POCO, the sub-brand from Xiaomi, has been really making rounds in budget smartphones for some-times now as it offers very low budget phones with maximum hardware features. One such phone is the POCO M3, and the reason why it was widely popularized is that it flaunts high-to-highest affordability value for money. On top of that, perhaps, the main ingredient behind its edge is the software and ROM experience delivered by this particular smartphone, which pretty much adds synergy between Xiaomi’s MIUI and the hardware capabilities of the device.
This review will mainly examine the POCO M3 ROM, which includes user interface, performance, customization features, software optimizations, and much more. Besides the overall influence of the ROM over the user experience, battery life, gaming performance, and camera functionalities will all be analyzed as well, giving a comprehensive overview of what one can expect from POCO M3.
An Overview of the POCO M3
Before we start exploring ROM, a quick summary of the hardware specifications is an essential foundation to any understanding of what we are going to be seeing and dealing with in software performance. The chipset powering POCO M3 is Qualcomm Snapdragon 662, which is backed with 4GB of RAM and either 64GB or 128GB of internal storage. A 6.53-inch FHD+ with a resolution of 1080 x 2340 pixels makes it work for gaming. It also features a large 6000mAh battery, which ranks the smartphone as the most enduring in this price segment.
The POCO M3 runs on MIUI, the customized ROM from Xiaomi, but for this particular one they branded it as the POCO’s UI, which is basically the same but with a tweak or two for POCO users. This phone was initially released running the MIUI 12 on Android 10 but has since been past upgrade to newer versions of Android and MIUI.
POCO M3 ROM: MIUI Description
The ROM of the POCO M3 has made the base of MIUI, developed and modified by Xiaomi for running on low end devices, which will smoothen its performance. MIUI has stood out to be probably one of the richest Android skins. This brings high customization, applications, and optimization, which are rare to be found on other cheaper smartphones.
User Interface/Design
One of the strong points concerning the POCO M3’s ROM is an attractive user interface in sync with MIUI design principles by Xiaomi. Its UI always comes bright, colorful, and customizable with a larger number of options for tweaking the look and feel to the taste of various users. For instance, the homepage can be customized to either an app drawer or a traditional flat layout to hundreds of its themes available in MIUI Theme Store.
Theming and Personalization: MIUI’s Theme Store is perhaps the most powerful feature of the POCO M3’s ROM. Consumers can select hundreds of themes that modify more than just wallpapers and icons; they also modify system fonts, notification styles, and even the lock screen interface. This high degree of customization is a serious jaw-dropping feature for users who love to customize their phones.
App Drawer: Unlike Xiaomi’s earlier versions of MIUI, which added a flat home screen as there was no app drawer, POCO’s interface included an app drawer by default. This gives a more stock Android-like experience, making it easy for users to organization apps and keeps clean their home screen. Besides organizing by the system into folders such as Entertainment, Communication, Photography, and Tools, users could sort them manually.
Icons and Fonts: The icons in POCO M3 ROM are quite huge and are spaced well enough to allow easy reading even with pocket devices. Besides, the ROM allows custom icon packs, enhancing the personalization aspect. In addition, font size and style can be altered, thus being helpful for users who read texts further or require larger letters for better accessibility.
Performance and Optimization
Being on the Snapdragon 662, the POCO M3 has an optimized rom to ensure nice and smooth functioning, even on mid-range hardware. Support from the software team has also been significant in optimizing MIUI for budget devices, which goes on to show in the POCO M3’s daily usage.
Smooth Multitasking: The POCO M3 does manage to multitask decently thanks to MIUI’s memory management and optimization features. The same could be said about 4GB of RAM on the flagship model; the software, however, is very efficient in using available resources. Apps open fairly quickly, and the switch feels smooth, but sometimes, under heavy load applications, it does stutter a bit.
Animations and Transition: One of the hallmark attributes of MIUI is highly polished animations. On POCO M3, these are smooth, from the opening and closing of applications to transitions between home screens. If too slow while user prefers, MIUI should allow this in a device even with modest capacities to speed up the animation speed.
Bloatware: Among the common drawbacks of MIUI, it features bloatware or preinstalled apps that most users deem unnecessary. The POCO M3 bundles some useless pre-installed apps such as those within Xiaomi’s own suite, Mi Browser, Mi Video, and Mi Music. Most of them can be either uninstalled or disabled; it can be noted that recently updated Xiaomi devices have had their bloatware issue reduced significantly with the upcoming update.
Battery Life Optimization:
One of the significant properties of the POCO M3 is a very large capacity battery of up to 6000mAh, while the extent to which the ROM maximizes this capacity is indeed a smart integration on Xiaomi’s side. MIUI has provided several battery-saving features that help users utilize their devices more over a long period.
Battery Saver Mode: The battery saver mode found in the POCO M3 ROM is rather robust, as it limits the running of the background processes, reduces the performance of the processor, and dims the display for maximum power conservation. An ultra-battery saver mode still restricts its functions to basic calls and text messages but can extend the battery life for several additional hours.
Battery Usage Statistics: MIUI will present battery usage statistics in great detail in the end, which allows users to closely monitor the power consumption of applications. This fine granularity will enable users to spot the power-hungry apps that are likely running unnoticed in the background and cut down on their total power output.
Charging and battery health: The ROM has further provisions for protecting the longevity of the battery with charging slow alerts and battery health information. The device charges fairly quickly owing to fast charging support of 18W even if the massive battery takes more than two hours to fully charge.
Camera Software and Optimization
As for the cameras at the back, the POCO M3 sports a triple-camera setup with a 48MP main sensor, a 2MP macro lens, and a 2MP depth sensor. The price would be the main factor to make things worth seeing; however, the camera hardware is not enough to make great photos, without good camera software and ROM optimization.
Camera Interface: The main camera app in MIUI is user-friendly, providing easy navigation of controls and simple switching between modes such as Portrait, Night Mode, Pro Mode, and Panorama. It additionally offers a depth of customization capacity, enabling users to manually set ISO, shutter speed, and white balance in Pro Mode-things which many budget smartphones rarely offer.
AI Scene Detection: The ROM of POCO M3 has AI scene detection, wherein it automatically detects and adjusts the camera according to the subject and light condition. The capability may not be as powerfully present on premium Xiaomi devices, but it manages to optimize daily scenario photographs decently, like landscapes or portrait photography.
Night Mode: Although the POCO M3 fits into the budget segment, it still has one feature worth mentioning in its camera software-a Night Mode. With the Night Mode, low-light shots can be brightened, along with increasing their clarity, whenever from exposure extension. Although it cannot be compared to expensive-model counterparts, it works fairly well for any phone in this price category.
Macro Mode and Portrait Mode: The 2MP macro and depth sensors are quite useful, but they do not get anywhere close to delivering what they promise, owing to their small resolution. Macro mode is actually fun to work with, but it rather produces images with poor quality and quite often the capture holds an apparent dearth in detail. On the contrary, Portrait Mode offers decent results with the separation of the edge from that of the subject being well executed by the edge detection algorithm of the ROM.
MIUI 12 Features
Newer features were added to MIUI 12 with the POCO M3, which significantly enriches the whole experience of the user interface. Here are some of the highlighted features of MIUI 12 on POCO M3:
Control Center: With MIUI 12 comes a completely reinterpreted control center which, separated quick settings from notifications, makes the device a bit more original from iOS. This new skin is much clearer and much more intuitive in accessing what they use most: Wi-Fi and Bluetooth access & brightness.
Floating Windows: I consider this a new amazing feature of MIUI 12 in that it will merely reduce an app window to a small window that is dragged all over the screen. This would be more fun and interesting to watch videos and chat together with other applications.
Dark Mode: Dark Mode is almost everywhere in MIUI 12, plus it’s put in place very well in the POCO M3. It certainly reduces the stress on the eye and was even confirmed to also help conserve battery life on the LCD screen, particularly when paired with battery-saving features.
Privacy Features: MIUI 12 looks forward to being a privacy-and-security-oriented version of the ROM. Some of the features include permission controls, a notification whenever an app accesses sensitive information, and granting temporary permissions to applications. The layer of added security is very convenient for users who prefer an even more private life.
Gaming Performance and Various Optimizations
Performance-wise, POCO M3 is not classified as a gaming mobile., but it is a good enough device for casual gamers, thanks to the optimizations done in MIUI ROM. Casual lightweight games can run on this device, and even heavier ones like PUBG Mobile and call-of-duty mobile can run, in some cases at lower settings of graphics, for relatively satisfactory performance. While it can be pushed for high graphics settings, the Snapdragon 662 paired with 4GB of RAM would likely struggle a bit with heavier titles. Most important, however, is that games be able to run smoothly due to intelligent resource management optimization in the ROM.
Game Turbo Mode
One of such things which adds to the gaming values of POCO M3 is Game Turbo Mode. This boosts performance for a game when it’s opened by redistributing the CPU and GPU hardware resources to some extent, restricting running background activities. Thus, the performance gives room for a little stuttering or lag especially in not-so-heavy games and mainly promises to contribute positively to your overall gaming experience.
Features of Game Turbo:
Distraction-free mode: Disable all outside calls and messages from coming through during playing time.
Control improvements: fine-tuning touch sensitivity-response times, which can become important in perfect response in certain games having high speed.
Screen recording: It gives a bonus option to quickly record the game on the go, removing the need for third-party apps.
Overall, considering everything, although POCO M3 is not a gaming monster, MIUI gaming optimizations still enable it to run casual games well and just about permit tolerable play in demanding ones.
There is good long-term software support.
One of the significant drawbacks of budget smartphones like the POCO M3 is in terms of long software support. Xiaomi has had a decent performance in delivering updates to its devices, but budget models tend to get later updates than flagship items. Presently, the POCO M3 was initially launched with Android 10 with MIUI 12, and so far, it has been upgraded to MIUI 12.5 and Android 11.
MIUI 12.5: The update included a number of improvements in performance, giving the UI a much smoother and responsive touch. Among its highlights was the optimization in the use of memory, reduction of battery drain because of background processes, and increased security and privacy introduced in MIUI 12. It also made MIUI 12.5 lighter on usage and less demanding on the system resource requirements of devices such as the POCO M3 that have limited RAM and processing power.
Future Updates: The POCO M3 is still a very young model and thus can be expected to have at least one more major Android update (Android 12) and extra MIUI updates. Users should be informed, however, that there are times when the update schedules of POCO and Xiaomi for budget devices do not match that of more expensive devices in such areas as security patches and new features.
Privacy and Security Features and Fine-tuning
Xiaomi’s MIUI has great security options, and over and above ROM extension, the POCO M3 has a lot of features for other aspects of data protection and device privacy. The options include App Lock, Second Space, Hidden Apps, and more layers of privacy and security for the device.
App Lock: Users can lock specific applications with a fingerprint or PIN, ensuring even an access to your phone will not allow a person to open sensitive applications like those banking, WhatsApp, and private galleries without prior permission.
Second Space: This is a separate user profile created entirely anew within the same phone unit and would be created mainly for work apps or personal content the user would prefer to keep private. Each space will have its own applications, pictures, and settings, thus giving a different environment that could be password-protected.
Hidden Apps: Hide apps from the home screens or app drawers, meaning peeping eyes can’t easily find them. Typing a specific passcode or gesture unlocks the hidden apps, thus providing an additional level of security.
ROM Stability and Bugs
The ROM of the POCO M3 is well-optimized but is not entirely trouble-free. Users do report bugs and stability issues at times; however, Xiaomi has tried resolving most of them through updates.
Common Issues:
Notification Delays: One of the most common complaints in MIUI, especially in budget devices, would be notification delays. Most of the time, it occurs due to aggressive memory management which kills background processes to better battery saving. Although whitelisting apps so that users could prevent them from closing, certain cases are still slightly different.
Occasional Stutter: Formal MIUI, although it’s said to be optimized for the smoothest experience, does not come in hand for hardware limitations. Hence, you’d run into stutters at certain cases when switching apps or stuff that may need more resources.
As discussed earlier, bloatware and advertisements under MIUI also ruin otherwise great user experience. Although Xiaomi has done a great amount of work on reducing bloatware, the inclusion of many pre-installed apps and advertisements in the system apps continues to be one of the major grievances among the users.
But Xiaomi’s development team has been able to release bug fixes and performance patches at a real fast pace, making the POCO M3 ROM more stable with time.
Unlocking Bootloader and Custom ROM support
For all the advanced users of their POCO M3, Xiaomi has provided a feature where users can unlock the bootloader and then go on to install custom ROMs. Custom ROMs like LineageOS, Pixel Experience, and Paranoid Android have pledged support to Xiaomi devices, including POCO M3.
Features of Custom ROMs:
Stock Android Experience: Most ROMs claim to be close to stock so as not really to have too much bloat or as much performance diminishment by stripping away some of the heavier MIUI features.
Improved Performance: Lightweight, less strain on the quite limited processing resource of your system.
Reduced Delays in Updates: Unlike MIUI, where updates could take longer to roll out, custom ROMs can provide faster security patches and feature upgrades, keeping your device up to date.
This is because a custom ROM installation is technical and voids the warranty granted by the manufacturer for the purchase of the device. And sometimes, software installations cause bugs and lead to system instability. This becomes even more complicated if the new ROM is not completely optimized with the device.
Is POCO M3 ROM Worth It?
It’s indeed worth the name in budget smartphones as the MIUI provides fantastic optimizations, customization features, and battery-saving techniques. There’s little to complain about the POCO M3’s ROM, despite having some bloatware and performance stutters now and then. The smoothness with which it handles even pretty rich feature gameplay is enough to impress any one casual user.
If you are someone who likes to customize things, then you would love using the POCO M3 ROM with its extensive theme options, the ability to take control of apps and their management, and privacy settings. Not to forget, a combination of a large-sized battery and MIUI battery optimization features make the POCO M3 pretty handy when it comes to keeping it up through long periods of use without frequent charging.
Unlocking the bootloader and getting a custom ROM installation is an answer for users looking for something even lighter or with lesser pre-installed apps. However, this may have its own risks, so it is only advisable for the more technologically inclined.
So, at this price competitive, POCO M3’s ROM provides a fairly balanced performance with features and customization, making it quite appealing to a budget-conscious audience. MIUI keeps coming with updates, thus promising to continually improve the experience with the POCO M3, ensuring it remains a competitive offering within its category.