POCO UI Archives - Gizmochina

Poco executive discusses the future of the company: Poco smartwatches and earbuds upcoming?

Zohaib Ahmed — Mon, 01 Nov 2021 14:04:28 +0000

Poco is easily one of the fastest-growing smartphone ‘sub brands’ around and has seen huge success since its very first device itself that launched back in 2018 – the Poco F1. Fast forward to three years later and the brand has gone independent from Xiaomi and is seeking to expand into other products, starting with ecosystem products.

Poco ecosystem products

In an interview with Android Authority, Poco revealed that it’s expanding into ecosystem products in 2022. This doesn’t come as a surprise though considering almost every smartphone brand now has its own ecosystem of sorts. It, after all, allows for a more seamless experience while also building brand loyalty.

“We always think smartphone plus IoT is a key strategy for us,” Poco Global head Kevin Qiu said.

Poco’s head of product marketing, Angus Ng added saying that while “nothing is actually off-limits,” it’s starting small at first. “Coming out with ecosystem products, I think we still need to stay close to our brand philosophy and product philosophy. So we need to somehow play it more on the safer end, to begin with (sic).”

This suggests that audio products, followed by wearables and power banks could be the first products towards building a Poco ecosystem.

An ecosystem typically includes tablets as well. This market is something that Poco isn’t planning on entering anytime soon though considering high competition:

“On the tablet side, yeah tablets have been huge in the industry in the last year and a half because of the pandemic. But it’s because it’s been huge and kinda crowded, (that) it’s even harder for us to enter from that perspective.”

Poco software

Moving on to what Poco does best – smartphones – the company’s next offering will likely be the Poco M4 Pro. The device has been touted as being a rebranded Redmi Note 11 by many. Poco is known for simply slapping their own logo atop devices that were originally Xiaomi and reselling them, but that is said to change now.

The company is looking to further differentiate itself from Xiaomi and Redmi in terms of software. Sure, you do get a Poco launcher, but that has mostly been it. Qiu now says that further customizations and aesthetics for the software to bring it more in line with Poco’s hardware designs are being considered.

And as for the dilemma of software updates, Qiu had the following to say:

“As of right now we’re actually still discussing and talking to the MIUI team about being a part of that plan. As of right now, I can’t confirm anything about three plus four [three years of OS updates and 4 years of security patches – ed], we’re still staying with two plus three right now for all of our devices.”

Poco Snapdragon 888 phones

Last but not least was the question of why Poco chose to stick to Snapdragon 870 and has not released any device with the latest Snapdragon 888 chip:

“After internal testing with a lot of our R&D and product managers, we found out that (the Snapdragon) 865 from last year was an amazing chipset. In terms of performance, stability, and cooling in general. And 870 was able to keep all of those great attributes and become even better. When some of the first flagship Android devices pushed out 888, the major concern was overheating and power consumption.”

POCO UI confirmed to arrive in late 2021

Sudarshan Ravichandran — Thu, 13 May 2021 08:38:23 +0000

POCO started as a sub-brand of Xiaomi in 2018. The brand’s POCO F1 (aka POCOPHONE F1) was a phenomenal hit. The company made a comeback in 2020 as an individual brand under the Xiaomi Corporation. Since its early days, the company’s smartphones have been running MIUI for POCO. Now, the brand has revealed its plans for new software.

Yesterday, in an exclusive interview with Android Central, POCO spilled the beans on the upcoming POCO M3 Pro 5G and the brand’s future plans. In this interview, the company even revealed that it’s not going to launch Android One smartphones.

But we can expect different software on future POCO-branded phones. The POCO executives have confirmed that their devices will continue to use MIUI but with exclusive features.

For those unaware, when MIUI for POCO was introduced with POCO F1, it looked different than the regular MIUI found on Mi and Redmi smartphones. But with the brand’s second coming, the lines between the two versions of MIUI blurred. At present, they both look identical.

That’s because MIUI never had an app launcher. POCO F1 debuted with one dubbed as POCO launcher. With MIUI 11, Xiaomi baked this launcher into its software. Right now, the only noticeable difference between the two UIs is the default icon packs.

So how will MIUI for POCO differ in the future? The brand says that it will be implementing special features based on feedback from POCO Community and social media. This new version of the company’s software may release as POCO UI in late 2021.

In a nutshell, the upcoming POCO UI will be another clone of MIUI like Black Shark’s JOYUI. Another example of this type of implementation is realme UI, which is basically ColorOS.

Last but not least, POCO does say that it could develop an Android skin from scratch if the brand gains more market share globally.

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