POCO is back with the POCO F6, the company’s next smartphone in the F series, as the successor to the popular POCO F5. Once again, we have impressive on-paper specs including a 1.5K 120Hz AMOLED display with Dolby Vision, Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 SoC, a major upgrade from Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2, while retaining the 5000mAh battery and faster 90W charging. Is the phone worth the price? Let us dive into the review to find out.
Box Contents
- POCO F6 5G 12GB + 512GB in Black colour
- 120W fast charger
- USB Type-C Cable
- SIM Ejector tool
- Clear protective case
- Screen protector (Pre-installed)
- User guide
Display, Hardware and Design
Starting with the display, the POCO F6 has a 6.67-inch 1.5K AMOLED display with a pixel resolution of 2712 x 1220 pixels, 20:9 aspect ratio and a pixel density of about 445 PPI. This is better than the FHD+ screen in the F5, and it offers up to 2400 nits peak brightness, compared to 1000 nits in the F5. It is bright outdoors or watching HDR content. It has 100% DCI-P3 Color Gamut, so the colours are vibrant.
The phone has a 120Hz refresh rate display and 480Hz touch sampling rate. When enabled, it offers a buttery smooth user experience, especially when you are scrolling through the UI and when gaming.
The phone has a 1920Hz high-frequency dimming technology. In dark environments, the phone will automatically switch to 1920Hz PWM dimming mode to maintain accurate colors on display with a more comfortable eye experience. It also has HDR 10+ support, which works for YouTube and Amazon Prime Video and there is Dolby Vision which works for Netflix.
Under the display options, there are different options to adjust colours and contrast based on your preference with new Original colour PRO option. It also has AI HDR enhancement for videos, but there is no MEMC. The phone has an always-on-display option, which can be enabled from display settings. The phone comes with Corning Gorilla Glass Victus protection.
The phone has a tiny punch-hole that houses a 20-megapixel camera, which doesn’t disturb when watching videos since it just occupies a small space. Above the display there is an earpiece on the top edge which also doubles up as a secondary speaker. It has a 2.27mm ultra-narrow bottom bezel.
Coming to the button placements, the volume rockers and the power button are present on the right side of the phone. The dual SIM slot, loudspeaker grill, primary microphone and USB Type-C port are present on the bottom. It doesn’t have a microSD expansion slot.
On the top there is a vent for the speaker, secondary microphone and an infrared sensor are present on the top. The 3.5mm audio jack, which made a comeback in the POCO F5, is now gone. Since the phone has a plastic frame, you don’t see any antenna cutouts. The flat frame offers a good grip to hold and doesn’t attract fingerprints.
The back of the phone also has a plastic finish, so it doesn’t feel premium. In addition to the Black colour that we have, the phone also comes in, Titanium colour in India. Global version also comes in a Green colour. I liked the White colour in the POCO F5 with an Iceflake texture.
The phone is just 7.8mm thick, and weighs 179 grams even though it packs a 5000mAh battery. The phone has IP54 ratings for splash resistance, so it has mange slight spills or light rain, but you can’t immerse in water.
Camera
- 50MP main camera with 1/ 1.95″ Sony IMX882 sensor, f/1.59 aperture, OIS
- 8MP ultra-wide angle lens with f/2.2 aperture
- 20MP OmniVision OV20B front-facing camera with f/2.4 aperture
The camera UI is familiar with other Xiaomi or POCO smartphones running Hyper OS. You get all the features such as Pro, Night, 50MP, Short Video, Panorama, VLOG, Slow motion, Time-lapse, Dual video, AI watermark, Long exposure and Pro mode lets you adjust white balance, focus, shutter speed (1/4000s to 30 seconds), ISO (50 to 6400) and option to select main, ultra-wide and macro lens. You can enable focus peaking, exposure verification and more options.
Coming to the image quality, daylight shots came out well with good dynamic range. After pixel binning technology, you get 12MP output from all main camera. HDR shots are better with improved dynamic range. 8MP wide-angle shots are decent. It is a good thing that there is no 2MP macro camera, which was not useful. The 20MP front camera is good, and you get full 16MP output. Lowlight camera performance is decent, but it could have been better.
Check out the camera samples.
It can record videos at 4k resolution at 60 fps, and it also has slow motion 1080p at up to 240 fps. You can also shoot 1080 60 fps videos using the front camera and 1080p 30 fps from ultra-wide. There is also HDR video option, which you can enable from settings. OIS in the main camera does its job, and there is a separate ultra-steady mode that uses both OIS and EIS, but it switches to 1080p.
Software, UI and Apps
This is one of the first POCO phones to run HyperOS out of the box. It recently got April 2023 Android security patch recently. The company has promised 3 OS updates and 4 years of security updates for the phone, which is good. HyperOS brings customizable lock screen, reworked control center, and new fonts and icon packs.
Since the phone has an infrared sensor for remote function, it comes with Mi Remote that lets you control your home appliances easily. Out of 12GB LPDDR5 RAM, you get 11.06GB of usable RAM, and about 5GB of RAM is free when default apps are running in the background. It also has up to 8GB of memory extension or virtual RAM, which you can disable from additional settings. Out of 512GB UFS 4.0 storage, you get about 465.3GB of free storage.
Apart from the usual set of utility apps, Google apps and POCO’s own set of apps, it comes preloaded with Netflix, PhonePe, Amazon, Facebook, LinkedIn, Spotify, Snapchat and a couple of games. It also asks for additional app installation during setup, which you can skip. You can easily uninstall these apps, but these come up when you reset the phone. Even though there is personalized ads option during set up and recommendations in all the apps, you don’t get any ads in apps.
Fingerprint sensor and Face unlock
POCO has finally switched from a side-mounted fingerprint scanner to an in-display fingerprint sensor. You can add up to 5 fingerprints. You can also use the fingerprint for app local and payments in apps. The phone also has face unlock.
Music Player and Multimedia
The Mi Music Player is the default music player with usual POCO audio effects and equalizer. It also doesn’t have FM Radio, but comes with Dolby Atmos, and the phone has stereo speakers that offer an excellent audio experience, and Audio through earphones is good as well.
It has Widevine L1 support, so you can play HD content on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and other streaming apps without any issues. The phone also supports Dolby Vision for Netflix and HDR10+ for Amazon Prime Video.
Dual SIM and Connectivity
It supports 5G, and has support for 15 5G Bands – n1/n2/n3/n5/n7/n8/n20/n28/n38/n40/n41/n48/n66/n77/n78. There is also support for Dual 4G VoLTE and phone supports carrier aggregation as well. Other connectivity options include Dual-Band Wi-Fi 6 802.11 ax. It has VoWiFi / Wi-Fi calling support, Bluetooth 5.4 LE, GPS, Glonass, Beidou, and there is also NFC support.
It also has USB OTG support that lets you connect USB drives. Call quality is good, and we did not face any call drops and the earpiece volume was loud. It has Xiaomi dialer instead of Google dialer seen in some Xiaomi phones.
The POCO F6’s body SAR is 0.628W/Kg and head SAR is at 0.848/Kg, slightly less than the POCO F5 and is well under the limit of 1.6 W/kg (over 1 g) in India.
Performance and Benchmarks
This is the first phone to be powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 SoC in India. It uses the same microarchitecture as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, but the CPU cores are underclocked and this uses a different GPU.
It uses 1 x Kryo Prime CPU (Arm Cortex-X4 based) at up to 3GHz, 4 x Kryo Performance CPUs (Arm Cortex-A720 based) at up to 2.8GHz and 3x Kryo Efficiency CPUs (Arm Cortex-A520 based) at up to 2GHz.
The SoC is fabricated using the TSMC 4nm Process Technology, same as Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. The phone has POCO Ice-Loop System. Since it uses a specific vapour-liquid separation method, this is up to three times more efficient than a traditional VC cooling configuration, said the company.
The Adreno 735 GPU has Real-time Hardware-Accelerated Ray Tracing, but it lacks, and also doesn’t have support for Unreal Engine 5 Lumen Global Illumination and Reflections System present in the 8 Gen 3 since there is change in the GPU which offers similar performance as the Adreno GPU present in the 8 Gen 2.
We did not face any issues or frame drops in the graphic-intensive games like COD, BGMI and Genshin Impact. It reached maximum 41º in our testing indoors in 5G, but this might vary outdoors.
In 3D Mark wild life stress test, it scored 81.2% which is good without any throttling issue. The temperature shot up from 32 to 51 degrees, which is high since it doesn’t throttle. That said, check out some synthetic benchmark scores below.
As you can see, the POCO F6 is only slightly better than the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 that powers the realme GT 6T.
Battery life
Coming to the battery life, the phone packs a 5000mAh (typical) built-in battery same as the POCO F5. This lasts for a day, even with heavy use. With minimal use on Wi-Fi, it should last more than a day. I got over 5 hours of screen on time with over a day of mixed use on 5G and Wi-Fi in 120Hz.
There is 5G battery saver, boost charging and more features in the battery settings. Since the phone has support for 90W fast charging, it can charge up to 50% in about 11 minutes and up to 100% in about 35 minutes.
Conclusion
At a starting price of Rs. 29,999, the POCO F6 is another value performer and a worthy successor to the POCO F5. There are upgrades in the screen, SoC, and charging. The camera is decent, but could have been better in low light. Lightweight design is fine, but the company could have offered a slightly bigger battery, compromising the weight.
Alternatives
The realme GT 6T is a direct competitor with a slightly underclocked SoC, but with a better LTPO curved screen, bigger battery and charging. If you spend more, there is iQOO Neo9 Pro that also has an LTPO screen.
Pricing and availability
The POCO F6 5G is priced at Rs. 29,999 for the 8GB + 256GB model, 12GB + 256GB model costs Rs. 31,999 and the 12GB + 512GB model costs Rs. 33,999. It will be available from Flipkart starting from today, May 29th at 12 noon.
As a part of launch offer, POCO offers Rs. 2000 instant discount with ICICI Bank cards and Rs. 2000 additional discount on exchange. Buyers during the first sale also gets additional 1-year warranty.
Pros
- 1.5K 120Hz AMOLED display with HDR10+ and Dolby Vision is brilliant
- Smooth performance and good gaming performance
- Stereo speakers, Dolby Atmos
- Good battery life with 90W fast charging
Cons
- Average low-light camera performance
- 3.5mm audio jack is gone
- Same old design