Huawei is the second largest Android smartphone vendor behind Samsung and one reason behind this is the sheer number of devices the Chinese OEM pumps into the smartphone market. Heck, the company even went ahead and launched a sub-brand dubbed Honor just so as to increase the number of devices in the market, albeit marketed as non-related to the parent company.
One thing that has always differentiated the two – Huawei and Honor – is the price of devices. In Honor phones, you pay affordable prices for phones with top-notch specs and features that are sometimes available in their premium variants sold under the Huawei brand. But rather than being distinct, some of the latest releases from the two brands keep blurring the line between them, something that Xiaomi was quick to notice and form as the basis of its slight dig aimed at its rival.
Related: The best Xiaomi phones in 2018
In a blog post highlighting the things you should know about the newly launched Poco brand and Poco F1 smartphone, Xiaomi notes that:
With some of those sub-brands from other smartphone vendors, a slightly tweaked product can be given a name change and appear in both the parent and sub-brands’ lineups. With POCO F1, this phone is completely different and not available in the Xiaomi lineup.
We’ve seen this happening on multiple occasions. For instance, it has been claimed that the recently launched Huawei Nova 3i will form the basis for the upcoming Huawei Mate 20 Lite and in some markets, it goes by the name Huawei P Smart+. As for the Nova 3, it closely resembles the Huawei P20 that launched earlier this year and speaking of which, the P20 Lite goes by the name Huawei Nova 3e in some markets like Malaysia. Last year’s Mate 10 Lite is known as Honor 9i in India and going back to Malaysia, you’ll come across the Huawei Y7 Prime 2018 disguised as the Nova 2 Lite. This can go on and on.
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The Xiaomi Poco F1 comes with performance specs that mimic the Xiaomi Mi 8 and even borrows a few design cues from the flagship. However, it takes a completely different direction when it comes to the overall design, where Xiaomi has adopted a polycarbonate body to house the premium specs on board. It remains to be seen how different future Poco phones will be from other Xiaomi phones, especially since the Chinese company already has plenty of other devices under the Mi and Redmi series.
