POCO F6

The POCO F6 camera setup includes a 50MP OIS Sony IMX882 primary sensor and an 8MP ultrawide lens. The field of view of the latter is 119 degrees and the image quality can't really match the handset's main sensor. There is some warping around the edges of the frame, and the details appear underwhelming too. However, the colour calibration is consistent with that of the primary camera. The handset prioritises colder tones to add a contrasty look to the images.When compared to close rival Realme GT 6T, the POCO F6 performs better overall. The latter offers a superior dynamic range, along with decent detailing and colour accuracy. However, if these aspects are not your main concern, you might find the Realme smartphone more appealing due to its brighter image results.For selfies and video calling, the POCO F6 is equipped with a 20MP selfie snapper that is quite capable of capturing images with near-accurate skin tones in daylight. However, the facial detailing is underwhelming, with some noticeable smoothening. While the portrait mode offers nice edge detection, the bokeh effect looks slightly unnatural. Indoors or in low light, the quality of the images suffers, much like any other smartphone. Details and sharpness decrease significantly, with more noise across the frame. Although night mode reduces noise, it further compromises detail.

Performance has always been the core aspect of the F-series smartphones, and the POCO F6 is no exception. It is the first smartphone in India to feature Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset, which aims to make the on-device AI more accessible to users. The chipset is said to deliver the most sought-after capabilities from the flagship Snapdragon 8 series, including on-device generative AI, an always-sensing ISP, hyper-realistic mobile gaming, improved connectivity, and lossless high-definition sound.That said, the POCO F6 doesn't seem to offer any AI features. The handset primarily focuses on performance, scoring over 15,00,000 on AnTuTu. While this falls short of the iQOO Neo 9 Pro, which is equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC, it remains the leader in its segment. Additionally, the F6 achieves impressive scores of 1,930 and 5,017 on Geekbench's single-core and multi-core tests, respectively. However, it's worth noting that the handset experiences significant throttling during the Burnout CPU throttle test, operating at only 56 percent of its peak performance under intense load.The throttling wasn't apparent during our usage though. The phone handled everything thrown at it well, including some heavy multitasking and graphically demanding games such as BGMI, Call of Duty, and Real Racing 3. The POCO F6 features proprietary Iceloop cooling technology, along with LiquidCool Technology 4.0, which improves thermal efficiency during gaming and other demanding tasks. The phone heated up by approximately 15 degrees after playing our usual games, BGMI, Call of Duty, and Real Racing 3, with moderate settings for 30 minutes each. Naturally, the gaming experience was quite enjoyable with no stutter or frame drop whatsoever. The phone comes with Wild Boost Optimisation 3.0 to ensure smooth gameplay.The POCO F6 is available in two RAM and storage configurations: 8GB + 256GB and 12GB + 512GB. While the storage is not user-expandable, its fast UFS 4.0 standard delivers swift transfer speeds. The RAM type is the standard LPDDR5X.As for the software, the POCO F6 boots HyperOS layered atop Android 14 out of the box. The handset will be supported by three years of major software updates and four years of security updates. The current software experience remains arguably the same as POCO X6 Pro (review). Currently, there are no exclusive features on the POCO F6, except for support for the AI air gestures - expected to arrive in a future OTA update. This feature will enable users to navigate through compatible apps using hand gestures recognised by the front camera, similar to what has been seen on some Realme smartphones.The software is intuitive and easy to use; however, there are quite a few third-party apps pre-installed which you may have to skim through. If you are looking for numbers, there are 16 such apps preloaded - most for any smartphone within the segment. On the plus side, most of these apps are quite popular and have millions of users, such as Netflix, Spotify, Facebook, Amazon, Snapchat, and more.

While competitors are opting for larger battery cells, the POCO F6 retains the same battery capacity as last year. The handset houses a 5,000mAh battery, which scored 11 hours 42 minutes on the PCMark battery test at 80 percent screen brightness. This is lower than most of its arch-rivals. In our 30-minute YouTube video playback test, the handset consumed 4 percent of its battery life, which is higher than the Realme GT 6T, which packs a 5,500mAh battery.The handset falls behind in battery consumption during our gaming tests, with the battery life dropping by 24 percent after playing BGMI, Call of Duty, and Real Racing 3 for 30 minutes each. Despite this, the handset can easily last up to a day between charges. It comes with a 90W charger, included in the box, that can quickly replenish the battery. The charger can juice up the device from 20 to 100 percent in about 30 minutes. Additionally, there is an option to enable quicker charging speeds with Boost charging in the settings menu, though it comes with a warning that ‘it might heat up the device.' You don't want to take that risk in Delhi's summer.