Poco India GM talks about upcoming phone (Poco F2?) and other future plans of the now independent brand

Xiaomi’s 2018 Pocophone F1 (Poco F1) is no-doubt, one of the halo devices in recent times. Its strategy was simple, the same that brought us OnePlus; flagship specs and a budget price. The same should apply for the upcoming Poco F2

The brand’s philosophy, ‘Everything You Need, Nothing You Don’t’ resonated so well with the market that a year into its life cycle, the Pocophone F1 remains one of the best mid-range devices today. Fans are clamoring for the next Pocophone.

In light of new reports of the second generation Pocophone in the works, and Pocophone being a standalone brand, independent from Xiaomi, Poco India General Manager, C Manmohan in an interview with Gadgets 360 shed some light on the new developments.

As mentioned, Poco is now an independent brand. While it is still a really young brand with little in form of resources, the Poco India General Manager says that Poco will get a product team of its own. As if that is not all, the company will also have a sales team of its own, as well as a marketing team of its own.

This is a very tall order for a brand who’s halo device was launched in partnership with its mother company. While this could prove to be a mammoth task, Manmohan is rather confident of this move by Poco.

This confidence probably stems from the fact that in the foreseeable future, Poco will continue to use the established presence of Xiaomi in markets where Poco will operate. This means that Poco, despite being its own brand, will continue to store user data at Xiaomi’s data centers. This will help the young brand cut down on a lot of the initial infrastructure it needs if it wants to go solo.

Just like realme and its relationship with OPPO, after-sales services for Poco will be done through Xiaomi’s existing channels. This is a wise move as Xiaomi’s current network of service centers is expansive.

Manmohan further explains that even after being its own brand, Poco will still ask Xiaomi to render services for them. Evolution of Poco as a separate brand is not expected to have an impact on Poco’s existing philosophy to provide “Everything you need, nothing you don’t”

Poco will also not invest in building up its own skin for Android. At the moment, the Poco F1 runs on a custom skin dubbed MIUI for POCO. Manmohan says that this is expected to continue although depending on the fans and community feedback, MIUI for Poco may get even better.

Poco is expected to launch more than one successor to the Poco F1 sometime soon. The Poco India MD further goes to assure users that the Poco brand will continue its philosophy of launching value-for-money smartphones. The company does not intend to veer far from the Poco F1 recipe. A few years ago, OnePlus made the same bold claims. Well, we all know how that turned out.

With the Poco F2 smartphones, the market is expected to get a little more confusing. Xiaomi has its Redmi and Mi line of phones, many of which appear to be in direct competition with the Poco devices.

Asked whether Xiaomi will be competition, Manmohan says,

“Of course, it’ll be a competition and so will Xiaomi also face the heat from Poco, right? But having said that, at the end of the day, if customers are winning, everything is hunky dory.”

In the interview, Manmohan fails to divulge information about the upcoming Poco device(s). We still don’t know whether device will be the Poco F2 or something different. Reports have it that one of the Poco devices will be a rebadged Redmi K30 which was recently launched in China.

We still know that the device will essentially be the successor to the Poco F1, with a similar value-for-money. It will also have a flagship SoC (probably the Snapdragon 865) and a large amount of RAM.

Manmohan also revealed that the device will debut as early as this quarter. This is consistent with the rumors we have seen so far.

While we might eventually get more Poco F2 devices, Manmohan suggested that there would initially be one model to begin the new era.

NOTE: For more Poco stories, check out this section.

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