They teased the phone a while ago in mid-August. Xiaomi Poco X8 was launched today right on schedule in one of the Asian countries with a base 6/128GB variant. And its starting price is a tough pill to swallow for that configuration. The rest of the phone is quite premium.
This is actually a rebranded Redmi Note 17 Pro. You can tell from the camera island and the lens arrangement on the back. They’ve put a 50MP main camera next to a 2MP depth mapper on the island. But that’s it. There’s no other camera, which again brings the phone’s price into question.
The screen has a 16MP selfie camera in a punch hole. The Xiaomi new Poco mobile is built around a 6.83” OLED display. There’s 1.5K resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate. High PWM dimming is also supported. And there are plenty of eye safety features. 3500nits is the rated peak brightness on the Poco X8 Pro.
Gorilla Glass Victus 2 keeps the screen somewhat safe. Redmi Note 17 Pro’s biggest advantage was the battery, but the Poco X8 cuts off a big chunk. The newcomer has an 8340mAh cell. There’s a 67W charging solution and 22.5W reverse wired output, so it doubles as a power bank for other accessories.
The chip is mediocre at best. Poco X8 uses the same Snapdragon 6s Gen 4 at 2.4Ghz. That’s a 5G platform. There’s LPDDR4x RAM and UFS 3.1 storage. Four out of its eight cores have a boost clock of 2.4 GHz. This is adequate for Android 16 and Hyper OS 3.
The phone’s officially rated for IP69K water ingress and dust protection, and there’s drop resistance too (up to 3m). By the way, essentials like Dual speakers and a screen fingerprint reader are also added to the Poco X8.
UFS 3.1 is the claimed storage on the Poco X8, but that’s only true for the 256GB options and above. 128GB trims are only UFS 2.2 modules. The phone has an IR blaster. There’s no audio jack. But it does support WiFi 5. $269 (~PKR 74,000) is the base price for Poco X8 (6/128GB).
