Poco F3 long-term review

MIUI 12.5 Enhanced, updates

It's starting to feel a lot like Xiaomi has an irrational fear of the number 13. Think about it - when we were all expecting the announcement of MIUI 13, what we got instead was MIUI 12.5. And now guess what's rolling out (and made it to our Poco F3 while we had it for this review)? MIUI 12.5 Enhanced.

Light joking aside, MIUI 12.5 Enhanced didn't actually deserve the MIUI 13 moniker because it doesn't change almost anything that you can actually see (unlike every single big MIUI iteration before it). Instead, it's all about making things smoother, more bug-free, and more future-proof, and we're all for that.

MIUI 12.5 Enhanced update changelog

In the time we've had with the Poco F3 since getting the MIUI 12.5 Enhanced update, we did notice that things seemed a bit smoother overall, and we took that into account when thinking about the phone's overall smoothness (as detailed on the previous page of this review in the Performance section).

MIUI 12.5 Enhanced is basically MIUI 12.5, just more optimized under-the-hood, and if you're like us, you also believe one can't possibly have enough under-the-hood optimizations in software. There's always something that could be made more efficient, smoother, or both. And that's the story here. Hopefully, Xiaomi's claims about future-proofing also pan out, but we can't vouch for that right now.

While we did get this big under-the-hood MIUI update, when it comes to underlying Android versions and security patches, Xiaomi is one of the worst offenders out there. We're being blunt here, since there's point in sugarcoating this. Don't expect big Android versions to be timely. And don't expect your Xiaomi/Poco/Redmi phone's security patch level to ever be current, no matter how much your device costs.

These are givens at this point, but when it comes to big Android updates, there's always a caveat we have to mention, and that is that the big new user-facing features most of the time arrive in new MIUI versions, which are uncoupled from the underlying Android version. So you can have MIUI 12 on Android 11 or Android 10, for example, and usually, the Android version bump only has effects under-the-hood. However, things may be different with Android 12, if Xiaomi decides to incorporate the new auto-theming system into MIUI. That's a big if, though.

Current software version and security status

Our Poco F3 unit was most recently on MIUI 12.5.6.0, the Enhanced edition, with Android 11 underneath and the August 2021 security patch level. Keep in mind that this update arrived in October, so at that point, the security stuff was already two months behind. Now, in November, it's three months removed from the current ones. As we implied above, you need to get used to this as it's always been the way things are in Xiaomi land.

Now, taking a look at this MIUI 12.5 Enhanced, we see it basically looks exactly the same as MIUI 12.5 non-Enhanced, and we've seen this one before a few times in long-term reviews, most recently in the Redmi Note 10 Pro, but also in the Mi 11 before that.

Settings

The skin is an evolution of MIUI 12, and that means no huge design differences are present, but there are a lot of functional enhancements and some more customization options here and there. MIUI, as it is now on the Poco F3 (we'll refrain from using the phrase "MIUI 12.5 Enhanced" every time, but that's what we mean) is really at its peak in terms of maturity, smoothness, and overall coherence.

If you used to hate MIUI a few years ago, maybe it's time to give it another try because it sure has grown up in the meantime. That doesn't mean it comes devoid of any weird bits and pieces, but they mostly don't detract from a very good user experience.

Yes, by default, you get an ad page after each app installation, even if it's from the Play Store, but that is easily disableable forever by tapping on the gear icon in the top right and turning off the scanning of apps from the Play Store as well as showing "recommendations" (the perfect euphemism for ads, if you ask us).

Recents, gestures

On the Poco F3, you can only have one type of Recent apps menu, which is weird because in other devices running MIUI 12.5 you can finally pick between the traditional vertically-scrolling two-column view and a horizontally-scrolling version that looks more in tune with what every other Android skin has been doing for a few years now.

But on the F3, for whatever reason, you're stuck with the vertically-scrolling Recents, and we don't like that. For a skin that's all about options, randomly keeping this one from some phones just feels petty. Or maybe this is one of the things that makes "MIUI for Poco" stand apart from its not-for-Poco twin, who knows. Whatever the reason, we can't help but think it's quite random.

Recents

We've praised MIUI's gesture navigation system from the beginning, and it has consistently stayed on top of our list of best out there. It works very well, and even better in MIUI 12.5 Enhanced, with zero perceived lag from when you start a swipe to seeing feedback to it on the screen. Unlike Google's messy implementation of the side-swipe to go back gesture, MIUI has kept its much smarter idea of having that gesture work in the bottom two-thirds of the screen. And if you come across an app that still has a hamburger slide-out menu, you can get to that by swiping from the side in the top third. Easy and intuitive, we'd say.

Of course, you still swipe up to go to the home screen, and you swipe up and hold to reveal the Recent apps display, and this is the only area where things aren't entirely smooth sailing. The animation that places the app screenshots in the vertically scrolling two-column Recents view is slow and cumbersome at best, and it's always slower to respond than any other gesture. Again, we think the easy fix here is to allow horizontally scrolling Recents, but that's still not in the Poco F3's software.

Gesture navigation settings

In past MIUI iterations, you could enable fast switching to the previously used app by swiping from the side (as if to go back) and holding a bit, but that's now a dead and buried feature. However, you can achieve the same effect by swiping up just a bit and then left or right. That would make more intuitive sense if the Recents display was horizontal, because upon that small swipe up you're basically seeing the outlines of the other apps left and right, but we digress.

A new thing that's technically a gesture is the ability to tap the back of the phone, either twice or three times, to make something happen. This is off by default, but you can easily activate it from Settings, where you can pick an individual action for both double tap and triple tap.

Back tap, quick camera and Assistant launch

If we stretch the definition of "gesture" just enough, we can also tell you that we really like the fact that we can set the Camera app to be opened by either a double press of the power button, or a double press of the volume down button when the screen is locked, or both of these. Additionally, you can have it so pressing and holding the power button activates Google Assistant after half a second (to get the power menu you just keep pressing longer).

Dark mode, System apps updater

While on most MIUI 12.5 phones the entire UI turns dark when you employ Dark Mode, on the Poco F3 the System apps updater stays white. Why? We wouldn't be able to tell you, but it makes for a jarring look. In case you were thinking of asking, we also still don't know why the System apps updater needs to exist, considering the fact that, despite what its name may imply, it doesn't actually update all system apps, just some of them. The others get updates through the Play Store. This still doesn't make any sense.

System apps updater isn't dark themed

Speaking of the Dark mode, it's there and still great, although we think we'd like to see more companies offer the choice to customize the level of darkness you want, a la Oppo's ColorOS. Even so, MIUI lets you schedule the Dark mode automatically based on sunset/sunrise or with a custom interval of your choosing.

You can also let the phone darken the wallpaper when Dark mode is on, and tweak contrast, so things are easier on the eyes (the "Adjust text and backgrounds automatically" setting), and we especially like the latter. It just shows a lot of attention to detail.

Dark mode settings

Perhaps disappointingly, MIUI still automatically forces Dark mode onto all apps, regardless of whether they have a dark theme of their own, and this can sometimes lead to weird visual artefacts in some apps. When or if you encounter such a thing, you then need to jump into Settings > Display > More dark mode options and turn off the automatic dark-ification for that specific app once the list loads.

It's a cumbersome process, and we wish there was a "select all" option at least. Also, now that more and more apps actually do have dark themes, maybe the best behavior here would be off by default, and then if you want to force an app into dark mode, just do that manually on a case-by-case basis. Even Facebook, long the biggest holdout, has somehow managed to concoct a dark theme of its own!

Launcher

The Poco Launcher has been around for a while now, and most of its features have made it to Xiaomi's System launcher (used on non-Poco phones) recently. It still works very well, and has some rather unique features like App categories, but it feels like its last big update was years ago - maybe it's time for another one? Introducing new features, perhaps? We don't exactly have a list of things it has to contain, but surely the Xiaomi/Poco developers can think of a few new things to add? Otherwise, it does the job very well. It just feels a bit stale, for lack of a better word.

Poco Launcher and its settings

Like with most recent Xiaomi/Poco/Redmi devices, you can choose to have the Google Discover feed show up to the left of your leftmost home screen, where the Mi Vault used to reside in years past. You can't get that one back, by the way, you only have a choice between showing Google Discover or not showing anything there. Since we were never fans of the Mi Vault (or OnePlus' Shelf, or various other such things), we are happy that it's gone from that part of the UI, and we were amazed to see that sometimes the Discover feed presents us with a few things we'd actually want to read. Shocking, that.

New Control center

A new feature in recent MIUI builds is the option to use the "new" Control center, which is basically "inspired" by Apple's. Thankfully you can still have it the old way, with Quick Settings icons in the top of the notification shade, and you can then swipe down again to expand that view to show even more Quick Settings toggles.

Old version

We went back and forth here a bunch of times but eventually settled on using the "old" way of doing things because we were more used to it and because if you enable the "new" Control center, you have to swipe down in the leftmost third of the screen to actually get to the notifications - otherwise you're getting the Control center.

Control center style setting

We think Xiaomi should tweak this to be 50/50, it seems fairer that way. As it is, this reviewer being right-handed, and the Poco F3 being as big as it is, it was cumbersome to hit that leftmost third to bring down the notifications a lot of times, which is why eventually we decided to go with the "old" method.