favourite Netflix show or putting some time into Call of Duty, you’re not likely to find a richer or more immersive mobile experience. 

Both speakers on either side are identical, so offer a fully symmetrical stereo sound, while the speaker on the back stamped with ‘Sound by Bose’ acts as the subwoofer to give more low end to the sound. 

Those speakers are surprisingly rich and full-bodied, and rarely needed the volume turned up past 50%. Vocals are super clear in TV shows and movies, so they’re not tinny in the slightest. Lower voices retain a sense of their bassy timbre and resonance, as do any low, rumbling sounds in movie soundtracks. 

You can adjust the sound too, using the sound dynamics settings menu. So you can swap between a dynamic bass-filled sound and a more neutral setting, or switch on the immersive sound feature to make it feel a little more like you’re sitting in the sound. 

Cameras

• Weakest area of the F8 Ultra experience
• Secondary lenses are pretty disappointing
• Overprocessed results, even from main lens

Nearly every time I’ve reviewed a Poco phone, I’ve got to the cameras and found that they’re the biggest weak spot. Almost certainly in an effort to keep the cost competitive, compromises are made in the camera department. And the same is true this year. 

It might boast three 50-megapixel sensors, but the images that come from them aren’t as good as what you’d find on devices like the Oppo Find X9, or even Samsung’s latest crop of devices. Particularly when using the ultrawide and 5x telephoto zoom lens. 

I found that in most conditions, whether bright daylight or low light, the ultrawide struggles to retain any detail towards the sides of the image. So the only part that looks vaguely sharp is in the centre, where the left and right sides are often unclear and over-smooth. 

As for the telephoto 5x lens – which is supposed to have stabilisation – I very frequently found that it would either struggle to focus, or fail to counteract hand motion or shakiness. That meant photos often processed with unclear detail and blur, particularly if pushed past its 5x optical equivalent limit. Anything with complex textures, like pebbles on a beach or tree branches, came out looking quite messy. 

As is typical then, it’s the primary camera I’d argue is the only decent one that’s at least consistent and reliable. I have reservations about how Poco processes detail and colour, in that they don’t always seem authentic, and highlights are sometimes overblown.

Crop into the details and you’ll often find that unusual swirling going on, where the processing in general seems to be trying to smooth out any grain. But it’s hard to complain too much, especially if you only ever look at the photos on a phone screen. 

At night, when the light levels drop, the two weaker cameras show their weaknesses even more. And even the primary camera struggles a little when it’s dark. But, in automatic photo mode, it will default to taking a night mode photo, drawing in more light, stabilising motion and delivering an in-focus shot. 

The primary camera draws in quite a lot more light than the other two lenses and is more reliable at keeping images sharp, in-focus and blur-free. The ultrawide in particular struggles with low-light scenes, which isn’t at all surprising given it also struggles even in daylight. 

Performance

• Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and up to 16GB of RAM
• Solid performance, even when gaming
• Some animations feel a bit too fast

The Poco F8 Ultra is the latest in the recent crop of top-tier Android phones to come powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. And that means, when it comes to pure grunt and performance, it’s up there with the best of them. 

It doesn’t struggle with any graphically intensive tasks. Most of the casual games you play will run really smoothly, and even the more demanding titles like Genshin, Call of Duty or Destiny Rising stay smooth and responsive, even for longer periods. 

The only time I felt it get hot was when I’d switched the phone into performance mode and ran an extreme graphics stress test in a benchmark app that pushes the processor as hard as it can for 20 minutes continuously. And even then, it kept performing at a reasonable level towards the end of the test where so many others would have slowed down massively by then. 

For graphics tasks – it’s one of the best performing phones we’ve tested yet – and just about outscores the OnePlus 15, which has the same processor inside.  

The smart thing about the Poco phone, however, is that you don’t really ever need to switch it into performance mode to get the best out of it. In its default ‘Balanced’ state, it’ll switch into high gear when needed, and drop again when you’re doing more casual everyday tasks, so you’re not constantly pushing the processor or draining the battery. 

My only real, very nitpicky complaint with performance is that sometimes the animation on screen responds a bit too quickly. Like it moves faster than the swipe of your finger or thumb in the general user interface, and so it doesn’t feel completely natural. 

Software 

• HyperOS 3 based on Android 16
• Big focus on AI, but nothing game-changing
• Highly customisable OS, but takes some getting used to

Poco’s HyperOS software is, for the most part, the same as what you’ll get on most other Xiaomi phones. And for this year’s HyperOS 3, that means the inclusion of plenty of AI features. 

One of the more interesting ones is the AI Dynamic Wallpaper feature that can take one of your landscape or cityscape photos and then uses AI to turn it into a live wallpaper. I tried it on a photo I took near the sea, and after a few minutes of processing, it made the sea waves crash against the shore and the grass blades move in the wind in the foreground. It’s actually pretty cool. 

The rest of the AI features are largely things you’ve seen before. Features like translation in various settings, or generative text features for turning bullet points into paragraphs, or helping you adjust the tone of what you’ve written for different situations.

There are some AI features in the Gallery app, too, helpful mostly for upscaling grainy photos or beautifying them, but I didn’t particularly find those all that useful. 

Otherwise, you get lots of customisation choices with Xiaomi software. And that can be anything from the look and feel of the phone UI, themes, wallpapers and icons to customising how it behaves. Being able to adjust the power mode to either save battery or boost performance, for example. 

Xiaomi’s HyperOS isn’t without its frustrations – like constant pop-up ads in notifications if you even dare to use the Xiaomi browser just once. Or that when you want to change the wallpaper or theme from the Home Screen, it takes you to the store instead of letting you simply pick options that are already installed.

But a lot of those frustrations can be tamed, or there are workarounds, thankfully. 

Battery life

• 6500mAh battery can deliver two days of use
• Heavier battery drain when gaming
• Rapid 100W fast charging

Battery life is very good too. With its 6500mAh capacity battery, even the heaviest user won’t struggle to make it through a day on a full charge. In fact, depending on how you use it, you might even make it through two days. As long as you’re a light user like me, with very little extreme heavy usage, it should just about handle it. 

The only time you’ll see heavy drain is when pushing its processor to extremes, like playing those top-tier games with their ultra settings enabled. For the lighter-weight titles, it doesn’t drain much at all. A 30-minute spell of Mario Kart Tour only sipped 4%, which is just 1% less than the battery it drained watching an hour of Netflix. 

When it is empty, it’ll refill very quickly too; as long as you have a compatible Xiaomi 100W charger. With one of those, in our testing – and with the top charging speed enabled – I managed to get it from 1-100% in just under 45 minutes. It was half full in under 20.

Should you buy it?

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