The POCOPHONE F1 has been the best smartphone for India since its debut in 2019. Better known as POCO F1 in India is quite popular as it’s not just affordable, but the camera quality is quite good plus it has flagship-tier hardware and you get custom development support as well.
Though it has very close competition with OnePlus 6T and OnePlus 6, the POCO F1 came to its owners without any Widevine L1 certificate. We also were unaware of it and found out about it when we saw its necessary for streaming HD quality video on Amazon Prime and Netflix. This became a controversial issue that gave way for OnePlus to offer its users the ability to send in their devices physically and receive the certificate of Widevine L1.
But, now that POCO announced they will be bringing Widevine support to their POCO F1 smartphones, it’s obvious to assume the users would require sending their devices over to Xiaomi. However, our sources say POCO is actually going to provision the devices with Widevine L1 as soon as they depart from the factory, and Xiaomi stands to their promise, POCO F1 is finally going to get the Widevine L1 certificate in the latest beta MIUI 10 9.2.25.
In the screenshot, you can see the DRM Info app is used to shoe Widevine CDM security level showing L1. Now, generally, this means owners of the Xiaomi POCO F1 should be able to stream DRM protected content while watching on Netflix that also above 540p and no need to use any hacked APK.
Do remember, a Widevine L1 certificate does not mean a streaming service will allow protected streaming of content. Service providers like Netflix have the right to blacklist or whitelist any device based on their desired parameters. In fact, most of the video providers don’t even like to certify devices that are launched without the certification.
Good news though, a POCO CM has confirmed POCO F1 now supports DRM content from Amazon Prime and Hotstar. Unfortunately, Netflix is yet to certify POCO F1 to stream HD videos.
Source: XDA
