Xiaomi has been a key contender in the smartphone market for more than a while now. Throughout the globe, Xiaomi has built its presence for its excellent fleet for devices, home devices, accessories and a whole lot more. One their more polarizing decisions came in once Xiaomi decided to branch out a new brand, dubbed as Poco.
Here at GeeksULTD, we’ve been very vocal regarding the changes and updates coming to the Pocophone F1 well into its launch. Therefore, we decided to get in touch with the cool folks at Xiaomi on a number of issues and general discussions on how they plan to move forward in the near future. We discussed with them if they know what’s going on with the Pocophone F1, how the Poco sub-brand came to be and a number of other questions regarding the company’s decisions throughout 2018 and a few questions pertaining the future of the company.
Here are the questions and answer’s we had collected from our session with them. Do note though that both of the folks from Xiaomi did not want their names to be disclosed, instead, they’ll be representing themselves as “Xiaomi representatives”.
Q. The Pocophone F1 has to be one of the most polarizing phones this year, was the launch of the Pocophone planned long ago or was it a last minute decision to create a sub-division within Xiaomi?
No, it’s definitely not a last minute decision. As a small outfit within Xiaomi, POCOPHONE has the freedom to start from scratch, zeroing in on the product choices that matter. POCOPHONE stands for “a little”—we believe in starting small but dreaming big. POCOPHONE understands the core elements of a great smartphone experience and focuses on providing exactly that. We think this is what users want, instead of abundant features that aren’t crucial and in fact add to costs. So POCOPHONE delivers a fluid, speedy and flagship experience at an irresistible price tag.
Q. The Pocophone F1 has quite a few issues with its screen. While updates have fixed screen scaling issues and a number of other simple issues, has Xiaomi taken notice issues with touch latency on the Pocophone F1.
Yes, we have created a page on Xiaomi MIUI official forum to constantly update the progress of resolving all those issues, including the ones you have mentioned. We are grateful for the feedback from our users and would like to apologize for any inconveniences caused. We will continue to improve our products along the way.
Q. With the Pocophone F1, a lot of people are still stunned by the fact that there is such a phone that exists in such a price range. Is this a one-off smartphone that we’d see once in a lifetime or do you think that the next Pocophone would replicate the same amount of success with beastly specs next year?
We have some exciting ideas but it’s too early to share at this stage.
Q. With the launch of the Mi 8, Xiaomi has really diversified their lineup. From the Mi 8 Explorer to the Mi 8 Lite, Xiaomi has filled in pretty much every gap with the Mi 8 nametag. Do you find any potential reasons behind this?
Xiaomi is committed to providing more and more people with excellent products at honest prices. The new members of the Mi 8 family were designed according to user demands for different features.
Q. Xiaomi’s stance on developers has always been very clear. They’ve supported them, they’ve invited them and they have also encouraged users to get into the technical nitty gritty by allowing users to unlock their bootloaders and root their devices, do you think that Huawei’s recent stance on blocking bootloader unlocks is a good thing and that Xiaomi may also follow Huawei’s steps?
Our stance remains unchanged. We are happy to see a lively custom ROM community for Xiaomi devices and as it has always been, those who buy their devices from local official channels will not void their warranty even if they choose to unlock their bootloader.
Xiaomi’s answers were rather vague. However, we did some keen answers from them whether brief or not.
Staying true to their stance, Xiaomi did get back their promises of making the Pocophone as developer friendly as possible and how they are planning to expand their reach into every single category. What was vague with this whole issue was the fact that Xiaomi hasn’t taken the issue regarding the touch latency on the Pocophone F1 seriously and instead handed a link to the community update page for the Pocophone F1. Sure, details regarding the Pocophone F2 are out of the question. However, we were interested to see if Xiaomi plans to expand the Pocophone range with a few new devices. Based on their answers, it seems like Xiaomi won’t be expanding their lineup range and would instead launch the Pocophone F2 next year rather than filling in gaps like the Mi lineup.
Based on how disconnected Xiaomi is regarding the situation, we’ve decided to launch a follow up to the whole issue to the touch problems.
