Back in August 2018, Xiaomi kicked off POCO as an independent sub-brand and it had a tremendous start with the launch of the POCO F1 — a budget-friendly device with flagship specifications. However, since then, the company hasn't launched another device. Over the last year, fans of the POCO F1 wondered when the brand would launch its successor and we even got to see a number of leaks here and there, suggesting that the brand was prepping up to launch another banger of a device. But sadly, we haven't seen any official information from the company regarding this elusive device over the last year. This led people to believe that the brand was essentially dead.

Much to the surprise of POCO F1 fans, the brand came back strong earlier this week with a staged rollout of Android 10 for its users and an announcement that POCO would become an independent brand. Of late, the company has also been posting teasers on social media for a "season 2" and they have done interviews confirming that a new phone is coming. We now have evidence to suggest that this new phone could be a rebranded Redmi K30 4G.

The Redmi K30 4G and Redmi K30 5G were both launched in China late last year in December. The Redmi K30 4G, which is code-named "phoenix", features a Snapdragon 730G processor, as opposed to the Snapdragon 765G found on the K30 5G. Even before its launch, we saw evidence of a device build code-named "phoenixin", which suggested that the phone was coming to the Indian market.

Then, towards the end of last year, a third-party reseller put up a listing for the Redmi K30 4G with a "global ROM" pre-installed. This was quite peculiar since Xiaomi hasn't launched the device internationally and hasn't released a global ROM for the unit. One of the screenshots in the listing shows the device's model name as "POCO X2", suggesting that the global version of the Redmi K30 4G will indeed be launched under the POCO brand name. However, since retailers are known to customize software before selling devices, we weren't that confident in the legitimacy of this information at first.

Following this string of developments, earlier today XDA Junior Member kacskrz, who is a frequent and trusted Xiaomi tipster, revealed that one of his Polish friends had obtained a Redmi K30 4G (phoenix) with the phoenixin ROM pre-installed. He shared an image (seen below) as well as a screen recording, which also showed POCO X2 as the model name. This fueled our suspicion even further.

Furthermore, Geekbench (which we warn can easily be faked but can still be useful if you use it as corroborating evidence and not as standalone primary evidence) has multiple benchmarks for a POCO X2 code-named phoenixin (seen below).

Examining the full details of one of the listing revealed that there's nothing off about these benchmarks: the GPU listed is the Adreno 618 (suggesting a Snapdragon 730G device), the build number matches what's shown in previous images shared above, and the benchmark score matches the K30 4G.

On top of all that, a recent report from 91Mobiles revealed a BIS listing of an upcoming POCO device with the model number M1912G7BI. This also lines up the model number of the Redmi K30 4G — M1912G7BC and M1912G7BE. The last letter in the model number is indicative of the target market, with "C" and "E" pointing towards Chinese and European markets, while the "I" points towards the Indian market.

Now if you connect the dots, as we have, you have some reason to believe that the Redmi K30 4G might be launched as the POCO X2 in India, and perhaps globally. However, it's also worth noting that this move doesn't really tie into POCO's recent announcement on separating its brand from Xiaomi. If our speculation stands true, the company is essentially rebranding an existing Redmi phone which doesn't fit into the new POCO rhetoric of being a separate entity. Instead of rebranding a phone from its parent company Xiaomi, POCO is allegedly rebranding a phone from a sister company, Redmi, which casts doubts on both of their independence from Xiaomi.

As of now, we have no official confirmation from either POCO, Redmi or Xiaomi regarding this turn of events, so it's best to take the aforementioned information with a grain of salt.