The iPhone XS is expensive.

Starting at $1,000 and reaching $1,450

for the maxed out Max,

if you see what I did there,

it's easy to say that this

is the most expensive flagship ever.

On the other hand, I recently took a look

at the cheapest flagship you can buy.

The $300 Pocophone F1.

Even in its $400 Armored configuration,

which is what I have here, it is an incredible bargain.

To be clear, I don't think anyone is

cross-shopping these two phones,

but I also don't think it's a crazy idea.

And sure, if you've got the kind of budget

for a high-end flagship like the iPhone,

by all means, go pick one up.

But I think for a lot of people,

if you can get a very similar experience

for a whole lot less, why wouldn't you?

Which brings us to the real question of this video.

Can a $400 Pocophone match up to a $1,000+ iPhone?

This is probably the strongest case for the iPhone XS.

It has incredibly nice hardware.

Not only is it rocking glass on front and back,

but unlike most phones which are made out of aluminum,

this has a stainless steel chassis.

Now, of course that's something

that's up to personal preference.

Some people won't like the idea that it is

going to scuff a little bit easier,

specifically with the silver edition,

but as far as I'm concerned, it looks nice

and gives you a nice sense of heft,

which feels very premium.

On the other hand, the Pocophone

is primarily made out of plastic.

Now that's not necessarily a bad thing.

If you take a look at the JerryRigEverything video,

he did a really solid test of seeing how durable it is

and it did hold up pretty well.

Unfortunately though, plastic is never

going to feel quite as premium

as stuff like stainless steel and glass.

To be fair, the Armored edition I have here

is a slight upgrade over the standard version,

as the back is made out of aramid fiber

as opposed to plastic.

It feels nice and it does give you a little

bit of grippy-ness that the iPhone lacks.

But there's a clear winner here in build quality.

It's the phone that costs three times more.

There are some advantages

to the Pocophone's hardware however.

USB-C versus Lightning is kind of a wash

as far as I'm concerned.

But what the Pocophone has that the iPhone lacks

is a headphone jack.

Unless you're TechRax and you drill one in,

the iPhone XS is going to be using

a whole lot of dongles and adapters to listen to music.

The downside is that you're losing basically

any kind of water resistance with the Pocophone F1,

something that the iPhone has no problems with

with a full IP68 water resistance.

Hey look, I didn't even press the screen.

It still works though.

You won't find wireless charging on the Pocophone,

something that is standard on an iPhone.

However, the Pocophone does have a fingerprint sensor

and to be fair, both phones have a pretty solid

implementation of Face Unlock.

The added advantage here is if you don't want to,

you know, stare at your phone to unlock it,

you can easily drop a finger on the button

and unlock it like that.

Let's be real though.

The vast majority of people are going to put these phones

in a case regardless, and the build quality is good enough

that neither of them really worry me all that much.

Now yeah, the Pocophone can't quite keep up

with the iPhone, but considering how much

more expensive this is, yeah, I would hope so.

Usually when it comes to a budget phone,

one of the biggest things you have to sacrifice

is performance, but that's actually the strong suit

of the Pocophone.

Inside you'll find a Snapdragon 845,

paired with 6 gigs of RAM and 128 gigs of storage.

That's not a perfect comparison, but in context,

the iPhone only has 4 gigs of RAM, and 64 gigs of storage

on the base model.

And again,

it's $1,100.

That is really impressive for a phone

that's this much cheaper.

However, as soon as you start trying

to do any kind of benchmarks,

you're going to find the Pocophone

just can't hang with the iPhone.

It shouldn't be a huge surprise,

but not only is the Pocophone

going to be significantly slower than the XS,

but even the OnePlus 6 is going to be quicker,

even though it has basically the same spec.

It's much the same story on the graphics side.

The iPhone is a huge, huge leap over what's available

on the Android side, full stop.

And the Pocophone is no exception.

Surprise, surprise, this does apply to real world use.

So I don't think anyone would call the Pocophone slow,

but put it side by side with the iPhone

and you will notice that there is a responsive difference.

Responsive difference?

Responsiveness difference?

A difference is responsiveness, perhaps?

A responsive difference.

One thing I think is important to mention,

is that while the Pocophone is a global phone,

it's not necessarily meant for the U.S. market.

Don't get me wrong, it is available

to be purchased here in the U.S.,

but it doesn't have full LTE support for all the carriers.

It's pretty good on AT&T and T-Mobile

but Sprint and Verizon are a bit hit or miss.

This is all a lot more straightforward

than you might think.

Yes, the iPhone is faster,

and that really shouldn't be a surprise,

but when you consider the enormous price difference,

and the fact that the Pocophone can totally

hang with the iPhone in some ways,

and slightly surpasses it in others,

is incredibly impressive.

Take a look at the screens, and you're going to find that

they look very, very similar.

The Pocophone has a slightly smaller 6.2 inch display

whereas the iPhone is rocking a 6.5 inch panel,

but they are actually really close.

There's no doubting that both these phones

have quite the notch.

I can't complain too much.

So both the Poco and the iPhone do have,

not only their selfie cameras here,

but they also do have some face ID tech

to be able to unlock.

The issue here is that while the iPhone

looks pretty much uniform on the rest of it,

the Poco does have a pretty large chin.

Considering that it's a third of the price though,

I really can't complain too much.

Run the phones through our display tests

and what you'll find is something kind of surprising.

Yes, the iPhone has a terrific display,

and some of the things that our test doesn't really show

is the excellent viewing angles as well the contrast,

but that being said, color accuracy and brightness

on the Pocophone is right up there.

In addition to having a slightly higher screen resolution,

the real advantage for the iPhone is that it's using

an OLED panel versus LCD.

There's nothing wrong with a solid LCD like on the Poco

but you're not gonna get quite as vibrant

of a picture as on the iPhone.

Still though, I'm incredibly impressed

with just how close this gets.

Surprisingly, both the iPhone and Pocophone

share the exact same size 12 megapixel sensor.

Now mind you, there are some other advantages

with the iPhone,

including having optical image stabilization

as well as an actual telephoto lens,

but on paper, they look pretty close.

It might not look particularly exciting

but this actually should be reasonable test of the camera.

Not only is there a lot of detail on the tree,

we've got a lot of vibrant colors

as well as some serious dynamic range.

It does seem like the iPhone got the white balance

just a little bit more accurate.

Detail-wise, they're fairly close.

I will say that there's a little bit more dynamic range

on the iPhone here and it did do a good job

of, sort of, warming up the image,

but it's not a huge difference.

Oh, that's a much bigger difference.

The iPhone really was able to pull in a lot of that sky,

whereas the Pocophone totally blew it out.

Yeah, the Pocophone just does not hold the shadows

as well as the iPhone.

It also seems like it's a little bit

over-sharp in this photo.

The iPhone does look a little more natural.

It shouldn't be a huge surprise

that the iPhone has a better camera.

What I'm also curious about is the video capability.

This is what 4K video looks like

straight off of the Pocophone F1.

So of course, you guys can be the judge for yourself.

I will say that there's not quite

the same level of stabilization.

So if I move a little bit to the left and right,

you'll be able to tell.

But based on that and the audio, not bad?

On the other hand, this is what you're going to getting

on the iPhone XS Max.

Here we're recording at 4K 24 frames,

although it is important to note that

the iPhone will go all the up to 60.

But first of all, you're going to be getting stereo audio,

something new for the iPhone.

On top of that, to my eye, this is going to be

a little bit more of a natural image

with a little bit less, sort of, crunchiness

and a little bit less compression.

Next up we have the front facing cameras.

Whereas the iPhone has seven megapixels to work with,

the Pocophone has 20,

but is it actually any good?

I will say I like the iPhone colors a bit more

and there is more dynamic range,

but I gotta give this one to the Pocophone.

It's wider which means, of course,

you're going to be able to get more people in your selfies

if you're super popular like Ken.

But almost more importantly than that,

it's a nice sharp image.

Those extra megapixels are definitely doing something.

So, does the $400 Pocophone F1

match up to $1,100 iPhone XS Max?

Well subjectively, the iPhone is a better phone,

there is no doubt.

And in a lot of ways,

it's actually a pretty significant difference,

but in most ways that people care about,

I think the Pocophone is right there.

And it is incredibly impressive

that I'm even having this comparison, right?

You might think that, of course,

an iPhone's going to be way, way better

but consider it's nearly three times the price,

it is nowhere near three times the phone.