Xiaomi's Poco F2 Pro flagship lands in the UK with considerably gentler price tag

Xiaomi's latest flagship, the Poco F2 Pro, hits UK shelves today with an early-bird price of £499. The dual-sim, 5G-enabled Poco F2 Pro packs Qualcomm's Snapdragon 865 platform. The first slew of phones will come with 8GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage. Xiaomi also intends to launch a cheaper version later in the …

[Anonymous Coward]

5G early adopter?

I hope to wait 6 months to a year yet to get my next phone when real world 5G networks are common enough to actually test the hardware.

Too much risk right now of getting a phone that won't tune to your local bands

[tip pc]

Re: 5G early adopter?

Some googling will reveal what spectrum licenses your local phone providers have purchased and also what they plan to deploy, from that you can purchase a phone that supports those wavelengths.

Or just wait and get a cheap 5g handset that still doesn’t support all your needed bands.

[Guildencrantz]

Re: bands

Pretty sure all the UK networks are just doing n78 3500mhz atm, which a UK-marketed 5G mobe will have to have. It's the cheapo stuff off Kimovil etc that lacks this band.

https://kenstechtips.com/index.php/uk-network-frequency-bands#Three_Coverage_Bands

[Anonymous Coward]

Margins

If the component cost is really 45% of the selling price, those are very tight margins indeed. Add on assembly cost, R&D, logistics and perhaps we're up to 60-65%, and out of the remaining 35-40% the manufacturer has to finance the HQ and its staff, other overhead, margin for distributors and end sellers, some profit, a bone for shareholders, cocaine and hookers.

I'd be interested to know what that 45% really represents. Is it actual BOM only?

[bengoey49]

Limited LTE / 4 G Bands

I am surprised that this phone has limited 4G / LTE bands despite its upmarket / expensive price ( compared to the original POCO ). For the next two years at least 4G is still important due to patchy coverage of 5G. This phone won't be good for the US. It has way less LTE / 4G coverage than the cheapest Google Pixel and iPhone SE. The LTE coverage is only good for the EU and parts of Asia. I have the original POCO (still using it as a back up and use in Asia ) and live in the UK but often travel abroad hence my interest in the coverage before buying a phone. Interestingly all the OnePlus phones have extensive LTE coverage, even the old models.