Xiaomi’s Poco sub-brand has announced its latest phone, the Poco X3 NFC. As you might have guessed from the inclusion of “NFC” in the name of the phone itself, this is not a device targeting a typical flagship audience. But like other recent Poco phones, the X3 NFC looks to be a strong proposition from a price-performance standpoint.
This is not a subtle phone, even before you get to the giant glossy “POCO” logo on the plastic back. It’s big and chunky at 9.4mm thick and 215g, with a large camera bump — but that’s just what you get when you make a phone with a massive screen, a huge battery, and a bunch of cameras.
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The display is a 6.67-inch 1080p panel with a refresh rate of 120Hz. It’s an LCD, which means it’s not quite as contrasty as the OLED screens common in even mid-range devices these days, and the panel choice also means the fingerprint sensor is on the sleep/wake button rather than integrated into the display. It doesn’t look bad, though — it’s sharper than an equivalently sized 1080p OLED, and the 120Hz refresh rate is usually only found on much more expensive phones.
The Poco X3 NFC is the first phone to use Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 732G processor, a speed-bumped version of the 730G found on Google’s Pixel 4A. It supports LTE — no 5G here — and comes with 6GB of RAM. There are options for 64GB or 128GB of storage, and there’s also a microSD card slot.
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The camera selection includes a 64-megapixel Sony IMX682 primary sensor, a 13-megapixel ultrawide, and 2-megapixel sensors for macro and depth functionality that are mostly just there to make the phone look like it has four cameras. The selfie camera is 20 megapixels and housed in a hole-punch display cutout.
The battery is 5,160mAh and can be fast-charged over USB-C at 33W. Xiaomi claims more than two days of regular usage, plus the ability to get a full charge in 65 minutes or 62 percent in half an hour. Other hardware features include decent-sounding stereo speakers, reasonably good haptics, and a headphone jack. And NFC, of course.
The Poco X3 NFC is going on sale in Europe today for €199 (~$235) for a model with 64GB of storage, or €249 ($295) for 128GB of storage. That’s the launch pricing for an unspecified period of time, however — the MSRP is €229 ($270) and €269 ($320). Still, even at the regular prices this is likely to be one of the better-value phones you’ll find in its segment.
