Poco X8s Debuts in Vietnam: a Compact Phone With Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 and 100W Charging

POCO has a new compact phone, and for now only Vietnam gets it. The Poco X8s launched on October 21, 2026, listed for pre-order on Xiaomi's official Shopee Vietnam store, becoming the fifth member of the X8 series after the X8 Pro, X8 Pro Max, X8, and X8 Power. The Poco X8s specs read like a flagship checklist shrunk into a genuinely small body, which is exactly what makes it interesting.

Poco X8s specs: the full sheet

• 6.35-inch 1.5K LTPO OLED display, 120Hz, 3,500-nit peak brightness, 1.18mm bezels
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 (4nm), up to 12GB LPDDR5X RAM, up to 512GB UFS 4.0 storage
• 6,330mAh battery, 100W wired charging (PPS), 22.5W wired reverse charging
• Triple rear camera: 50MP Light Fusion 800 main with OIS, 50MP 2.5x telephoto, 8MP ultrawide; 32MP front camera
• Android 16-based HyperOS 3, IP68 dust and water resistance
• In-display fingerprint sensor, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, NFC, IR blaster
• 187g weight, 8.06mm aluminum-frame body; colors White, Black, Blue

Compact is the point

The 6.35-inch display is the headline. Most 2026 phones with this spec sheet stretch past 6.7 inches, and POCO is clearly betting there is an underserved crowd that wants flagship-tier hardware without the pocket-busting footprint. At 187 grams and 8.06mm thin with an aluminum frame, the X8s undercuts the big-screen competition on portability while keeping the 1.5K LTPO OLED, 120Hz refresh, and a 3,500-nit peak brightness figure that matches phones costing twice as much.

Small phones usually pay for their size with compromised batteries. Not here. The 6,330mAh cell is larger than what many full-size flagships shipped with two years ago, and 100W wired charging means a dead phone is a solved problem in well under half an hour. The 22.5W reverse charging is a nice extra for topping up earbuds on the go.

Cameras without the usual mid-range apology

The camera setup skips the depth-sensor filler that still haunts this price bracket. The 50MP Light Fusion 800 main sensor gets optical image stabilization, and the 50MP 2.5x telephoto is the kind of lens that usually gets cut first when a manufacturer chases a price point. The 8MP ultrawide is the one obvious compromise, and the 32MP front camera is more than adequate for video calls.

Software and the everyday extras

The X8s runs HyperOS 3 on top of Android 16, so it ships current rather than arriving a version behind, which has been a fair criticism of some POCO launches. IP68 dust and water resistance is present, which remains genuinely rare at this price. Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, NFC, an in-display fingerprint sensor, and an IR blaster round out a connectivity sheet with no holes. The IR blaster is a small thing, but it is the kind of feature people miss the moment it disappears.

Pricing and the global question

Vietnam pricing is aggressive: VND 11,500,000 (about $437) for 8GB/256GB and VND 14,000,000 (about $532) for 12GB/512GB. Launch vouchers push effective prices down to roughly $313 and $387, and early buyers get free Redmi Buds 6 Play thrown in. Pre-orders ship between November 6 and 9.

POCO has not confirmed availability anywhere outside Vietnam. But the phone already appeared on Geekbench and in IMDA, EEC, and IECEE certifications under model number 2609CPC5FG, a paper trail that usually precedes a wider rollout. If it goes global at anything close to these prices, it lands in a market where phone prices keep climbing and recent launches like the Oppo Find X10 and the fan-cooled OnePlus Ace 7 Pro are fighting over the same performance-per-dollar buyer.

The compact flagship-lite is a bet that the industry abandoned too early. POCO just made it cheap enough to find out.