iQoo launched its first smartphone iQoo 3 in India in February 2020. This phone had made its place as an entry level smartphone in the premium segment. Due to its aggressive features and hardware, the phone game lovers were well-liked. Then came the iQoo Z3 and last year the company launched the iQoo7 series which included the iQoo 7 and 7 Legend smartphones. These devices were also launched in the premium segment like entry level smartphones.
Although iQoo 9 was expected to be launched by iQoo, the company also introduced iQoo 9 SE (More Affordable Premium Smartphone) and iQoo 9 Pro, an ultra premium model of the same series, which is currently the latest flagship smartphone. Is. company. As I mentioned in my first impression of this phone too, the iQoo 9 Pro is an impressive device. It comes equipped with some top-notch hardware features along with gimbal stabilization found in the primary camera. In the premium segment, can this company’s latest smartphone compete with some of the big players in the market like OnePlus and Samsung? Learn in this full review.
iQoo 9 Pro price in India
iQoo 9 Pro comes in two variants in India. Its 8 GB RAM variant costs Rs 64,990 while the top variant with 12 GB RAM is priced at Rs 69,990. 256 GB storage is available in both variants. In terms of colours, it is available in Legend (White) and Dark Cruise (Black) finishes.
iQoo 9 Pro Design
The metal frame used in the iQoo 9 Pro is placed between two layers of glass. For review, I got its 12 GB RAM unit which was in Legend finish. Looking at its entire design, it is very similar to the iQoo 7 Legend. The rear panel gets a three-colour BMW Motor-Sport-inspired racing stripe, which is placed away from the center of the panel. Like the iQoo 7 Legend, its power button is also in blue color.
If you look at it a little more carefully, you might get to see some new details. The white part of the rear glass has been given a fine weave like carbon fiber. This white area gets a matte finish, which is quite smooth and does not catch fingerprints. But it feels slippery. The company has also given a color matching case in the box. The stripes on the rear have a glossy finish which gives a dual tone effect to the rear panel.
The camera module on the rear panel occupies a third of the panel. It doesn’t feel very out of body, which I really liked. Although it is given only for beauty, but because of this the phone does not stagger when placed on a flat surface.
iQoo has used Panda Glass for the display. It is curved on the right and left sides to give the phone a slim body. The screen bezels are very thin. The top and bottom of the phone are flat. The SIM tray, primary microphone, USB Type-C port and speaker are placed at the bottom. At the top is the infrared emitter and secondary mic.
One major feature it is missing is the IP rating. The company claims that the iQoo 9 Pro has all the necessary seals (around ports, in the SIM tray, etc.), which makes it at par with the IP52 rating but has not been officially certified. I think it is wiser to keep the phone away from water and dust. However, the absence of this feature can be unfortunate, as this feature is definitely available in all the smartphones in this price segment nowadays.
iQoo 9 Pro specifications and software
iQoo 9 Pro is the first smartphone in India to come with Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC in India. Soon after this processor was also seen in Moto Edge 30 Pro and Samsung Galaxy S22 series. This processor is built on a 4nm manufacturing process and its CPU cores run at a maximum clock speed of 3GHz. The architecture of its processor is divided into three parts. The first is a single Arm Cortex-X2 CPU, clocked at 3GHz. There are three large Cortex-A710 cores with a clock speed of 2.49GHz. While the other four smaller Cortex-A510 cores are clocked at 1.785GHz. For graphics, it has been given Adreno 730 GPU. Snapdragon X65 5G modem is integrated in the processor.
Like Vivo X70 Pro +, iQoo has also given Intelligent Display Chip (IDC) in the phone. IDC technology improves colors while gaming. It also smooths framerates using Motion Estimation and Motion Compensation (MEMC) algorithms. Connectivity options include Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, NFC and support for the usual satellite navigation system. The phone packs a 4,700mAh battery and supports 120W fast charging. The charger is included in the phone box.
iQoo 9 Pro runs on Funtouch OS 12 based on Android 12. In this, you get the new Android 12 Material You widgets for Google apps and services, which in some way match with the Funtouch OS. It also gets the support of the Theme Engine which can pick the colors from the wallpaper and apply them to the UI elements. The phone comes with pre-installed third-party apps like Josh, Netflix, Facebook, Cred, Moj-Lite, and ShareChat, but they can also be removed from the phone. Notifications from the default browser keep bothering me even though I didn’t even open this browser. But there is also an option to disable them from the settings, after which they did not cause trouble.
iQoo 9 Pro performance and battery life
iQoo 9 Pro sports a 6.78-inch curved edge AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate, which includes 1,440×3,200 pixels (2K+) resolution. Text and images appear quite sharp. The ‘Standard’ color setting is available by default. In which the colors appeared with oversaturation. I changed it to the ‘Professional’ setting, after which the colors looked more natural and real. The display is quite bright even in outdoors and can be read easily even in direct sunlight. It has an LTPO panel, which, if needed, steps down the refresh rate to 10Hz, which can improve battery life. The screen supports a touch sampling rate of 300Hz, the effect of which is felt during FPS gaming.
The phone’s panel can produce 10-bit colours, supports HDR10+ and includes Widevine L1 DRM certification for HD video streaming. However, HDR did not work in Netflix on my unit. Standard content looks sharp and blacks look quite deep. Videos in Amazon Prime Video could play only in SD quality that looked blurry for some reason. YouTube was the only app in which I was able to watch HDR content. The stereo speakers given in the phone give very loud and clear sound. Enjoyed gaming and watching movies. However, I did notice that these were not balanced well and the primary speaker was getting more bass than the earpiece.
The 3D ultrasonic fingerprint reader in the phone is found inside the display itself. It’s quite unique. Instead of multiple taps, it registers the fingerprint with just one strong tap. The area for registering or reading fingerprints is quite large as compared to other smartphones. In this, two thumbs can also be kept together. So authentication is done very easily.
In the benchmark test, the phone performed as expected. It scored better than any smartphone with Snapdragon 888 SoC. The phone’s score on AnTuTu was 9,91,830 points. While it scored 1,222 points in Geekbench’s single-core test and 3,636 points in multi-core test. It scored 84fps in the Manhattan 3.1 test and 47fps in GFXBench’s Car Chase test.
The gaming performance of the device is quite good. In games like Real Racing 3, the phone ran smooth and did not feel heating. But the phone got hot in high settings while playing Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) and Call of Duty: Mobile. The frame rate remained at 60fps in both FPS games, while the IDC feature, too, didn’t make much difference. Let me tell you, this feature comes in handy to boost the frame rate during gaming. The display touch sampling rate turned on while playing FPS games and I didn’t notice any lag during this. Games like Real Racing 3 and Subway Surfers only took advantage of the 120Hz refresh rate, otherwise the rest only ran at 30 or 60fps.
The company has also introduced a new iQoo gamepad. It has to be bought separately. It is placed on the left side of the phone and after installation, several physical buttons like L1, L2, R1, analog stick and a D-pad are added to the device, which provides a lot of convenience in FPS gaming. I tried it with Call of Duty: Mobile and found no lag in the game. The gamepad comes in a black finish with a yellow accent. It gets a built-in battery which can be charged via USB Type-C port.
iQoo 9 Pro has a battery of 4,700mAh. This is a big upgrade over the iQoo 7 Legend as it packs a 4,000mAh battery. If there is no heavy gaming, then it gives a full day’s backup. The phone lasted 17 hours and 16 minutes in our HD video loop test, which is a pretty decent backup time. During normal use, the phone should have 30-40 percent battery till the end of the day. It supports 120W fast charging. It gets charged from 0-100 percent in just 20 minutes. It only takes 10 minutes to charge the battery to 50 percent, which is well above average.
Even though there is no software toggle for charging at this speed, it starts charging at 120W as soon as the charger is installed. It also supports 50W wireless charging. For this, a wireless charger has to be purchased separately from the company.
iQoo 9 Pro cameras
iQoo 9 Pro has a triple camera setup. The rear has a 50-megapixel primary camera with OIS support, which provides gimbal-level smoothness. The second lens is a 50-megapixel ultrawide sensor with autofocus feature. The third sensor is a 16-megapixel telephoto camera with support for OIS and PDAF. For selfie, it has a 16-megapixel front camera. The camera interface is similar to that seen in other Funtouch OS smartphones. It has a customization feature and a hamburger icon has been given on the top left corner for necessary controls.
Photos clicked in daylight are sharp and clear, with good dynamic range. There was no shortage of detail and depth in all the photos taken with the phone, regardless of the lens taken. Photos taken with the 12-megapixel ultrawide camera were cropped, which was caused by software distortion correction. But you can tap the globe icon in the viewfinder to see a full 150-degree field-of-view with a fisheye effect, which makes for interesting Instagram-worthy photos. Its 2.5X telephoto camera is able to capture sharp photos in sufficient light. Photos taken in adequate light should come with very good detail.
Photos taken with the selfie camera were sharp and clear, with dynamic range and details getting better. However, there was a slight problem with the phone in edge detection while taking photos in portrait mode. Due to the autofocus in its ultrawide camera, it can also be used as a macro camera and it can click photos with good detail even from a distance of 3 cms.
The low-light camera performance of the phone is also quite good. The 5-axis gimbal stabilization found in the primary camera is its star feature. iQoo even has a toggle option in the viewfinder, which tells how the gimbal will move and how it will adjust itself when you move your hand. By default, when shooting in low light, the camera takes a photo in 1 second or a little longer. Photos taken in auto mode came out very well and with details. At the same time, when going to Night Mode, more dynamic range and detail are available in it. But due to lack of OIS here, the photo looked a bit soft. Selfies taken in low-light were found to be soft compared to selfies taken in daylight. Here the hello effect was seen in portrait mode, which was also present in the photos taken during the night.
Video quality was good in daylight. The footage taken with the primary camera was very stable and of good quality. Videos shot with the ultrawide angle camera were also usable but there was noise in the dark parts of the video. Any movement of the camera seemed robotic which was due to electronic stabilization. That’s why it became a problem for me when I wanted to pan the camera around. Video quality was a bit low in low-light but stabilization was good. However, videos shot in all resolutions in low-light had a blurry effect.
Verdict
Compared to iQoo 7 Legend, the biggest upgrade in iQoo 9 Pro has been done with its battery. Apart from this, many more features have been added to it, which proves its increased price as well. What I missed in the phone is the lack of IP68 rating in it, whereas nowadays this feature is seen in every phone of this segment. The software is up-to-date and gaming performance is also good. The phone’s still camera performance is good and video recording is also good. Improvements can be made in video recording in low-light. The phone also has wireless charging and 120W fast charging adds to it.
The starting price of iQoo 9 Pro is Rs 64,990 and it directly competes with OnePlus 9 Pro at this price point. At the same time, if you compare both, then it comes with the latest Qualcomm processor with better features, fast charging and gimbal stabilized display.