POCO X2 vs Samsung Galaxy M31s : Can Samsung rule over the POCO with its upgraded set of cameras under the Rs.20000?

Can the POCO X2 take on the newer Samsung Galaxy M31s?

Samsung has brought in the Galaxy M31s which is one of their best foot under the Rs.20000 segment. It comes with a punch-hole display, with some upgraded set of cameras, and much more.

There is a new 64MP Sony IMX 682 sensor main camera going up against POCO X2‘s 64MP Sony IMX686 which created a good impression on the smartphone way back when 48MP or 64MP Samsung cameras were present.

The POCO X2 is also a strong offering that comes with a 120Hz display, a powerful Snapdragon 730G chipset, and a larger 4500mAh battery. Can the new entrant, the Galaxy M31s take on the POCO X2 or will POCO X2 reign this sub Rs.20000 segment.

Let’s find out the full comparison.

POCO X2 vs Samsung Galaxy M31s Design:

On the design side, both of them have a different approach where Samsung continues to provide a plastic back with the Galaxy M31s and also across all M-series of its smartphones. The POCO X2 has a glass sandwich design both at the front as well back.

The front of the POCO X2 is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 5 which is premium compared to Corning Gorilla Glass 3 on the Galaxy M31s. The Galaxy M31s at the back has a glossy gradient finish but the POCO X2 has a shiny back around the camera module.

At the back, both have a different design for the cameras where the POCO X2 has a circular surround around its vertically stacked quad cameras and Samsung M31s, as usual, have a larger rectangular array setup with the quad cameras and a LED flash.

Both have the usual power button and the volume controls and offer P2i coating at the back. The Galaxy M31s provides an additional microSD card slot for storage expansion whereas the POCO X2 gets a hybrid SIM card slot.

Below both get a 3.5mm headphone jack, USB-Type-C port that supports fast charging, and a loudspeaker.

On the front, they both have different design approaches. The Galaxy M31s looks slightly different from its predecessor, the Galaxy M31 which has a punch-hole display that Samsung likes to call the Infinity-O display with a 6.5 inches screen.

The POCO X2 has also had a dual punch-hole display which is located to the top left corner of the smartphone. Both also have a side-mounted fingerprint scanner which is quite accurate and fast. One advantage the POCO X2 has in the form of an IR Blaster which the Galaxy M31s lacks.

Overall, in terms of design, both the POCO X2 and the Galaxy M31s provide a look but the POCO X2 edges here as it gets a premium glass design which is better than the plastic back of the Galaxy M31s.

See also: POCO X2 Review: Should you consider this new mid-ranger?

POCO X2 vs Samsung Galaxy M31s Display:

Both the POCO X2 and the Galaxy M31s have full HD+ display (1080 x 2400 pixels) with a screen to body ratio of 19.5:9. The POCO X2 gets a larger 6.67 inches display over the 6.5 inches display on the Galaxy M31s.

The Galaxy M31s gets an Infinity-O Super AMOLED display over the IPS LCD display on the POCO X2. The display on the Galaxy M31s is an AMOLED panel, so you get better color reproduction and the viewing angles are better when compared to an LCD panel.

On paper, the Galaxy M31s display feels superior compared to the POCO X2 display but what makes the POCO X2 display interesting is the support for the 120Hz refresh rate. The 120Hz refresh rate makes the smartphone smoother to use when it comes to multitasking or playing games.

The Galaxy M31s get the standard 60Hz display and comparing both display side by side, the POCO X2 feels faster to use which is mainly due to the higher refresh rate and the powerful chipset under the hood.

Both screens perform well when it comes to brightness under sunlight or low-light situation but the panel on the Galaxy M31s feels a tad bit better since AMOLED has better color reproduction and does not hurt eyes with the screen going very dim under low-light.

Both of them have Widevine L1 and support HDR content. When it comes to playing games, POCO X2 holds the edge whereas when watching videos, the Galaxy M31s feel better. So it all depends on personal preference which do you prefer.

Check also: Realme 6 Pro Review: Is this the best mid-ranger from Realme that can make a bold move in the market.

POCO X2 vs Samsung Galaxy M31s Performance:

The POCO X2 has a clear edge over the Galaxy M31s when it comes to performance and gaming as clearly seen on paper. The POCO X2 has the powerful Snapdragon 730G chipset whereas the Galaxy M31s stick with the older Exynos 9611 chipset as seen on the Galaxy M31, M30s and the A51.

The Snapdragon 730G is a hexacore chipset which has 2×2.2 GHz Kro 470 cores and another 6×1.8 GHz Kryo 470 Silver cores for better performance over the Exynos 9611 which is an octa-core chipset having 4×2.3 GHz Cortex A73 cores and another 4×1.7 GHz Cortex A55 cores.

(Remember on both the first set of cores are meant for achieving performance and another set of cores for achieving power efficiency).

Here the Adreno 618 GPU outperforms the Mali G72 MP3 GPU when it comes to gaming and real-life performance. All high-end games run smoothly on both the smartphones, but playing games like PUBG Mobile or Call of Duty at the highest frame rates, we noticed that the Galaxy M31s did stutter a bit and the back of the smartphone felt a bit warm.

There was no such problem with the POCO X2 as it could easily breeze through all of the games thrown at it and plus the 120Hz refresh rate makes games run smoother as the controls in games like Call of Duty felt easier to use.

Both have a dedicated GameSpace but the one on the POCO X2 has optimized well for both CPU and GPU performance and with POCO X2, there is a dedicated liquid cooling chamber that dissipates heat while playing games heavily.

Now coming to storage options, the Galaxy M31s has 6/8GB RAM and 64/128GB storage whereas POCO X2 has similar variants but has an extra 8GB RAM and 256GB storage variant. Both smartphones have faster UFS 2.1 storage.

Coming to benchmarks like Geekbench 5.1, the Galaxy M31s scores 346 in single-core and 1288 in multi-core tests whereas the POCO X2 scores 552 in single-core and 1768 in multi-core tests which are higher and better.

Similarly in Antutu v8, the POCO X2 scores 263970 over the 182259 on the Galaxy M31s, so undoubtedly the POCO X2 is the better one of the two. Combined with a 120Hz display and a powerful chipset, the POCO X2 is the clear winner here.

POCO X2 vs Samsung Galaxy M31s Software:

The Galaxy M31s ships with OneUI 2.1 built on top of Android 10 and similarly, the POCO X2 gets Android 10 and runs MIUI11 with a POCO launcher. Both these skins provide all the features like a system-wide dark mode, Android 10 based navigation gestures, a dedicated Game app, and some more.

The POCO X2 has a POCO launcher that looks cleaner but still, there is a lot of bloatware present and every some or the other time but compared to many Xiaomi smartphones is less and with MIUI 11 you get nature alarm and notification sounds and good optimization for the battery.

On the other hand, Samsung’s OneUI 2.1 provides a much cleaner look compared to the POCO launcher on the POCO X2. It has less of bloatware installed which includes Galaxy applications and some like Netflix, Facebook, etc.

Both of them provide a ton of customizations and you will not go wrong choosing each one of them. But here the OneUI 2.1 feels better as it has less bloatware and looks streamlined but the POCO launcher is good too.

POCO X2 vs Samsung Galaxy M31s Cameras:

Both the POCO X2 and the Galaxy M31s get quad cameras at the back. The Galaxy M31s ships with a Sony IMX682 sensor for its main 64MP camera which is a good upgrade from the 64MP Samsung ISOCELL GW1 sensor on the Galaxy M31.

The POCO X2 on the other hand gets the 64MP Sony IMX686 main camera. Both the smartphones get an ultrawide camera, a macro, and a depth sensor. So here the ultrawide camera is larger on the Galaxy M31s which is a 12MP one compared to 8MP one on the POCO X2.

The Galaxy M31s have a larger 5MP depth sensor compared to the 2MP depth sensor on the POCO X2 and both have a similar 2MP depth sensor.

Both have easy to use camera application and has all the different modes for both the photos and videos. Moving to the main camera, the images taken from both the smartphones come out good, but the Galaxy M31s has better details and dynamic range over the POCO X2.

The POCO X2 has a cooler tone with good contrast but tends to oversharpen the background in most scenarios. The images from the Galaxy M31s have a natural look whereas the colors in the images on the POCO X2 seem to be oversaturated.

At night, here also the Galaxy M31s shines with its better details and captures the highlight in shadows better than the POCO X2. The POCO X2 does have better contrast and the images have a cooler tone to it. With the Night Mode turned on, the Galaxy M31s shines over the POCO X2.

Now switching to the ultrawide camera, the Galaxy M31s has a larger 12MP ultrawide camera that has a 123-degree field of view over the 119-degree field of view of the 8MP ultrawide camera of the POCO X2. The images taken from the Galaxy M31s have better details and capture more objects in the frame.

The details are also superior on the Galaxy M31s to the POCO X2 but the sharpness and contrast are better on the POCO X2. At night, the dynamic range is good but still, here the Galaxy M31s have less noise and with the night mode, it is much better than the POCO X2 which tries to oversaturate colors.

The 5MP macro camera on the Galaxy M31s has better details and dynamic range compared to the 2MP macro camera on the POCO X2. The edge detection is better on the Galaxy M31s but the POCO X2 is not far behind but loses details when compared to the Galaxy M31s images.

The portraits on both were good but the one on the POCO X2 has better edge detection and the background blur works well compared to the Galaxy M31s. The skin tones look more natural on the POCO X2 compared to the Galaxy M31s which tends to make the white appear more in the images.

Switching to the front camera, the Galaxy M31s has a larger 32MP f/2.0 camera compared to the dual 20MP f/2.2 and 2MP depth camera on the POCO X2. So here the selfies come out better on the Galaxy M31s with more natural-looking skin tones but the dynamic range is better on the POCO X2.

Similarly, at night, the Galaxy M31s have better selfies and the noise is also lower compared to the POCO X2. Coming to portraits, the POCO X2 takes better portraits with the additional 2MP depth sensor that helps in better edge detection and the background blur works well.

In terms of videos, both the Galaxy M31s and the POCO X2 can shoot up to 4K videos at 30fps. The 1080p videos come out good on the POCO X2 as the EIS provides better-stabilized videos with good color reproduction and the noise is kept low when compared to the Galaxy M31s.

The videos on the POCO X2 at 4K resolution are much better thanks to the Snapdragon 730G chipset which has a better ISP compared to Galaxy M31s Exynos chipset. Then from the front camera, the videos come out much better on the POCO X2 when it comes to normal or portrait videos.

So on an overall basis, the Galaxy M31s have better overall cameras but when it comes to portraits and videos, the POCO X2 is a better one.

POCO X2 vs Samsung Galaxy M31s Battery Life:

The Galaxy M31s has a huge 6000mAh battery which remains unchanged from its predecessor, the Galaxy M31 but now instead of the 15W charger, you get a faster 25W fast charger seen on many Samsung flagship smartphones.

The POCO X2 sports a 4500mAh battery which is adequately good and with the display set to 120Hz, the smartphone can easily last for a single day. With moderate usage, the POCO X2 can last for one and a half days.

The Galaxy M31s can easily stretch up to three days with normal usage and with moderate usage that includes playing games like PUBG Mobile, or streaming video or browsing social media, the Galaxy M31s easily last for two days. The standard screen on time for the Galaxy M31s is around 6-7 hours and for the POCO X2, it is around 4-5 hours.

Here in terms of battery life, we can see that the Snapdragon 730G is much more efficient than Exynos 9611 but still the 6000mAh battery gives that extra muscle over the 4500mAh battery on the POCO X2.

In terms of charging, the Galaxy M31s ships with a 25W fast charger and POCO X2 has the 27W fast charger. Here coming to charging speeds, the Galaxy M31s takes around 1hour 30 minutes to charge completely whereas POCO X2 charges slightly faster completing zero to hundred in 63 minutes.

Do note that the Galaxy M31s charge a slightly bigger battery but MIUI’s optimization for the battery is better than that of the OneUI. Still, Samsung provides a power-saving and an ultra-power saving mode which disables wifi, turning the screen black, etc.

So, here clearly the bigger battery and the lower refresh rate of the Galaxy M31s provide a clear edge over the POCO X2.

POCO X2 vs Samsung Galaxy M31s Audio Quality:

Both the POCO X2 and Galaxy M31s sports a single firing bottom speakers and are adequately loud.

The loudness levels on the POCO X2 is good but when it comes to clarity, the Galaxy M31s hold an edge.

Similarly, both provide a 3.5mm headphone jack and here the sound output from the POCO X2 is better as the sound is louder and clearer.

Verdict:

This was a very close comparison between the two smartphones. Both have a lot to go for each other. When it comes to the display, Samsung Galaxy M31s has a better AMOLED screen whereas the POCO X2 gets the higher refresh rate.

In terms of design, both have punch hole displays on the front, but the POCO X2 feels premium with its glass back.

The POCO X2 has the edge over the Galaxy M31s when it comes to performance and gaming as it has a powerful Snapdragon 730G which is built on the 8nm process compared to Exynos 9611 built on the 10nm process. And plus the vapor cooling helps dissipate heat.

When it comes to cameras, the Galaxy M31s has better cameras of the two. But when it comes to portraits and videos, the POCO X2 has the edge. But the overall edge here goes to the Galaxy M31s. The Galaxy M31s has a better battery life than the POCO X2.

To sum it up, if you want a smartphone for playing games, a good set of cameras and a premium build, then the POCO X2 will make a better deal and if want a brighter display, a good set of cameras, and the most important of all battery life, the Galaxy M31s is the one to go for.

Both are very good smartphones under Rs.20000 and you can’t go wrong when considering either one of them.