Poco C71 Review: When You’re on an Extra-Tight Budget-OxBig News Network

A budget of Rs. 6,499 is not considered ideal for a decent smartphone in 2025. More so, when some feature phones from HMD or the popular Android-powered dumbphone, the Cat S22 Flip costs more. However, a set of smartphone manufacturers believes that there are buyers out there with really tight budgets who want to upgrade from a feature phone with buttons to their first smartphone. And for these buyers, the Poco C71 may be the perfect fit.

Poco C71 Design

Credit where it’s due, Poco does attempt to glamourise the entry-level segment by giving the C71 a dual-tone design. It’s not as snazzy or loud as the Poco C75‘s design but is a subtle take on the same.

The rear panel has a very art deco vibe to it with a pattern of straight flowing lines that overlap one another, taking up nearly half of the rear panel. A capsule-shaped camera island, with two cameras inside, adds to the glamour with its polished gold finish on the non-textured half.

The Poco C71 has a nice art deco theme around the back, and it also manages a basic IP52 rating for dust and water

The Cool Blue finish we received for review has a frame and rear panel made from polycarbonate. The sides of the frame are flat and have a matte finish, just like the rear panel, which makes this large phone very slippery.

Something that caught my attention was the lack of a bottom-firing speaker. To my surprise, it is placed at the top, and I believe it’s the same speaker that doubles up as the earpiece or the other way around.

The Poco C71’s receiver speaker doubles up as its primary speaker

At 193 grams, the phone feels a bit on the heavier side. It’s a bit too large for one-handed use. However, it’s good to know that the design is IP52-rated for both dust and water. It is quite basic but justified, given the phone’s entry-level price.

Flip the phone over, and you will notice a fairly large and flat 6.8-inch HD+ LCD display with a 120Hz screen refresh rate. It has thick borders all around, especially at the bottom and a water-drop style notch at the top. This, along with its smudgy nature, makes it very obvious that the Poco C71 belongs to the entry-level segment.

Poco C71 Performance

Continuing with its display, the screen’s refresh rate is set to a battery-saving 60Hz by default. There are only two settings to choose from, so I chose 120Hz for smoother visuals, as the stripped-down HyperOS software interface, powered by Android 15 (Go Edition), does stutter and lag a bit. You can definitely get smoother functioning and more future-proof software by spending a few thousand more.

Poco’s C71 is powered by Android 15 Go Edition, an extremely trimmed-down version of Xiaomi’s HyperOS

Poco’s website claims that the phone has an ambient light sensor, but it does not. It uses the front-facing camera to take a peek at your surroundings and determines the required brightness level needed to tackle it.

While this sounds like a cool “juggad”, the phone only checks for ambient light using the camera the moment it is unlocked and sets the necessary brightness level at that time. If you suddenly move out of the tree shade and into the bright sunlight, it will not recalibrate until you turn the screen off and unlock the phone again.

The Poco C71’s display is not too bright outdoors, and you will need to squint at the display when viewing it in direct sunlight. Indoors, viewing angles are decent as the brightness levels drop when viewing it off-center.

Text and icons appear sharp, which is a surprise given the low screen resolution that is stretched out over the large display. Colours are not bad either, with the display set to Nature (or natural tone) by default. The phone only supports Widevine L3 DRM, meaning it will only playback content in OTT apps in standard definition (SD). This means that video in OTT apps like Netflix and even video streaming apps like YouTube will appear soft and not as crisp as on a budget smartphone.

Coming to the basics, there is a fingerprint reader embedded into the power button, and it works just fine. One can store up to 5 prints which is good to have. There are two slots for nano SIM cards and a dedicated slot for expandable storage (microSD cards up to 1TB). Also available is a 3.5mm headphone jack, which is needed for the built-in radio app.

The Poco C71’s display, apart from its thick borders, also has a waterdrop notch

The call quality is decent, but the call volume could have been louder as I often found the caller sounding a bit too soft. Speaker volume too is a bit too soft when placing calls, and not sufficiently loud when watching videos as well. The speaker also gets accidentally blocked often when holding the phone horizontally and playing games, or when watching movies.

The phone has a Unisoc T7250 chipset and so my expectations about its performance weren’t too high, even considering its entry-level price. The processor is able to handle app launches and basic software navigation just fine. However, it tends to struggle when recalling apps from memory, so be prepared for frequent app restarts.

Given the poor CPU and GPU scores shown in the table above, I still managed to play Asphalt 8: Airborne. To my surprise, the game was playable at default settings but with plenty of skipped frames and random instances of lag. Most high-end games were not available for download from the Play Store itself.

The Poco C71 has only one user-accessible rear-facing camera

The Poco C71 has a single 32-megapixel rear-facing camera, which Poco calls a dual-camera setup. When combined with the second camera, it serves as a depth sensor used for Portrait mode. Selfies are handled by an 8-megapixel camera.

Poco C71 primary camera samples (tap images to expand)

The primary camera captures passable photos with low detail in daylight. Colours are a bit saturated, and dynamic range is a bit limited, with the camera struggling to expose the sky and the foreground despite switching on the Auto HDR feature. The binned camera samples lack sufficient detail and sharpness, with most samples showing textures that look like oil paintings. Close-ups of objects come out clearer but are still low on detail when you pixel peep.

Portrait photos (top) from the rear camera have overexposed backgrounds. Even the edges of the subject have clipped highlights. The same applies to selfie Portrait photos (bottom) that show soft facial detail. (tap images to expand)

Low-light photos from the primary camera come out with low detail and dynamic range and are very noisy.

Video recordings max out at 1080p 30 fps. The footage packs very little detail and comes out quite shaky, especially when walking or panning the camera. In low light, recorded videos are barely usable as image quality dips even further with added noise. The camera takes its own sweet time to focus even under bright street-lit conditions.

The Poco C71’s 5,200mAh battery capacity sounds like a lot, but barely lasts a day with heavy usage

Battery life easily lasts a whole day with heavy use. Casual users who don’t place too many calls or have limited app usage will see this phone last a bit longer than a day, but nothing more and this is mainly down to the use of the 12nm Unisoc chipset. Our HD video loop test lasted 14 hours and 32 minutes, which is a bit low as far as budget smartphones go. Xiaomi’s own Redmi A4 5G lasted a better 19 hours and 32 minutes in the same test, which plays an HD video on a loop till the battery drains completely. Charging the 5,200mAh battery is also very slow, with the device managing a full charge in 2 hours and 21 minutes using the bundled 15W charger.

Poco C71 Verdict

The entry-level smartphone segment isn’t yet fully stocked with choices, indicating that interest in this category has only started to pick up this year. Poco’s C71, at Rs. 6,499, packs everything under the sun for a basic entry-level smartphone. It’s just that at an additional Rs. 1,000, you can get a 5G-ready device with better specifications and more future-proof software, given that the C71 is running a rather basic Go Edition version of Android 15.

The Poco C75 5G (now from Rs. 7,699) is a solid contender, even though it was launched earlier. We haven’t reviewed the C75, but we have reviewed the Redmi A4 5G (now from Rs. 7,999). which is identical in terms of hardware. Both phones will need you to be hooked up to Reliance’s Jio network because they only support 5G bands provided by this operator.

Another solid option is Motorola’s G35 5G, which offers better-performing hardware compared to the phones mentioned above. Priced at Rs. 9,999, it will go over your entry-level budget, but gets you a much better vegan-leather design and near-stock Android software with Hello UI.

If you just cannot afford to stretch your budget over Rs. 7,000, grab the 6GB RAM version of the Poco C71 that’s available with 128GB storage at Rs. 6,999 instead.