POCO has announced the POCO F9 Pro and POCO F9 Ultra for global markets, which are effectively the China-only Redmi K100 Pro and Redmi K100 Pro Max. ^[1] Poco, a spinoff brand of Xiaomi, has partnered with Bose for the second consecutive year to equip its flagship F9 Pro and Ultra smartphones with audio systems. ^[2] Poco officially launched the F9 Ultra and F9 Pro smartphones on 2026-01-15, featuring all-round upgrades in display, imaging, and battery life. ^[3] The Poco F9 Ultra arrives with the same Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset as its predecessor, the Poco F8 Ultra. ^[4] Both phones feature a 6.9-inch 185Hz OLED screen with 10,000 nits peak brightness and 2,200 nits in high-brightness mode. ^[5] The POCO F9 Pro ships with a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 V chipset, described as the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 with a downgraded GPU, and a 6,330mAh battery. ^[6] Poco has slightly tweaked the hardware for the F9 series, upgrading each of the two main speakers while using the same subwoofer as the previous model. ^[7] The F9 Ultra model features a light-up subwoofer ring surrounding the speaker, a design element previously introduced on the F8 Ultra. ^[8] Kang Lou, Senior Product Manager at Poco, stated that rising memory costs are putting pressure on the smartphone industry and that having the latest chipset costs a lot more. ^[9] The Poco F9 Ultra starts at $799, which is $70 more than the F8 Ultra's launch price of $729. ^[10] The F9 phones are equipped with extremely bright displays, enormous batteries, and what should be Poco's best cameras yet. ^[11]