Some of these features are still work in progress.
The Poco F6, which launched last month, was the first phone in the country to come with the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 SoC. Apart from being a powerful chipset, it also enables some AI features. While we did mention these features in our full review, we weren’t able to fully test them as some of them didn’t work as intended. Now, after having tried most of them, here’s what we think of the AI features available on the Poco F6.
We’ll start with the most usable AI features and then move on to ones that aren’t there yet.
AI Eraser Pro
It’s the age of AI, and AI-powered image editing tools are all the rave right now. Most phone manufacturers already offer these features or are working on them. With the Poco F6, you get the AI Eraser Pro. As the name of the tool suggests, you can use it to erase things from a photo. To access the tool, head over to the Gallery app, open an image, select Edit, and tap Create.
When you select the Erase tool, you’ll get options to Remove objects, lines, people, and shadows on food. There’s also a Manual mode that you can use to remove any objects from a photo.
We found that the Eraser tool, while it does work well, needs some extra tries to get things right. It can remove objects, cables, and people well, but the generative fill is not perfect. Sometimes, things do get weird and instead of removing the object, the feature can replace it with something else. The eraser can be used with an internet connection, but using the Eraser Pro (located at the top right corner) requires an additional download and an active internet connection.
AI Image Expansion
The Poco F6 also offers a feature called AI image expansion that can be used to expand images. To access this tool, you’ll need to open the Gallery app, open the image you’d like to expand, select Edit, and tap on Crop. You’ll find the AI expansion option over here.
We used this tool on a couple of images and found it to be alright. In the above screenshot, you can see that the tool did expand the image and added the missing part of the car. However, the AI fill is flawed. At times, the fill also had nothing to do with the image. This tool also doesn’t require an internet connection.
AI Bokeh and AI Clear Sky
There’s also an AI Bokeh feature on the Poco F6 that adds an artificial bokeh to any image. You can also choose between the bokeh style.
While Poco did not really speak about this feature, the AI Clear Sky can turn your gloomy photos into something bright. Both of these features are available in the Edit Photo option.
AI Gesture control
You can use your Poco F6 with gestures thanks to AI Gesture control, but it’s not all rosy. The feature is currently supported only on the built-in Music app and Netflix. We tried it out, and it takes some getting used to. Once enabled in the Settings app under Contactless Gestures, you can wave vertically with your hand to adjust volume, wave horizontally to adjust playback or switch between songs, double tap in air to play/pause content and draw a circle to answer or end calls.
All of these options worked, but not well. Your hand has to be at a certain distance for this to work, and sometimes it just doesn’t register the gestures. However, the idea is nice. Poco did say that it will add support for more apps in the coming months. We’ll see how things have improved then.
Other AI features on Poco F6
The phone also comes with a couple of other AI-powered features that work behind the scenes. You get the AI Noise cancellation feature that enhances the audio quality during phone calls, voice recording, or during video/music playback.
Next up, AI Network and Connectivity, which is said to improve the network and also aids in auto switching of SIM cards when one of the SIM loses connectivity.
There’s also Wildboost 3.0, which Poco claims can improve performance when gaming. This works in tandem with the Game Mode tool available on the phone.
Finally, there’s an AI Image Engine and AI subtitles. The former offers Super-resolution, which can auto-enhance videos by upscaling the quality, and AI HDR enhancement that is said to deliver more details in videos. Meanwhile, AI subtitles claim to auto-add subtitles to all kinds of videos on your phone.