The Pocophone F1 can’t Stream HD Video From Netflix, Hulu or Amazon as It Turns Out

The Pocophone F1 was released in the last year as a definitive flagship killer. Earlier today, we wrote about how the smartphone is selling well. Although the Poco F1 is close to a perfect VFM smartphone, it won’t be a miracle and still lacks. And here we go again – the Pocophone F1 does not have Widevine L1. If you’re not familiarized with such technical names, the lack of Widevine L1 simply means that it can’t have access to HD quality videos from streaming services – On the list, we have Netflix, Hulu, BBC, Amazon Video and all the major players rely on it.

Widevine is a DRM system that ensures a video stream cannot be copied illegally. There are three levels, but essentially any stream with 720p resolution and above requires L1. The phone does come with L3, which enables 540p streaming, but even on a mobile screen, it doesn’t look great.

Widevine is not something you can just install, even an OTA update cannot fix the situation. As OnePlus 5T users found out, Widevine L1 can only be installed at a service center, so owners had to ship their phones back to OnePlus.

Image Of: The Pocophone F1 Fully Teardown Picture

By the way, this problem is not unique to the Pocophone. Even the Xiaomi Mi 8 flagship only comes with Widevine L3. Same for the Android One-running Mi A1, Redmi Note 4 and many others. This probably means that there’s no fix incoming (though again, if there’s a fix, it won’t be pleasant).