Pocophone F1 may be cheap, but it still aces JerryRigEverything's durability tests

The professional phone breakers over at the JerryRigEverything YouTube channel have turned their attention to the high-spec budget device that’s got everyone talking: the Pocophone F1.

As anyone familiar with the channel will already know, host Zack Nelson likes to put phones through a series of sometimes-hard-to-watch durability tests to see what kind of damage the poor, innocent handsets can withstand.

In what might come as a bit of a surprise considering the 329 euro (~$384) price tag of Xiaomi’s “flagship killer,” the POCOphone F1 actually fares pretty well throughout. Nelson even suggests that this might be “one of the most structurally sound phones Xiaomi has ever made.”

The POCOphone F1’s display, in particular, stands up to the same scratches we’d usually see from premium devices. It takes until level 6 on the Mohs hardness scale to register any kind of damage on the Gorilla Glass 3 display. Likewise, the fingerprint scanner is “invincible,” according to Nelson.

The body of the phone doesn’t take as much punishment, however. The polycarbonate back and sides are easily punctured by Nelson’s blades, leaving large divots behind, although the plastic body should offer some extra protection against accidental drops.

The biggest test of all is the bend test, and the POCOphone F1 aces this one with flying colors. JerryRigEverything has a mixed history with Xiaomi-made phones in this area, but the POCOphone F1 barely budges under stress and happily pops back to normal afterward.

All in all, the POCOphone F1 seems to be a fairly reliable little device that can take a serious beating… as long as you don’t start hacking the plastic back, obviously. It should also be noted that JerryRigEverything has the regular version and not the even sturdier Kevlar variant.

What do you make of the POCOphone F1’s performance? Let us know in the comments.

Up next: Ten ways Xiaomi is trying to make the POCOphone F1 even better