This article may contain personal views and opinion from the author.
Smartphone innovation is stale. That's a phrase I've been hearing more and more often in the past couple of years. And to some extent, it might be true, especially for big brands such as Apple, Samsung, and Google.
But while they're playing it safe, one company has decided to give the smartphone as we know it an exciting new feature—a dedicated subwoofer! Do you feel like your phone sounds thin and lacks bass? There's a solution.
Enter the Poco F8 Ultra, the first phone with a built-in subwoofer system. What does it do, how good is it, are there any compromises, and do you need one? These are the questions I'm going to try and address today. Let's dive in.
What is a subwoofer?
Subwoofer speakers are normally quite large, as the membrane needs to push a lot of air
Without getting too technical, a subwoofer is just a type of speaker designed to reproduce low frequencies. It's often separate from the main speaker system because creating low-frequency sound requires a different design.
Speakers produce sound by oscillating at a certain frequency and moving the air. To produce a low-frequency bass sound, you need a big membrane. Big speakers are more efficient at creating bass sounds, but you probably already know this looking at your home Hi-Fi system.
Smartphone sound is usually tiny and lacks bass
Smartphone loudspeakers are normally tiny and can't handle bass frequencies
The loudspeakers in modern smartphones are tiny compared to even the most basic Bluetooth speaker or even a pair of headphones. There are size constraints that can't be easily overcome without making the phone big and bulky.
We often lament the tinny and flat sound of most smartphones, and the reason often is the lack of bass frequencies. Many companies have tried to address this with clever tricks, software emulation, and new loudspeaker designs.
But Poco decided to do things differently and collaborated with the sound giant Bose to slap a dedicated subwoofer on a smartphone.
The Poco F8 Ultra subwoofer. What is it, and how does it work?
The so-called subwoofer is just a big, tablet-like speaker. But it works!
The Poco F8 Ultra features a triple-speaker audio system. There are two 1115F loudspeakers at the top and bottom of the phone and the so-called subwoofer on the back, next to the camera system.
I'm writing "so-called" because it's actually a bigger, tablet-like speaker. It's called the 1620, and this number, just like the one above, refers to the size of the speaker. It's 16 by 20 millimeters. In terms of smartphone speakers, this is quite big indeed.
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What Poco has done is designate all the bass frequencies to this bigger speaker, effectively creating a 2.1-stereo system in a smartphone (two stereo speakers at the top and bottom, and one subwoofer speaker at the back). There are no exotic materials involved or a new innovative speaker design, just a bigger speaker.
The results are amazing, though!
What's it like in real life?
It's close to a small Bluetooth speaker
The phone sounds great! Having a dedicated speaker to take care of those bass frequencies makes a night-and-day difference. The Poco F8 Ultra really sounds like a small Bluetooth speaker; the "thump" of this 1620 speaker is clearly audible, and the soundstage is much wider compared to your regular, non-subwoofer-equipped phone.
"Remain Nameless" by Florence and the Machine sounds amazing on the Poco and totally different on the iPhone 17 Pro Max. Some frequencies just aren't there on the iPhone.
The same goes for Kosheen's "Empty Skies"—a song that's pretty heavy on bass, but this dedicated subwoofer works wonders in other genres too. I tried the phone with some low-fi jazz (Morphine—The Saddest Song) and some straight pop (Billy Eilish—Bury a Friend), as well as old-school heavy metal (Iron Maiden and Judas Priest).
So, what's the catch?
Are iPhones and Galaxies with dedicated subwoofers coming next?
The 2.1 stereo system inside the Poco F8 Ultra draws a lot of battery
The Poco F8 Ultra is an audio monster of a phone, there's no doubt about it. But there are a few complications.
The big one concerns battery life. Subwoofer systems require a lot of power, that's just how these frequencies are generated. It's not a problem when you're plugged into the power grid, but on a smartphone, where every milliamp-hour matters, it's a major consideration.
Our battery test illustrates this perfectly. In the YouTube test, where our setup requires max volume, the Poco F8 Ultra managed less than half the score of the F8 Pro, which lacks a dedicated subwoofer.
The fact that the Poco F8 Ultra comes equipped with a big 6,500 mAh kind of lets it get away with this, but on a phone with a smaller battery (imagine a sub-5,000 mAh iPhone or Galaxy phone), the situation would be much worse.
The other issue with having a phone with a dedicated subwoofer has something to do with how we use our phones in the first place. Most people listen to audio and multimedia content in general through headphones and earbuds. Letting your smartphone blast audio in the open at full volume is a rare case most of the time.
There's a huge variety of earbuds available, and all of them will give you much better sound quality and privacy compared to a phone with a subwoofer. For all the beach parties, most people would take a Bluetooth speaker anyway, so the use cases of a smartphone with a thump-y bass and big audio are somewhat limited.
What's the takeaway? Do you really need a phone with a subwoofer?
Most people use earbuds with their smartphones
The answer to the second one is "probably not." But even though this Bose-tuned audio system might be remembered as just a gimmick five years on, the Poco F8 Ultra deserves a lot of credit for doing things differently and bringing back some excitement to our beloved smartphone.
The F8 Ultra is a legitimate flagship even without taking into account the subwoofer, and if you have the chance, you should definitely check it out. But it probably won't make Bluetooth speakers or headphones obsolete anytime soon.
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Mariyan, a tech enthusiast with a background in Nuclear Physics and Journalism, brings a unique perspective to PhoneArena. His childhood curiosity for gadgets evolved into a professional passion for technology, leading him to the role of Editor-in-Chief at PCWorld Bulgaria before joining PhoneArena. Mariyan's interests range from mainstream Android and iPhone debates to fringe technologies like graphene batteries and nanotechnology. Off-duty, he enjoys playing his electric guitar, practicing Japanese, and revisiting his love for video games and Haruki Murakami's works.
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