POCO F9 Ultra Review: A Flagship Phone Built for Performance and Battery Life
The POCO F9 Ultra is the company’s latest attempt to combine flagship-level performance with a price that remains below many traditional premium smartphones.
With a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor, a huge 8,050mAh silicon-carbon battery, a 6.9-inch 185Hz AMOLED display and a 200MP main camera, the F9 Ultra is clearly designed for users who want powerful hardware without moving straight to the most expensive flagship phones.
After spending time with the device, the F9 Ultra stands out particularly for its performance, battery endurance, display and audio system.
Design and Build
The POCO F9 Ultra has a large, premium-looking body measuring 163.49 x 77.94 x 8.74mm and weighing 235 grams. It also carries an IP68 rating for dust and water resistance.
The phone is not particularly light, but its size is understandable considering the large display and enormous battery inside.
The overall design is relatively restrained compared with some gaming-focused smartphones. There are no aggressive RGB elements or excessive gaming accents, allowing the F9 Ultra to look more like a conventional premium flagship.
6.9-inch 185Hz AMOLED Display
One of the biggest highlights is the display.
The F9 Ultra features a 6.9-inch AMOLED panel with a 2608 × 1200 resolution and refresh rate of up to 185Hz. It also supports HDR10+, Dolby Vision and up to 12-bit colour depth.
POCO claims peak brightness of up to 10,000 nits in specific conditions, while the display can reach 2,200 nits in high-brightness mode. It also supports touch sampling rates of up to 4,800Hz in compatible gaming scenarios.
In everyday use, the screen looks sharp, colourful and extremely smooth. Scrolling through websites and social media is fluid, while compatible games can take advantage of the higher refresh rate.
For gaming and multimedia consumption, this is one of the phone’s strongest features.
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Performance
The F9 Ultra is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, manufactured using a 3nm process.
The chipset features two prime cores reaching up to 4.6GHz and six performance cores reaching up to 3.62GHz. The phone also uses LPDDR5X memory and UFS 4.1 storage.
Storage configurations include:
- 12GB RAM + 256GB storage
- 16GB RAM + 512GB storage
- 16GB RAM + 1TB storage
Performance is therefore not an area where the F9 Ultra makes major compromises.
Apps open quickly, multitasking is smooth and demanding games run at high settings. POCO also includes its dedicated VisionBoost D8 graphics chipset, which is designed to improve image quality and frame interpolation in supported games.
During extended gaming sessions, however, thermal behaviour can still vary depending on the game and performance mode. Some independent testing has noted occasional thermal limitations despite the phone’s powerful hardware.
200MP Main Camera
The camera system is another major upgrade.
The F9 Ultra features a 200MP main camera with optical image stabilisation, alongside a 50MP periscope telephoto camera and a 50MP ultra-wide camera. The telephoto lens provides a 5x optical zoom.
The 200MP sensor is capable of capturing highly detailed photographs in good lighting. Image processing also helps improve dynamic range and overall exposure.
The 5x periscope camera is particularly useful for distant subjects, allowing the phone to produce more detailed zoom images than a standard digital zoom system.
The ultra-wide camera completes the setup, although some reviews have pointed out that its field of view is relatively narrow compared with some competing flagship phones.
Video Recording
Video capabilities are also strong.
The rear cameras can record up to 8K video at 30fps, while 4K recording is available at up to 60fps. The phone also supports electronic and optical stabilisation, HDR and 10-bit HDR video.
For users who regularly record videos, the combination of the high-resolution main sensor and telephoto camera provides plenty of flexibility.
8,050mAh Battery
Battery life may be the F9 Ultra’s biggest adva
