I am a new Poco F3 owner, and was a Poco F1 long-term user. Was, because I recently sold that beloved phone after more than 2.5 years of usage. 


Yes, I'm aware of the dust that's visible. Haha...

I bought the Poco F1 back in September 2018, shortly after the launch. I had purchase the phone from Lazada Malaysia, and if my memory serves me right, the delivery was quick — I got the phone like the very next day or something. This time around, I also purchased the Poco F3 from Lazada but the delivery took a very long time (more than 10 days) this time and it was shipped from Hong Kong. The Poco F3 price in Malaysia starts at RM1,399 and I had gotten the Poco F4 5G 6GB RAM + 128GB storage for RM1,299 during flash sale.

The Poco F1 was a dream phone - it had everything that I wanted in a phone. Top flagship chip at that time of its launch, huge battery, USB-C (not all phones came with USB C then), and most importantly, it came with a headphone jack.

After getting the Poco F3, I realise there are a couple of things which I missed:

  • I was able to wake the screen whenever I touch the fingerprint scanner on Poco F1 (even when I did not activate fingerprint lock on the phone). I can't figure out a way to do that on the Poco F3. 
  • Missing LED light notification on Poco F3. I was Googling "How to enable LED light notification" only to realise that there's no such hardware on the phone. Sure, there's the Always On Display AOD) on Poco F3, but I rather have that turned off because AOD does increase battery consumption.
  • No headphone jack on Poco F3. Sure, I still can use earphones with but it means I have to use the dongle as well. Bluetooth earphones are great but since I do play some games, and it means I have to get earphones with low latency so that there's no noticeably lag between visuals and audio.

Few other caveats I discovered as well:

  • Low volume when gaming on Poco F3: When playing COD Mobile on the Poco F3, the volume was extremely low and it was difficult to hear anything at all. Thanks to some digging around Facebook groups, I realised that this can be fixed when I changed the "Region" setting from Malaysia to Singapore. Apparently it also works when you change the "Region" setting to India or Indonesia.  
  • Poco F3 - MIUI optimisation option is missing by default. I think this is more of a software issue though, with MIUI. Usually a lot of users would be looking to disable this temporarily because of Vanced. Again, thanks to some Googling and search, I found out that you could get MIUI optimisation option to appear by tapping "reset to default values" for five (5) times. But the problem is, some users couldn't even tap on the "reset to default values" as the "reset to default values" option is greyed out. 

How to enable or fix the "reset to default values" option?

    • First, make sure you've enabled developer mode on MIUI.
      • Step 1: Open Settings app on your Mi device.
      • Step 2: Scroll down and tap on About Phone.
      • Step 3: Tap on MIUI version for about 7-10 times.
      • Step 4: You should see a message saying “You are now a developer”.
    • Go to Settings > Additional settings > Languages & input > Auto-fill service
    • Change from 'None' to 'Google'
    • Press 'OK' when you see this notice: "Make sure that you trust this app. Google uses what's on your screen to determine what can be auto-filled." 
    • The "reset to default values" should be clickable now and you should be able to tap it 5 times to see the MIUI optimisation option.

Here's a video guide on how to fix the "reset to default values option" if you prefer:




So, it looks like I'm complaining a lot about Poco F3, right? It's true, if I were to compare phone-to-phone and early experience, I would say I love Poco F1 much more for my own needs. Like, I've always preferred non-glass back for phones because I'm so clumsy :(. And I really don't care about what people say about how "good phones should have glass", otherwise it feels cheap. And I don't care so much about camera either because I already have a dedicated mirrorless camera for photography purposes. 

Nonetheless, there are several things on the Poco F3 that still impressed me of course:


  • Battery life is impressive so far. Granted, it's a newer phone but it's behaving as good as I expected it to be. 
  • Charging speed. Excellent. No complaints.
  • Display. AMOLED. What's not to love about AMOLED.
  • Dolby Atmos dual speakers. Nice.
  • Value for money. Still, one of the main reasons I chose to pick up the Poco F3 is because this is really the phone that is bang for the buck for all the features that it offers. Heck, even Arun of Mrwhosetheboss had given the coveted Best "Most Worth It Phone of 2021" aka "Best Affordable Phone" but also "Best Value Phone" award.
Watch his video here:


Overall, I have to admit I don't love this as much as I fancied the Poco F1, but I hope it will grow on me.