Flagship phones are painfully expensive these days. It isn’t a surprise that there are a lot of people who want phones that perform well but don’t want to spend a four-digit amount in pounds, dollars, or euros. For that demographic, flagship killers are arguably the best answer to their dilemma.
Xiaomi’s Poco lineup came to life in 2018 with the Poco F1, which was clearly positioned to compete with flagships in terms of raw power, and surprisingly, it did a very good job of that despite being a fraction of the price. Several years later, the Poco F7 Pro and Poco F7 Ultra are here, maintaining that flagship-killing DNA.
The Poco F7 Pro and F7 Ultra Bring Similar High-End Abilities, With Some Key Differences
Poco and OnePlus had a similar mission around the time that they each launched. They both aimed to bring you the stuff that the bigger OEMs were gatekeeping behind high price tags, except at a price that a lot more people would be open to paying. While their pricing has climbed ever since, Poco has stayed a little more loyal to its initial mission.
Today, the brand has launched the Poco F7 Pro and the Poco F7 Ultra, each offering flagship specs for a much easier-to-swallow price. Let’s discuss them.
The Design
The Poco F7 Pro and Ultra both have very similar designs. The corners are slightly rounded and the frame is flat. The Pro model opts for a flat screen and back, but on the Ultra, the screen is “quad-curved”, though the part of the glass that curves starts with the bezels. The back has a similar curvature. But devices come in a dual-tone finish. The circular camera module sits in the upper-left corner of the back panel.
It’s 2025, and needless to say, both devices come with IP68 dust and water resistance. It’s hard to be competitive without those.
The Screen
Both devices carry the same fantastic display. You get a 6.67-inch 1440p AMOLED display with Dolby Vision and HDR10+ certification. As expected in 2025, the screen has a 120Hz refresh rate and a peak brightness of 3,200 nits (and 1,800 nits in high brightness mode). There’s also 3,840Hz PWM dimming to protect your eyes at night.
The Hardware
What makes a smartphone a true flagship is the chip that it carries. Does that SoC have the power to compete with the very best of them? In the case of the Poco F7 Pro and F7 Ultra, the answer is yes. The F7 Ultra uses the chip of the moment—the Snapdragon 8 Elite—while the F7 Pro brings last year’s flagship power in the form of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Not bad.
The Poco F7 Pro comes in two storage variants: 256GB and 512GB, paired with 12GB of RAM. In the case of the Ultra model, you can go for 12/256GB as well, but for a little extra, that becomes 16/512GB, sort of making it a no-brainer. Both devices use UFS 4.1 storage, despite being relatively affordable. I’m impressed.
Oh, and it’d be wrong for me not to mention that both phones come with under-display ultrasonic fingerprint readers, NFC, IR blasters, and Wi-Fi 7. The Pro model has Bluetooth 5.4, but the Ultra steps that up to Bluetooth 6.0.
The Batteries and Charging
It’ll probably be annoying to many, but this is perhaps the one category where you might have to make a notable trade-off when going for the more expensive phone. The Ultra has a 5,300mAh battery, but the Pro model pushes that up to 6,000mAh.
However, if you want faster charging or wireless charging, you’ll need to make that compromise. The Pro model “only” has 90W wired charging while the Poco F7 Ultra makes that 120W wired, along with 50W wireless charging.
The Cameras
Both phones opt for a 50MP primary sensor with OIS and can record as high as 8K/24 and 4K/60. That’s where the similarities end, though. The Pro model has only two cameras, with the second being a standard 8MP ultrawide. The Ultra takes its job more seriously. Its ultrawide is a 32MP unit, and it also comes with a 50MP 2.5x telephoto camera.
In the selfie department, the Pro model chooses a 20MP sensor (we don’t see that number much) and the Ultra goes for a 32MP.
The Pricing and Availability
The Poco F7 Ultra is available in Yellow and Black and starts at £649. The higher-specced option is only £50 more though, and you get more memory and double the storage.
In the case of the Poco F7 Pro, you can get it in Black, Silver, and Blue colorways. It’ll set you back by at least £499 for the base model. The top variant similarly costs £50 more.
But if you buy the phone from Amazon before April 10th, you can get a pretty solid discount. You’ll be able to save £90 on the F7 Ultra and £100 on the Pro model. That just makes the flagship killing even more potent.
