Once you start looking at Android phones beyond the big manufacturers like Samsung and Google, you find yourself in a colorful world of brands that often seem confusing. For example, take a look at phone brands owned by Chinese companies and you’ll quickly notice that many of them started life under the umbrella of larger companies before morphing into separate brands. Remember when Redmi was Xiaomi’s product line? Well, Xiaomi still owns Redmi, but it operates as an independent brand. If your memory serves me correctly, POCO was also a Xiaomi model. Are POCO and Xiaomi the same today?
The story is almost identical to that of Redmi. Xiaomi, the famous Chinese phone company, still owns the POCO brand. In 2018, Xiaomi launched the first POCO F1, which made waves in the industry. Designed as a premium phone with all the best specs around, it gave the Samsung Note 9 value for money at a significantly lower price. POCO quickly became famous and after just two years, Xiaomi made it an independent brand. Just as Redmi has become a budget to mid-range phone brand for the manufacturer, POCO is focused on delivering powerful specs in a more affordable package.
POCO went “solo” to promote original designs and has a completely different marketing and sales team than Xiaomi. However, the brand shares manufacturing and after-sales resources with its parent company. POCO products are most likely manufactured in Xiaomi’s Beijing factory, and some products may also be assembled in India, where Xiaomi is one of the major manufacturers.
Are POCO, Xiaomi and Redmi phones similar?
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Xiaomi is more than just a phone maker, as it has expanded into everything from kitchen appliances to electric vehicles. However, all of its smart devices (including wearables) use the same operating system: HyperOS based on Android, formerly MIUI. The similarities don’t end there. Smartphones leaving the Xiaomi factory are generally reliable in both hardware and software, but can suffer from a short update window. This is evident when comparing Redmi with POCO, both of which benefit from around two years of updates.
The similarities don’t end there. When POCO became independent, the brand’s promises included the phrase “Technology that matters”, leading many to believe that the brand would only offer original products. While this is generally true, Redmi and POCO share related DNA, which isn’t all that surprising. For example, models like the Redmi K90 Pro and POCO F8 Ultra used the same Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 processor and were bundled under the codename Myron.
Shady? Not exactly, because this information is public. Despite some variations, mainly in terms of battery capacity, the POCO X8 Pro was a rebrand of the Redmi Turbo 5 (which was marketed for the Chinese territory). In the same vein, the POCO F7 was rumored to be a K80 in disguise before the former was released. Ultimately, the model differs from its predecessor by certain characteristics. Some have been supercharged, while others have been nerfed to keep the two phones aligned with different branding strategies. It makes sense: why waste additional resources on R&D when you can make a few changes and offer two different products for different types of consumers?
