POCO F9 Ultra and F9 Pro land in the UK with 185Hz screens, an 8,050mAh battery and Bose-tuned sound
POCO has pulled back the curtain on its next F Series flagships, and the headline number is a big one: 185FPS. The POCO F9 Ultra and POCO F9 Pro were unveiled in London on 1 September, built around Qualcomm’s newest silicon and a dedicated graphics chip that POCO says pushes gaming frame rates well past what most phone screens can currently keep up with. “We remain focused on challenging conventions through technologies and innovations,” said Kang Lou, senior product marketing manager at POCO Global, at the launch. Alongside the performance push, POCO used the event to extend its audio partnership with Bose, promising properly tuned speakers rather than a badge stuck on a stock driver.
Chasing 185FPS
The F9 Ultra runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, which POCO says produces an AnTuTu score of 4,165,108, the highest it has recorded on any of its phones. Both phones run on Qualcomm’s newest flagship silicon, though POCO only named the Ultra’s chip specifically in the launch materials; the Pro’s exact chipset wasn’t broken out. What both share is a second, dedicated graphics chip, the VisionBoost D8, which is what makes that 185FPS figure possible. POCO says more than 20 titles already run natively at that frame rate, with five more reaching it through the company’s own upscaling tool. For context, most flagship Android phones top out around 120FPS in supported games, so getting anywhere near 185FPS puts these two in territory usually reserved for dedicated gaming handsets.
The WildBoost Engine behind that number also shortens the refresh interval by 3ms compared with 120FPS play, which on paper means spotting movement fractionally sooner. A 4,800Hz touch sampling rate and 200Hz gyro sampling are there to back it up, so taps and tilts register as fast as the frame rate allows. Keeping the chips cool through all that is a new 3D IceLoop cooling system, POCO’s answer to the thermal throttling that usually undercuts long gaming sessions on a phone. Storage on the Ultra tops out at 1TB, which matters more than it sounds for anyone installing several large, texture-heavy titles at once.
A display built around POCO’s own subpixel layout
Both phones use a 185Hz AMOLED panel built on what POCO calls HyperRGB, a full RGB subpixel structure designed to look closer to a 2K display without the usual power cost of one. The F9 Ultra gets the larger 6.9-inch version, while the F9 Pro fits the same panel technology into a more pocketable 6.59-inch screen. Peak brightness reaches 4,500 nits generally and 10,000 nits for HDR content, thanks to a new luminescent material POCO is introducing globally for the first time on these two phones. There’s also a new eye care system built around Xiaomi’s Vision Care standards, which has picked up TÜV Rheinland’s Quadruple Eye Care certification, aimed more at long reading and video sessions than gaming.
Design is where the two phones split in an interesting way. The F9 Ultra gets a programmable light on the back that reacts to calls, notifications, gaming and music, while the F9 Pro’s Aurora Green colourway uses a full-panel luminous coating that glows after absorbing daylight or indoor light, and can be drawn on with a blue-violet laser pointer to create custom patterns. It’s an unusual flourish for a phone at this price.
Bose gets a bigger role this time
POCO is extending its audio partnership with Bose for this generation, and it shows up as genuinely different hardware on each phone rather than a shared spec sheet. The F9 Ultra pairs two symmetrical 1115D speakers with a dedicated 1620 subwoofer for what POCO calls true 2.1-channel sound, aiming for a wider soundstage and deeper bass than a standard stereo pair can manage. The F9 Pro instead uses 1115F super-linear speakers built into a sealed cavity design, tuned more for a fuller midrange and crisper top end. Both phones ship with two Bose-tuned sound profiles, Dynamic for warmer, bass-forward listening and Balanced for a flatter, vocal-focused mix, and the tuning is also meant to keep audio clean at both very low and very high volumes rather than distorting or losing detail at the extremes.
There’s a specific Game audio mode too, which raises footstep volume relative to everything else so players can place an opponent by sound before they see them, without burying gunfire or dialogue in the process.
A battery big enough to skip a charge
The F9 Ultra’s standout spec might actually be its battery: an 8,050mAh cell, the largest POCO has fitted into an F Series phone, using a silicon-carbon chemistry that packs in more capacity without making the phone noticeably thicker. POCO is claiming two days of use from it, though as with any manufacturer battery figure, that’s worth treating as a best case rather than a promise. The F9 Pro’s 6,330mAh battery is more conventional but still sits comfortably above what most flagships offer, pitched at getting through a full day without a top-up.
Charging is identical across both phones: 100W wired and 50W wireless, plus reverse charging at 27W wired and 22.5W wireless if you need to top up a pair of earbuds, or someone else’s phone, in a pinch.
POCO’s first 200MP camera, with a proper telephoto on the Ultra
Both phones get POCO’s first 200MP main camera, with optical image stabilisation and a dedicated high-resolution mode for cropping into shots after the fact. Where they differ is the telephoto: the F9 Ultra has a 5x periscope lens with 10x lossless zoom and up to 20x AI-assisted zoom, while the F9 Pro gets a 50MP 2.5x floating telephoto lens that doubles as a macro camera, focusing from as close as 10cm. Both phones shoot 4K video with what POCO calls Live cinematography, which adds automated focal transitions and smoothed lens shifts, and both use the same 32MP front camera for selfies and video calls.
Pricing and availability
| Model | Configuration | Price |
|---|---|---|
| POCO F9 Ultra | 12GB / 256GB | £899 |
| POCO F9 Ultra | 16GB / 512GB | £999 |
| POCO F9 Ultra | 16GB / 1TB | £1,199 |
| POCO F9 Pro | 12GB / 256GB | £799 |
| POCO F9 Pro | 12GB / 512GB | £849 |
The F9 Ultra comes in Dark Cherry and Black, while the F9 Pro adds a third option in the glow-in-the-dark Aurora Green alongside White and Black. Both go on sale through Xiaomi’s UK website and Amazon.
