Poco F6, Poco’s latest—but not greatest—F-series phone, is India’s first smartphone to come rocking Qualcomm’s freshly minted Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 processor. For Poco, it is business as usual now. The Xiaomi spin-off almost always manages to sneak a “first” out of its hat, especially with these things.
The Poco F5 was India’s first phone with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 2. That, too, was a near-flagship chip of its time. With the Poco F6, you might have expected the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 3 (the processor seen inside the Realme GT 6T), but Poco went ahead and put something even more powerful. The Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, for those unaware, packs some of the best features from the flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.
Poco F6: Power player
It is built around a 4nm TSMC manufacturing process (same as the 8 Gen 2/Gen 3 and even the 7 Plus Gen 3) and uses the same Cortex-X4, A720 and A520 CPU cores as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 with a maximum clock speed of 3.0GHz (the 8 Plus Gen 3 can go a bit higher at up to 3.4GHz). The Adreno 735 GPU is closer to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2’s Adreno 740. The best of both worlds is the best way to describe it.
Poco ships the F6 with up to 512GB of fast UFS4.0 storage. The RAM can go up to 12GB and uses the LPDDR5x-type. Both are big improvements over the Poco F5 (UFS3.1/LPDDR5). The hardware combo not only makes the Poco F6 a significant update to last year’s –fantastic— Poco F5, it makes for one of the fastest phones at its price point. I say “one of” because curiously, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3—in the Poco F6—doesn’t benchmark “significantly” higher than the Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 3. In AnTuTu, the phone scored 14,30,399 which is no doubt flagship territory but then the Realme GT 6T pulled a 14,05,134 in our testing. And so, while the Poco F6 was definitely faster, it wasn’t by much.
But all said and done, we can’t ignore the fact that the Poco F6 is still punching above its weight especially for the price that Poco has launched it. The base variant with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage costs only Rs 29,999. Even the top-end 12GB/512GB model is only Rs 33,999. The idea was definitely to undercut Realme and Poco has done it.
As has usually been the case with these phones, the Poco F6 is not just about a fancy chip. It has a remarkable display, with some of the slimmest bezels I have seen in this price segment. Though, they are not symmetrical, which irks me sometimes. The panel is tall—6.67-inch—AMOLED (not LTPO like the Realme GT 6T’s), with a 1.5K resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate. It gets bright—but not as bright as the Realme GT 6T—at up to 2,400 nits. Corning Gorilla Glass Victus protection is available. So is Dolby Vision playback support. Biometrics are handled by an in-screen fingerprint reader.
The design feels a bit uninspired, even next to last year’s Poco F5 but at least you get proper IP64 rating. The cameras are decent— there’s a dual camera setup on the rear headlined by a 50-megapixel Sony IMX882 primary sensor behind an f/1.59 optically stabilised lens paired to another 8-megapixel ultrawide. The front camera is a 20-megapixel.
Powering the Poco F6 is a sizeable 5,000mAh battery. Battery life is good, not great. The phone supports 90W fast charging, but for some reason, Poco ships a 120W charger in the box. Last but not the least, the Poco F6 runs Xiaomi’s HyperOS based on Android 14 and is guaranteed to get three major OS and four years of security updates.
Poco F6: Price and availability
The Poco F6 comes in a choice of 8GB/256GB, 12GB/256GB, and 12GB/512GB for Rs 29,999, Rs 31,999, and Rs 33,999 respectively. It comes in two colours—titanium and black—with sales to start from May 29, 2024.
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