The Poco X3 Pro - basically the X3N souped up for performance - SD860 (or SD855++) in place of the X3N's SD732G & UFS 3.1 replacing the X3N's decently fast UFS 2.1 (and some material upgrades such as gorilla glass 6, 2-textured plastic back, & a full verification of the sides' materials - glossy plastic).
Summary : X3N with less overspecced camera (which still produces a viewable picture at least), 2019-flagship-grade performance (which is at least better than the X3N & F1), matte stripes flanking the more noticeable POCO logo stripe (all because of the back panel), & no inbuilt mountrw scripts to make modding easier (not that it matters). Or the full-on upgrade to the F1. I recommend crossreading alongside X3N review as it has some similarities with X3P on hardware.
The X3P is 95% similar to the X3N, so refer to the X3N review for it. The only difference would be on the back panel, as it has a matte finish on the sides of the POCO stripe (which is another component that can be replaced with the X3N's). More details about the backplate in a blogpost
Another thing that would differ the X3P from the X3N is the fingerprint scanner. While both seem similar (side mounted, doubles as power button), the X3P's scanner seems to be better.
The X3P has a bottom loudspeaker + earpiece / top speaker stereo combo & a headphone jack.
The speaker quality is very good - the top speaker competes with the top speaker well enough that it doesn't feel drowned out, but it'll also vibrate the back, which you'll feel the most when the X3N's not covered with a case. The back vibration is an unfortunate side effect of using a plastic back.
The headphone jack quality is passable. Loudness wise, it squarely falls into "average" territory.
The 6.67 inch 20:9 120hz LCD with a centered punch hole is mostly the same as the X3N (aside from cover glass, which doesn't have any added advantage IMO), so refer to the X3N review for it... again. At this point, I'm wondering if I should just merge both X3P & X3N's reviews.
No changes from the X3N, so it's still the worst bootloader unlock protocol, no questions asked. You need a Xiaomi account, have to submit your phone number to Xiaomi servers, and use a proprietary Windows-only application to unlock its bootloader. That, combined with 168 real-world hours (maybe even more, up to 2 weeks at worst - and yes, it's longer than the F1, as far as I can remember) of wait time (which gets triggered somewhere around the unlocker app as far as I remember), makes it the worst.
munchy's bootloader unlock video for Poco F1
Repair difficulty on the X3P is no different from the X3N, so just look up that one.
The X3P is alright on the ROM side, though not as strong as it used to be (considering upstream AOSP has worsened beyond my tolerance, understandable). By the way, I should also thank LineageOS' X3P maintainer for not "upgrading" to A13 (though I can only hope it stays there). 17/11/2023 Update : LineageOS maintainer "upgraded" to A13, so expect DivestOS & Lineage-microG to follow suit soon. Guess /e/ might be our last bastion for maintained A12L on X3P...
When it comes to recovery, there's a decently-maintained official TWRP, which doesn't mount partitions as rw by default, though there's a workaround for it.
For custom kernels, they were definitely there, and with KernelSU to boot.
Generally, there's not much problems with the X3P, aside from:
As for avoidable problems, we got :
To cut things short, here's what the X3P are :
Generally, I can somewhat recommend the X3P only if you're fine with Xiaomi's bootloader protocol & the reality of dynamic partitioned device hitting at full force (though there's a less convenient workaround). If you were to choose between the X3P & X3N, pick the former. However, I cannot ignore the elephant in the room on both - random hard-bricking. Be careful if you actually plan on getting it, & make sure you have a solution in case your X3P hard-bricks.
And, as with the X3N, the X3P has 2 hardware variants : Global with NFC (vayu) & Indian without NFC (bhima). The Indian variant might be more prone to hard-bricking due to QC issues so I recommend avoiding it, especially since there's no added battery to replace the missing NFC, unlike the Indian X3.
Source / warning | Testimony sample from Mochi kernel dev
As of 29/10/2021, there are widespread reports of X3s randomly hard-bricking itself from motherboard issues. I personally ignored it as I'm not sure where to post my opinions about it & my X3P hasn't bricked itself yet (MIUI 12.5.5 global firmware; Official ArrowOS 11.0 11/11/2021; 4.14.256 Moonbase Fury kernel 1/12/2021; & repasted with Arctic MX7 at the time of writing - 6/12/2021). However, the fact that a machine hard-bricks itself is a massive concern on its own, & therefore I shouldn't have ignored it (even if I can only somewhat recommend the X3P); & I apologize for it.
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