Poco F7 review

Design, build quality, handling

The Poco F7's design is anything but ordinary. The team aimed to create something distinct and memorable using broad, simple design strokes. Take the camera island, for instance—it's a minimalist vertical oval with a subtle accent ring, not exactly bold on its own. But the addition of a diagonal accent piece and two greenish LED-like lines on either side? That's a statement.

It almost like Poco designed the Limited Edition Silver model first and then dialed back and simplified the design from there. Our Limited Edition review unit has an incredibly busy back side. At least the top portion. There are geometric shapes like triangles and rhomboids, different textures and finishes, a whole slew of logos like the Snapdragon one, different accent colors, something resembling a gauge or meter of some sort, at least two bits imitating grills, some faux screws.

It's honestly more akin to something you would find on the back of a gaming phone than your "general-purpose" Poco F series.

Poco does tone down the "gamer aesthetic" quite a bit on the other two Poco F7 color options - the black and the white. It's probably for the better, too, since we don't really think the gamer look holds too much general appeal.

Still, even the more subdued color variants retain the small camera island accent, which is a nice touch.

You would be forgiven for thinking that the Poco F7 would mostly be made of plastic to keep costs down, but surprisingly, that is not the case. The middle frame is aluminum, and it is sandwiched by glass on both sides.

The glass on the front is Gorilla Glass 7i, just like the F7 Pro. Poco doesn't explicitly say what kind of glass it is using for the back.

The back side, while looking and feeling quite premium, gets smudged very, very easily. If you plan on using the F7 without a case, you can pretty much forget about keeping it clean. On the plus side, there is a fair amount of grip to the surface, so you shouldn't be constantly dropping the phone.

The Poco F7 feels very sturdy and well-made. There is practically no flex to the chassis and no hollowness to the back. The whole unit is nicely sealed for an official IP68 ingress protection rating.

Let's do a quick tour around the phone before moving on. The control set and location are mostly standard. The top side is mostly empty, sans a secondary noise-cancelling microphone. There is, unfortunately, no speaker grill here, which means that the amplified earpiece, acting as the second channel in the stereo audio output, is firing forward instead of upwards for a slightly less-balanced output.

Poco F7

The left side of the frame is empty while the right one houses the power button and volume rocker. Both are conveniently located height-wise and offer good tactile feedback.

The bottom side is a bit busier with the main microphone and speaker grill, as well as the dial Nano-SIM tray and the Type-C port.

The F7 uses an under-display fingerprint reader. It is of the standard optical variety and is both snappy and accurate. We had no issues with it whatsoever.

The front side of the phone is very clean. The display bezels are perhaps slightly thicker, but nothing too excessive. The display itself is mostly flat, which should accommodate a glass screen protector nicely, if you are into that sort of thing.

There are no visible sensors. Everything is nicely hidden away underneath the display. The earpiece is also nearly invisible and just a small sliver. The selfie punch hole is not the smallest we've seen, but still quite reasonable.