Bad News About Poco Fans

The next POCO smartphone may be an India-only exclusive. (Image source: @IndiaPOCO)

POCO has been driving speculation about a successor to the POCO F1 of late, which has stirred up hope of there being a Pocophone F2 in the offing. But, is it all that it seems? Dissecting the latest speculation suggests not, but the rebirth of POCO may be more complex than we were led to believe.

by, 2020/01/23

Android Smartphone Rumor

There has been a lot of news of POCO, and by extension, a new Pocophone lately. While there have been rumblings about a Pocophone F2 since the start of last year, speculation has been picking up of late. In the last month alone, we have seen a Pocophone F2 trademark application, a POCO X2 appearing on Geekbench, purported live images and the announcement of POCO becoming an independent brand.

Now, Chandolu Manmohan, the General Manager of POCO India, and @IndiaPOCO, dropped more hints about a new POCO device coming to market. Firstly, the "POCO | S02 E01" video that the latter recently posted online appears to briefly spell out POCO X2, as the photo below demonstrates.

Additionally, Manmohan clarified in an interview that a new POCO handset may arrive this quarter. Moreover, he is quoted as remarking that it would:

...essentially be the successor to the Poco F1, offering a similar value-for-money proposition with a top-end SoC and a large amount of RAM.

While stating that POCO would only release one handset for the time being, Manmohan did not rule out the company eventually selling multiple POCO handsets at once. However, all this apparently only applies to India, with POCO not becoming an independent company globally. Instead, Manmohan implied that Xiaomi will continue to manage the Pocophone brand, and that POCO currently has no control over "global operations of the brand". While POCO going global is being thought about,  has quoted Manmohan as saying "it might take some more time for us to kind of validate that”.

In fact, leaker claims that the POCO X2 is based on the Redmi K30. They have not ruled out a POCO F2 still coming to fruition, though.

All in all, there appear to be takeaways from all this. Firstly, a POCO F1 successor may arrive by April, and it could be called the POCO X2. With that said, it will not necessarily succeed the Pocophone F1. Hence, while India may only be a few months from the arrival of a new POCO smartphone, the wait for the rest of the world will go on.