# PocketSR: The Super-Resolution Expert in Your Pocket Mobiles

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.03012 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.03012/

## Key facts

- Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 63 of its 69 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Oct 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 63)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11487/) (2022)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03206/) (2024)
- [MobileNets: Efficient Convolutional Neural Networks for Mobile Vision Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.04861/) (2017)
- [Transformers are RNNs: Fast Autoregressive Transformers with Linear Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.16236/) (2020)
- [Photo-Realistic Single Image Super-Resolution Using a Generative Adversarial Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.04802/) (2016)
- [SwinIR: Image Restoration Using Swin Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10257/) (2021)
- [Restormer: Efficient Transformer for High-Resolution Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.09881/) (2021)
- [Enhanced Deep Residual Networks for Single Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.02921/) (2017)
- [Image Super-Resolution Using Very Deep Residual Channel Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.02758/) (2018)
- [ProlificDreamer: High-Fidelity and Diverse Text-to-3D Generation with Variational Score Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16213/) (2023)
- [MUSIQ: Multi-scale Image Quality Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.05997/) (2021)
- [Real-ESRGAN: Training Real-World Blind Super-Resolution with Pure Synthetic Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.10833/) (2021)
- [PixArt-α: Fast Training of Diffusion Transformer for Photorealistic Text-to-Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.00426/) (2023)
- [Image Quality Assessment: Unifying Structure and Texture Similarity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.07728/) (2020)
- [Adversarial Diffusion Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17042/) (2023)
- [Improved Distribution Matching Distillation for Fast Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14867/) (2024)
- [Designing a Practical Degradation Model for Deep Blind Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14006/) (2021)
- [Exploiting Diffusion Prior for Real-World Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.07015/) (2023)
- [Toward Real-World Single Image Super-Resolution: A New Benchmark and A New Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.00523/) (2019)
- [ResShift: Efficient Diffusion Model for Image Super-resolution by Residual Shifting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.12348/) (2023)
- [DeepCache: Accelerating Diffusion Models for Free](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00858/) (2023)
- [Towards Real-World Blind Face Restoration with Generative Facial Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.04061/) (2021)
- [SeeSR: Towards Semantics-Aware Real-World Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16518/) (2023)
- [Scaling Up to Excellence: Practicing Model Scaling for Photo-Realistic Image Restoration In the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.13627/) (2024)
- [Pixel-Aware Stable Diffusion for Realistic Image Super-resolution and Personalized Stylization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.14469/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [Ultra-Low Bitrate Perceptual Image Compression with Shallow Encoder](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.12229/) (2025)
- [HP-Edit: A Human-Preference Post-Training Framework for Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.19406/) (2026)
- [CREval: An Automated Interpretable Evaluation for Creative Image Manipulation under Complex Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.26174/) (2026)
- [NanoSD: Edge Efficient Foundation Model for Real Time Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.09823/) (2026)
- [OP4KSR: One-Step Patch-Free 4K Super-Resolution with Periodic Artifact Suppression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.13457/) (2026)
- [GramSR: Visual Feature Conditioning for Diffusion-Based Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.25457/) (2026)
- [TOC-SR: Task-Optimal Compact diffusion for Image Super Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.02767/) (2026)
- [SPARK: Input-Conditioned Sparse Activation Modulation for Frozen DiT-based Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.03813/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Real-world image super-resolution (RealSR) aims to enhance the visual quality of in-the-wild images, such as those captured by mobile phones. While existing methods leveraging large generative models demonstrate impressive results, the high computational cost and latency make them impractical for edge deployment. In this paper, we introduce PocketSR, an ultra-lightweight, single-step model that brings generative modeling capabilities to RealSR while maintaining high fidelity. To achieve this, we design LiteED, a highly efficient alternative to the original computationally intensive VAE in SD, reducing parameters by 97.5% while preserving high-quality encoding and decoding. Additionally, we propose online annealing pruning for the U-Net, which progressively shifts generative priors from heavy modules to lightweight counterparts, ensuring effective knowledge transfer and further optimizing efficiency. To mitigate the loss of prior knowledge during pruning, we incorporate a multi-layer feature distillation loss. Through an in-depth analysis of each design component, we provide valuable insights for future research. PocketSR, with a model size of 146M parameters, processes 4K images in just 0.8 seconds, achieving a remarkable speedup over previous methods. Notably, it delivers performance on par with state-of-the-art single-step and even multi-step RealSR models, making it a highly practical solution for edge-device applications.