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poco-x3-pro-review:-is-bigger-better?

Poco X3 Pro review: Is bigger better?

(Pocket-lint) – The big ol’ beast upon which your eyes are affixed is the Poco X3 Pro: the Xiaomi offshoot’s sub-flagship device, here to tempt you with massive screen, massive battery, and not-so-massive price point.

Just a year after the Poco X2 launched, the X3 Pro isn’t exactly an unexpected surprise. But it does cut its own path: its the first device to feature the Qualcomm Snapdragon 860 processor, which is all-powerful (basically an 855+ rebadged) but, crucially, drops any 5G modem – and, with that, any battery/cost implication that such connectivity could cause.

As such, the Poco X3 Pro is a fairly unique prospect. It’s not quite as flagship grade as the smaller Poco F3 – which was announced the same day, here’s how the two compare – but as 4G/LTE handsets on a big scale go, it’s got a lot of weight behind it (both figuratively and literally speaking).

Design & Display

  • Display: 6.67-inch DotDisplay panel, FHD+ resolution, 120Hz refresh, 450 nits
  • Finishes: Phantom Black, Frost Blue, Metal Bronze
  • Dimensions: 165.3 x 76.8 x 9.4mm / Weight: 215g
  • Side-mounted fingerprint scanner
  • 3.5mm headphone jack

As you’ve no doubt already figured out by now: the Poco X3 Pro is a big and weighty phone – even more so than its spec sheet might have you think. No, 215g is hardly a lot when you’re weighing out pasta for dinner or something, but in a phone that you handle constantly it’s noticeably chonky. It’s far more than the Redmi Note 10 Pro, for example, which has almost exactly the same footprint.

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The big scale comes, in part, from this Poco’s big screen. This 6.67-inch ‘DotDisplay’ panel is sourced from Samsung, complete with many of the current nice-to-haves in a phone – namely the 120Hz refresh rate to keep the visual experience smoother. The Full HD+ resolution – that’s 2400 x 1080 pixles – might not sound top of the line, but it’s really as much as you’ll need and doesn’t negatively affect fidelity.

Flip the phone around and the rear design has a kind-of retro look about it. Phone design moves on so rapidly year on year that, for whatever reason, the Poco X3 Pro just looks a bit ‘last year’. Maybe it’s the raised camera unit, housed within a black circle, that’s behind the times. The big look-at-me Poco logo emblazoned on the back is way bigger than necessary, too.

There are some nice touches though. A 3.5mm headphone jack is on board, if you’re still using wired headphones. And the side-mounted fingerprint scanner – which doubles-up as the power button – is well placed for rapid login. Or, by the wonders of face unlock, you can feed the X3 Pro your face and get a speedy unlock that way too.

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In summary: the Poco X3 Pro is massive, in a kind of gawky way that’s not at the forefront of phone design. But then it’s also practical, if you’re looking for a large phone, thanks to that massive screen and massive battery combination. And, really, that’s the most important take-away factor.

Performance & Battery

  • Qualcomm Snapdragon 860 platform, 6GB/8GB RAM
  • 5,160mAh battery, 33W charging
  • 4G/LTE only, no 5G

There’s been heaps of chat about 5G over the last few years. For good reason, too, as it enables super-fast connectivity with low-latency. Except, it doesn’t if you can’t get a 5G singal – which, in majority of places around the world, is often the case. Not to mention the elevated asking price of your monthly mobile subscription.

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The Poco X3 Pro bypasses any 5G problem by, well, shunning the connectivity entirely. That, it seems, is much the point of using the all-new Qualcomm Snapdragon 860 processor – there’s no X50/X55 series modem attached within the platform, thus no 5G. But 4G/LTE connectivity is perfectly good enough and, without the concern over elevated costs or battery consumption, we think it’ll be lapped up by many consumers.

Not to mention that the Snapdragon 860 is really rather powerful. It’s a lot like a rebaged Snapdragon 855+ from two years back – same eight cores, same clock speed (2.96GHz), same graphics chip – just minus the faster modem, as we said. In terms of performance, though, that means there’s little to nothing that’s going to bother this phone at all.

We’ve been living with the Poco X3 Pro as our own for a working week, digging into Zwift sessions (and Companion ones), playing South Park: Phone Destroyer, and generally milling about our suite of apps to browse, mail and watch videos. None of that has caused so much as a hiccup. It’s all a very smooth experience – often literally, thanks to the 120Hz display.

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Having this double-speed refresh rate here makes a lot of sense as a more powerful processor can handle decent frame-rates in a variety of situations, from the user interface and software through to a myriad of apps, including games. Some makers have pushed faster refresh screens but then not paired a quite good enough processor to always make good on that hardware – the cheaper Moto G30 being one such example – but the Poco always delivers.

Without throttling battery saver features enabled, we’ve been cutting through 30 per cent of battery every 10 hours. That includes some casual gaming. It’s no surprise, really, as the Poco X3 Pro houses a 5,160mAh battery – which is massive by any measure. But a 30-hours-plus innings per charge would be no bother, making this one of those phones that’s close to being a two-dayer unless you’re really hammering out heavyweight apps a lot of the time.

There are some caveats to all this though. That comes down to Xiaomi’s MIUI software, which has a lot of detail when it comes to battery handling. By default every app is set to ‘Battery Saver’ – so you’re likely going to need to manually move your key apps to ‘No Restrictions’ to ensure they continue to function better than not.

That said, the Poco X3 Pro still hits some walls. It’s persistently exhibited problems with notifications – much like we found with the Xiaomi Mi 11, albeit worse here – such as, for example, hour-long delays in WhatsApp notifications, plus delays with various other apps. In theory the software will learn which apps are most important to you – by volume and repetition of use – and permit those more access, but that’s not helped our overall experience.

Customisation can be a great thing, but it can also be a hindrance. We would rather MIUI was a just more gentle with its approach to limiting with apps. Why certain Xiaomi phones on the same software versions run fine – the Redmi Note 10 Pro being one example – but others do not, such as this Poco, is rather perplexing. Each has its own launcher, sure, but these ongoing notification issues are a needless irritation.

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Which is why this more laborious setup won’t be distracting those with a little more budget from buying into, say, a Google Pixel phone with stock Android software, or something like a Motorola handset instead (likely foregoing some power for the sake of user experience).

Cameras

  • Quad rear cameras:
    • Main: 48-megapixel, f/1.79 aperture, 1/2in sensor size
    • Wide-angle (119 degrees): 8MP, f/2.2
    • Macro: 2MP, f/2.4
    • Depth: 2MP, f/2.4
  • Front-facing camera:
    • 20-megapixels, f/2.2 aperture

Whereas many are now pushing 108-megapixel cameras as the norm, Poco is a little further down the ladder with the X3 Pro, instead opting for a 48-megapixel main sensor. This functions by using four pixels in one, to produce 12-megapixel results. Which are fairly decent quality overall, including in a mix of conditions, with a usable Night Mode too.

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Move away from that main sensor, however, and the X3 Pro isn’t especially ‘pro’ in its sell. There’s an 8-megapixel wide-angle that, while useful, is of limited quality – as is typical at this level, really.

But it’s the pair of other cameras – both 2-megapixel sensors – to cover depth readings and macro close-ups that are throwaway. They’re of limited use, don’t need to be here, and are on board to up the count and lure you in with the “quad camera” pitch. Macro is so hidden that you’ll never know to use it, which is a good job as the results are poor.

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: Main camera – Night ModeMain camera – Night Mode

Pare the X3 Pro’s camera spec down and it’s got a perfectly fine main lens, then, but that’s about as far as things go. It’s fairly typical of this level, though, so isn’t a surprise – but consider that “quad camera” claim as and oversell and your expectations may be met.



Best smartphones 2021 rated: The top mobile phones available to buy today


By Chris Hall
·

Verdict

The Poco X3 Pro is all about going big. It’s got a big screen, big battery, and its anticipated low price point should have big appeal.

In some regards, however, it’s a bit too big for its own boots. The software doesn’t quite connect in this format – we’ve had notification problems which irk – while the sheer physical size and weight mean other devices may hold added appeal.

But as a pitch there’s sense here: if you want a long-lasting phone, don’t mind the physical bulk, and don’t care for 5G, then the Poco X3 Pro will hit the mark for certain users in certain markets.

Also consider

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Redmi Note 10 Pro

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Still a large size, but the Redmi is lighter weight, feeling more balanced and accomplished compared to the big slice that is Poco. The battery isn’t quite as epic, though, if that’s your main want – but we found the software here wasn’t as marred by notification issues (despite it still running MIUI).

  • Read our review

Writing by Mike Lowe.

‘Anti-capitalist’ Verkada hacker charged by US government with attacks on dozens of companies

A Swiss computer hacker named Till Kottmann has been charged by the US government with multiple accounts of wire fraud, conspiracy, and identity theft. The indictment accuses Kottmann and co-conspirators of hacking “dozens of companies and government entities,” and posting private data and source code belonging to more than 100 firms online.

The 21-year-old Kottmann, who uses they / them pronouns and is better known as Tillie, was most recently connected to the security breach of US firm Verkada, which exposed footage from more than 150,000 of the companies’ surveillance cameras. But the charges filed this week date back to 2019, with Kottmann and associates accused of targeting online code repositories (known as “gits”) belonging to major private and public sector entities, ripping their contents and sharing them to a website they founded and maintained named git.rip.

Git.rip has since been seized by the FBI, but previously shared code and data belonging to numerous companies including Microsoft, Intel, Nissan, Nintendo, Disney, AMD, Qualcomm, Motorola, Adobe, Lenovo, Roblox, and many others (though no firms are explicitly named in the indictment). The exact nature of this data varied in each case. A rip of hundreds of code repositories maintained by German automaker Daimler AG contained the source code for valuable smart car components, for example, while a breach of Nintendo’s systems (which Kottmann said did not originate from them directly but which they reshared through a Telegram channel) offered gamers rare insight into unreleased features from old games.

In interviews about earlier breaches, Kottmann noted repeatedly that the data they found was usually exposed by companies’ own poor security standards. “I often just hunt for interesting GitLab instances, mostly with just simple Google dorks, when I’m bored, and I keep being amazed by how little thought seems to go into the security settings,” Kottmann told ZDNet in May 2020. (“Google dorks” or “Google dorking” refers to the use of advanced search strings to find vulnerabilities on public servers using Google.)

In the case of the Verkada breach, Kottmann and their associates reportedly found “super admin” credentials that gave them unfettered access to the company’s systems that were “publicly exposed on the internet.” These logins allowed the hackers to look through the live feeds of more than 150,000 internet-connected cameras. These cameras were installed in various facilities including prisons, hospitals, warehouses, and Tesla factories.

Kottmann said they were motivated by a hacktivist spirit: wanting to expose the poor security work of corporations before malicious actors could cause greater damage. Kottmann told BleedingComputer last June that they didn’t always contact companies before exposing their data, but that they attempted to prevent direct harm. “I try to do my best to prevent any major things resulting directly from my releases,” they said.

After the Verkada breach, Kottmann told Bloomberg their reasons for hacking were “lots of curiosity, fighting for freedom of information and against intellectual property, a huge dose of anti-capitalism, a hint of anarchism — and it’s also just too much fun not to do it.”

The US government, not surprisingly, takes a dimmer view of these activities. “Stealing credentials and data, and publishing source code and proprietary and sensitive information on the web is not protected speech — it is theft and fraud,” Acting U.S. Attorney Tessa M. Gorman said in a press statement. “These actions can increase vulnerabilities for everyone from large corporations to individual consumers. Wrapping oneself in an allegedly altruistic motive does not remove the criminal stench from such intrusion, theft, and fraud.”

The indictment includes as evidence, numerous tweets and messages sent by Kottmann using handles including @deletescape and @antiproprietary. These include a tweet sent on May 17, 2020 saying “i love helping companies open source their code;” messages to an unnamed associate soliciting “access to any confidential info, documents, binaries or source code;” and tweets sent on October 21 in which Kottmann said that “stealing and releasing” corporate data was “the morally correct thing to do.”

Kottmann is currently located in Lucerne, Switzerland, where their premises were recently raided by Swiss authorities and their devices seized. Whether or not they will be extradited to the US is unclear. Bloomberg reports that Kottmann has retained the services of Zurich lawyer Marcel Bosonnet, who previously represented Edward Snowden. The charges against Kottmann carry up to 20 year prison sentences.

tsmc-and-samsung-foundry-becoming-dominant-makers-of-advanced-chips

TSMC and Samsung Foundry Becoming Dominant Makers of Advanced Chips

(Image credit: GlobalFoundries)

It is well known that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Samsung Foundry dominate the market of contract chip production. They are the only companies to offer leading-edge process technologies and have the largest capacities. Meanwhile, TSMC and Samsung Foundry are on track to become the dominant manufacturers of advanced chips as nobody, including Intel, can match their capital expenditures.

TSMC: Big Can Only Get Bigger

Founded in 1987, TSMC was the world’s first pure play foundry that manufactured chips for others. In 34 years of its history, the company has grown from a small entity with one fab to a multi-billion corporation with five 300mm fabs, seven 20mm fabs, and one 150mm production facility. Having developed dozens of process technologies throughout its history and having installed vast production capacities, TSMC can offer services to almost any fabless chip designer with almost any requirements. At present, TSMC serves over 460 customers.

(Image credit: TSMC)

As the demand for leading-edge fabrication processes and volumes from its large customers (such as Apple, HiSilicon, Qualcomm, Nvidia, and AMD) have grown in recent years, TSMC intensified building of new GigaFabs — production facilities with a capacity of more than 100,000 300-mm wafer starts per month (WSPM). Each costs around $20 billion, and TSMC also increased its research and development (R&D) budgets. The strategy has paid off and today TSMC has not only left Intel and Samsung Foundry behind with its manufacturing technologies, but it also has more leading-edge capacity than other makers of semiconductors. This is largely because because it serves virtually all fabless designers that require advanced technologies. 

This year the company decided to radically increase its capital expenditure (CapEx) spending to $25 billion ~ $28 billion, an increase of 45% ~ 62% year-over-year from $17.2 billion in 2020. IC Insights believes that TSMC will “begin what is likely to be a huge multi-year ramp of spending,” and expects the company to boost its CapEx budget in 2022 and 2023 once again. 

Being the leading maker of semiconductors both in terms of volumes and in terms of technology leadership has its advantages. First, it’s easier to get the fab tools when you buy them in high volumes. Second, it’s easier to set up your own production and supply chain standards, something that is tremendously important in an industry that is all about standardization. 

Samsung Foundry: Closing the Gap with TSMC, Widening the Gap with Intel?

Samsung Electronics has been the world’s largest maker of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) and NAND flash for quite a while and has been in the semiconductor business for decades. Furthermore, it has produced various chips for its own needs. The company started to offer foundry services in mid-2000s, as it realized that only the largest chipmakers will survive in the long term. Samsung Foundry has been trying to catch up with TSMC for years, and while the gap is closing, it is still not quite there yet.

(Image credit: Samsung)

Samsung Foundry’s largest customer is still its parent company Samsung, which strives to make the world’s best smartphones, televisions, PCs, displays and other electronics. To that end, SF’s design decisions at times resemble those of an integrated device manufacturer (IDM) that makes money on actual products rather than on manufacturing services.

Samsung realized early enough that demand for chips (all chips, including DRAM, 3D NAND, SoCs, etc.) will only grow, so its corporate semiconductor CapEx spending exceeded $10 billion for the first time in 2010. Having spent $93.2 billion on expanding production capacities over the 2017–2020 period, the company significantly closed the gap with TSMC from a capacity point of view.

Samsung Foundry is still about three times smaller than TSMC in terms of wafer starts per month (and also in terms of the number of nodes it offers), but the gap between the two has been closing. So far, Samsung has not unveiled its 2021 semiconductor CapEx budget, but analysts believe that it could spend at least as much as it spent last year — around $28.1 billion.

Cumulative CapEx of Samsung and TSMC will total approximately $55.5 billion this year, according to IC Insights. A significant part Samsung’s funds will of course be used to buy equipment for Samsung’s memory businesses, but these two companies will be able to influence development of fab production tools and supply chains.

Should Intel Worry?

Intel traditionally spends tens of billions of dollars on CapEx (it spent about $14.3 billion last year), so it will remain a leading maker of processors. Yet, its spending on fabs will be about half that of Samsung and TSMC this year. Furthermore, since Intel will not start production of chips using a node that relies on EUV, it will not have an immediate significant influence on development of the industry and supply chains.

(Image credit: Intel)

Historically, Intel had several competitive advantages that set it apart from all of its direct and indirect rivals:

  1. Intel’s CPUs were the fastest in the industry. 
  2. Intel’s microarchitectures and CPU designs were scalable for all market segments.
  3. Intel had enough power to ensure that its architectural innovations were supported by software makers.
  4. Intel had the best process technologies, which could offset certain imperfections of its microarchitectures or design.
  5. Intel could produce CPUs in volumes unachievable by any of its competitors.
  6. Since Intel was the de facto leader of the semiconductor market both financially and technologically, it set standards for the rest of the industry, which further ensured its leadership position.
  7. While Intel competed against most companies in the semiconductor industry, it could build alliances or partnerships that strengthened it (e.g., with Microsoft, Dell, HP, Apple, and ATI Technologies) and helped it to better compete.
  8. Intel spent hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing and advertising, usually more than all of its rivals combined. 

So far, Intel has lost at least three out of eight advantages. These days Intel’s CPUs are not the undisputed leaders, and in many cases competing products from AMD are unchallenged. While Intel’s 2nd generation and 3rd generation 10nm fabrication technologies are competitive against TSMC’s N7, the company’s nodes cannot offer the same transistor density as TSMC’s N5. Finally, Intel no longer spends as much as its rivals on fabs and no longer has technological leadership.

If/when AMD becomes TSMC’s second largest customer, it could ask its production partner to customize the nodes it uses in a bid to gain performance and/or lower power consumption. Meanwhile, we still know nothing about Intel’s outsourcing plans other than the fact that some of its products will be made at TSMC in 2022.

Intel remains a driving force behind many industry initiatives, and no technology can get widespread in the PC world without Intel’s support. Yet, there are no more Wintel-like initiatives and Intel is no longer an exclusive CPU supplier for companies like Apple.

Meanwhile, Intel has extremely capable x86 CPU architectures that offer higher single-thread performance when compared to those from AMD. Intel also produces more processors than any other maker, and it can supply its partners with volumes of chips not available from anyone else. Given Intel’s market share and volume leadership, virtually all of its initiatives are supported by the software industry. Furthermore, the company knows how to advertise its products and promote its brand.

In general, Intel has many things to worry about, as it no longer can compete against all of its rivals on all fronts successfully. Hopefully, the company’s new CEO will shed some light on the chip giant’s future plans next week in a live chat.

Could Countries Compete Against Dominant Makers of Semiconductors?

Now that TSMC and Samsung spend around $28 billion each on manufacturing facilities and billions on R&D, it is extremely hard for a commercial company to catch up with these chipmakers. Even Apple, with its massive earnings and cash reserves, is hardly willing to invest tens of billions on chip manufacturing. In the recent years, the governments of the EU, US, and China started to talk about local semiconductor production industries and expressed willingness to assist chipmakers. 

(Image credit: TSMC)

IC Insights deems that it is close to impossible to catch up with TSMC and Samsung. Keeping in mind the two leading makers of semiconductors are way ahead of the industry both in terms of R&D and CapEx, analysts believe that “governments would need to spend at least $30 billion per year for a minimum of five years to have any reasonable chance of success.” The Chinese corporation SMIC has received a lot of help both from local authorities and Chinese government over the years, but the company is still about five years behind GlobalFoundries, Samsung Foundry, and TSMC. 

Summary

Both TSMC and Samsung Foundry started to use EUV tools to produce chips using their leading-edge process technologies several years before Intel, so they have been gaining experience with new tools and supply chains for quite a while now. 

Both TSMC and Samsung will invest two times more in their production facilities than Intel will in 2021. Arguably, Intel does not need to spend as much as TSMC and Samsung on CapEx since it only produces chips for itself, whereas its peers offer foundry services. Yet, previously Intel’s technological leadership was enabled by massive spending on fabs and R&D.

In theory, governments could stimulate development of the local semiconductor industry using direct help, tax breaks, and incentives. However, their total spending over the next five years would need to exceed $150 billion, and chances of success are not high.