Xiaomi’s Pocophone F1 won’t play Netflix in HD due to lack of Widevine L1 support

Ben Schoon | Aug 31 2018 - 9:59 am PT

Xiaomi’s Pocophone F1 has been the talk of the town recently with its flagship-tier specs but crazy low price of just $300. However, when you have a price that low, there are sure to be some omissions, and now it’s been discovered that the device lacks support for Widevine L1.

Now, if you’ve never heard of Widevine L1, I wouldn’t blame you. Widevine is a DRM module which is popularly used by many apps. There are multiple levels of support for Widevine, with L1 being full support. The Pocophone F1, however, only has Widevine L3 support.

This was first spotted by Android Pure (via Android Police) and it essentially means that the Pocophone F1 is slightly limited in what kind of content it can play. In the case of Netflix, it means content can’t be played in HD. The OnePlus 5 and OnePlus 5T had the same issue a while back, and the fix required a firmware update that forced users to physically send their phones to OnePlus. It’s unclear if Xiaomi would have to do the same for the Pocophone F1, but it’s something to keep in mind if you’ve been considering one.