Yes, the time has come to finally release the most requested comparison video. I’ve got both software updated on each phone and tested out the cameras, gaming, battery life, and more. So, the main question is this: Will the POCO F6 be a true successor of the POCO F3, and is it finally time to retire this phone?
Design
For the past several videos, I mentioned that I was not a fan of this finish on the POCO F6, as I felt that POCO was trying too hard to blend into the titanium color trend famously started by the iPhone 15 Pro Series, followed up by the Samsung S24 Ultra as well.Â
But what I found out is that the more I use the phone daily, the more it grew on me—this whole finish of the phone. But if you force me to go with a white color smartphone finish like this POCO F3, I would choose the POCO F3 in a pinch.Â
However, that is based on personal preference because the POCO F6 wasn’t as bad as I initially thought it was. Now, probably the green might look better, or perhaps the Deadpool version of the POCO F6, but since I don’t have those, I can’t compare them.


In terms of which feels better in the hands, the POCO F6 feels better long-term because of its more textured finish. But in terms of the camera design, call me old school, but I do prefer the camera array design on the POCO F3.Â
So, yeah, this does boil down to personal preference. While I would choose this POCO F3 over the POCO F4 or even the POCO F5’s overall design and finish, this time around, I would give this a draw instead.
Display
The display sizes are the same at 6.67 inches. Before even comparing the specs for each by itself, the POCO F3 looks good. But if you compare it side by side with the POCO F6, here’s where you finally see that the F6 variant is serious about upgrading its display.Â
Not only does it look great because of its thinner bezels, but the flatter design also played a huge role in making sure the phone was ready to step up its display game.Â
The massive peak brightness of 2,400 nits and the 1,200 nits of HBM (High Brightness Mode) on the POCO F6 also made looking at the display way much better. I find it very helpful, especially when taking photos and videos during the day. Yes, there will be a camera comparison between these, so don’t go anywhere.Â
While the pixel density on the POCO F6 is also higher, that is something not very noticeable to the naked eye because the POCO F3 still looks great during daily use. The responsiveness of the screen was also excellent since both have a 120Hz refresh rate.
The POCO F3 uses a side-mounted fingerprint sensor on the power button, but the POCO F6 is the first to include an in-display fingerprint sensor for this F series from POCO.Â
Finally, the area where I felt that the screen was far superior on the POCO F6 is that it uses Corning Gorilla Glass Victus, compared to Corning Gorilla Glass 5 on the POCO F3. What’s weird is that even the POCO F6 Pro—the pro version—comes with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 too and is also IP64 rated, which is not only higher than the POCO F3 at IP53 but also higher than the POCO F6 Pro’s IP54.Â
I’m not sure who came up with that decision from the POCO camp, but yeah, the display category for this POCO F6 was way better than the F3 and also the F6 Pro.
Cameras
Now, let’s go into the camera comparison. Specs-wise, the POCO F6 has a slightly bigger megapixel value at 50MP compared to 48MP on the POCO F3.Â
The ultra-wide lenses for both are 8MP. But what’s interesting is that POCO has decided to forego the dedicated macro lens, which it had before. That doesn’t affect me, but apparently, a lot of people think so, so some of you will disagree with this.
High Megapixel
Starting with the high-megapixel mode, besides the slightly darker contrast, both of them look very similar. Even if you zoom in after taking a picture, the amount of detail is the same.Â
Ultrawide
As for the ultra-wide lenses, the only difference between them is the more saturated photos on the POCO F3, whereas the POCO F6 looks more real as the skies are more accurately represented. Other than that, the dynamic range and the non-existent barrel distortion were equally great too.
Main Lens & Zoom
The story remains the same for the main lenses, where you can see more saturation, particularly on the blues.
Both phones can zoom up to 2x digitally, where once again, the photos produced similar results. You can go up to 10x zoom as the maximum zoom, where the 10x zoom images had better details on the POCO F6. The app also does a better job stabilizing the 10x zoom mode, which would be great if you need and use this feature a lot.
Portrait Mode
Portrait mode for objects on both looks equally great from a subject-to-background blur perspective. It also does very well on objects, as seen in these images.Â
When it comes to human subjects, the subject-to-background blur was great, but in terms of color accuracy, what’s interesting is that this time the POCO F3 was more color accurate instead. However, the overall subject was brighter on the POCO F6.
Day Selfie
Switching over to the front 20MP cameras on each, for regular selfies, the background dynamic range on the skies was better on the POCO F6, where it was totally blown out on the POCO F3.Â
While the second regular selfie image showed some amount of dynamic range in the skies for the POCO F3, it was not as good as the POCO F6.Â
This was also the case for the portrait selfie photos as well.
Night Ultrawide
As for nighttime photography, it’s all about the image processing on each phone’s night modes. Based on these shots, not only does the POCO F6 handle the lights better on the traffic lights and lamp posts, but the skies are more accurately black.
And it did consistently well even for the ceiling downlights as seen on top in this particular image.Â
Even for a low-light shot like this particular image, there are more details toward the bottom right of the image on the POCO F6 compared to a more smudgy image on the POCO F3.
The reflection on the water near the middle had this weird purple color reflection, which I don’t know where it came from.
Night Main
As for the main lenses, once again, the colors of the skies were more accurate on the POCO F6, and it handled the lights way better.Â
Even in this next image, the POCO F6 looks more pleasing, balancing the highlights and the shadows very well too.Â
As for low-light shots, while the details were better on this main lens for the POCO F3 compared to what you saw on the ultra-wide lens, the POCO F6 color accuracy was better in this particular scene.Â
If you like to take more zoomed-in photos at night, the 2x zoom image on the POCO F6 looks a tad bit better on the letters on this particular board.Â
What’s funny is that the 5x zoom looked better on the POCO F3, but the 10x zoom was better on the POCO F6. Yes, weirdly interesting.
Night Portrait
If you’re taking night portrait shots of humans, the POCO F3 was strangely really dark in capturing the actual skin tones compared to the POCO F6, but the subject-to-background blur was good for both.Â
The POCO F3 did not do a very good job on the night portrait photo for objects, as the texture of the plant branch was more prominent on the POCO F6.
If you look at taking selfie photos at night, once again, the POCO F6 was victorious with better skin tones and overall handling all parts of the image very well.Â
While the POCO F3 does better on the subject-to-background blur in this particular portrait selfie, the overall image and the skin tones were once again better on the POCO F6.Â
In this second image, the skin tones look paler on the POCO F3 and not as color-accurate as the POCO F6.
Video
[Sample video footage available on my YouTube video]
As for video recording, starting from the rear, the quality for the ultra-wide lenses was equally as good. What is interesting is that the time that the skies got exposed correctly was faster on the POCO F3. However, like the photos, the skies were a bit more saturated on the POCO F3 as well.Â
Stabilization was really good at the max recording of 1080p using this particular lens. The 4K main camera stabilization was also really good.
As for the main lens quality, the 4K was great, once again producing more saturation on the POCO F3, even at the 2x zoom video recording.Â
Speaking of this, I’m not a fan of how the camera app defaults to 1080p recording when switching between the ultra-wide to the main lenses instead of using the 4K setting I previously used. This was not the case on the camera app on the POCO F6.
Moving into the front video recording, what’s funny is that the dynamic range on the POCO F6 was nowhere as good as the POCO F3, where it seems like the POCO F6 was trying to expose the sky properly and then panicked and just left it, like, bye-bye.Â
However, stabilization-wise, both did a very good job maximizing at 1080p.Â
As for the nighttime videos for the rear, what’s funny is that the POCO F3 did a better job on the overall quality but had the same issues with the stabilization for the ultra-wide lenses. The 4K main video quality was equally as good.
Then finally, for the video at night, let me just say that I don’t like both of the videos produced by the front video cameras. Even the video stabilization for the front was just mediocre at best.Â
[Check out the vlogging test on my YouTube video]
Battery
So, the 4,520 mAh battery on the POCO F3 was expected to not be so great since I’ve owned this phone since it was launched. Battery degradation was very present here, and while I was still averaging about 3 hours plus of screen-on time at 10% battery with dark mode turned on.
The larger 5,000 mAh battery on the POCO F6 was better, with an average of 4 and a half hours.Â
Since you’re looking at the sixth iteration of the phone, the charging speed on the POCO F6 is higher at 90W, which goes from 0 to 100% in about 36 minutes, compared to the POCO F3, which is less than half of the fast charging speeds at 33W, which got me from 0 to 100% in close to 56 minutes. But that is to be expected since this is version 3 and this is version 6.Â
So yes, the winner for this category obviously goes to the POCO F6 because of its newer and larger battery.
Gaming
As for gaming, I did a gaming test on the most demanding game, and yes, can you guess it? It is Genshin Impact. On the POCO F3, while the overheating issues when I previously tested the phone earlier this year have gone away, this could be because of the new Hyper OS update, the battery drain on the POCO F3 was noticeable during gaming, where I had the best gaming experience at medium settings, 60 FPS, with motion blur turned off.Â
As for the POCO F6, the battery drain was kept to a minimum even after continued gaming for about 15 minutes, and Genshin Impact could run at the highest settings on this phone thanks to the new Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset, which is a 4nm chipset compared to the 7nm Snapdragon 870 on the POCO F3, so that is to be expected.
But if you want longer and more comfortable gameplay, I would just leave this at medium settings. That would be the ideal situation where it was smooth sailing all the way without any battery drain. So that is another point for the POCO F6.
Software
As for the software, as of the time of this review, the POCO F3 has been upgraded to Xiaomi’s latest HyperOS. Yep, it took my phone way longer than for a lot of people out there. It is at version 1.0.2.0, and the POCO F6 is at Hyper OS version 1.0.4.0Â
Out of the bat, I cannot see any differences in terms of the software’s performance, which was great. However, there was one weird software glitch that I’ve been experiencing on the POCO F6, which is when I was transferring files from the phone.Â
While both have USB version 2.0, the POCO F3 could detect external SSDs and USB thumb drives easily, whereas the POCO F6 had issues detecting them. Sometimes it would detect them, but they would just disappear after a minute or so.
That was really frustrating because imagine how I had to transfer all of the pictures and videos taken on the phone for this comparison—I had to literally upload every single file to Google Drive and then download it onto my computer to do this comparison. I believe that this could be a software glitch since both USB ports have the same hardware.Â
Other than that, the software experience was quite fluid on both phones. But one thing that I found very annoying on this POCO F3 is the amount of ads popping up. It seems to happen more frequently, not only compared to the POCO F6 but in general, compared to the past years that I’ve been using this particular phone when it first came out, it was to a point where I really noticed it, and it was really annoying.Â
So, other than the ads, in this category, I would give it to the POCO F3 because of the USB issue mentioned. Other than that, the POCO F6 would have beaten the POCO F3 in this category. Hopefully, there will be a fix for this soon.
Conclusion
So, in conclusion, based on this extensive test, I think that it is finally time for the POCO F3 to be knocked out from its throne because the POCO F6 seems to win in almost every test thrown at it.Â
But you know what’s funny? It took POCO 3 years—3 years—to create a phone that is better than this POCO F3. So, the question now remains: how many years will this POCO F6 be the best?