Last week, iQOO, a sub-brand of Vivo, officially launched its flagship smartphone, the iQOO 11, in India. It now has the best hardware and features available. This is the first device to be equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip coming to India. Additionally, it has an E6 AMOLED screen with 144Hz refresh rate capability. It is also a fantastic gaming gadget.
There are a few features on this gadget right now, one of which is a V2 chip, which is useful for extremely low-light photography among other things. Therefore, the iQOO 11’s V2 chip is something to which one should truly look forward. Additionally, we will also test whether the gadget is able to give a flagship-calibre experience to justify its pricing. In this iQOO 11 review, we’ll go into greater detail.
iQOO 11 Review: Design and Display
The iQOO 11’s design appears to be one-of-a-kind, and the overall construction feels classy. The phone has a distinctive leather back with a strip from the BMW M Motorsport series. The gadget is not slippery thanks to the leather finish. But for us with little hands, holding this phone in one hand is a task due to its tall and broad design.
A small kink in this situation is that, despite its price, iQOO 11 still lacks any kind of IP rating, which we were hoping it will sport. The screen is still flat, and the bezels around it are relatively thin. Also, a layer of Corning Gorilla Glass Victus shields the display from unintentional drops and dings.
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On the right side of the metal frame are the power and volume controls, and on the bottom edge, there is the SIM tray, main speaker grille and the USB Type-C connector.
The smartphone is defined by a 6.78-inch Samsung 2K AMOLED screen with a resolution of 1,440 x 3,200 pixels. The smartphone’s screen has a 144 Hz refresh rate and a maximum brightness of 1,800 nits. Additionally, an optical fingerprint sensor is integrated into the screen, which works well.
The default colour calibration of the 2K display is extremely striking with pretty natural colours and contrast, providing a wonderful viewing experience.
The 1,800 nits of peak brightness makes outdoor visibility very very good. Watching HDR movies and shows on the OTT platform is enjoyable because of its vivid highlights.
A rich multimedia experience is provided by the stereo speakers on the iQOO 11 as well as by the overall audio quality, which is rather powerful and well-detailed.
iQOO 11 Review: Performance and Cameras
The iQOO 11 sports an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 CPU and up to 16GB of UFS 4.0 RAM. Users of the series can increase RAM by up to 8GB thanks to the Extended RAM 3.0 capability. The phone has 256GB of UFS 4.0 storage space available.
When it comes to memory management or the responsiveness of the user interface, the iQOO 11 performs admirably on a daily basis. Unfortunately, there is no way to remove or even disable some of the pre-installed bloatware apps that come with it. With the Funtouch OS 13, there is little reason to be concerned because the business has committed to three years of OS updates and four years of security updates.
The iQOO 11 is a powerful performer even in real-world situations. The device is able to give steady performance with little frame lag even when GPU-intensive games are running at the highest settings. When playing Asphalt 9 at its top visual settings, the smartphone was able to sustain a steady 60 frames per second. The fact that the phone does not become uncomfortably warm is also fantastic.
The dual-axis haptics motor from iQOO keeps you engrossed in the game and adds to the overall enjoyment. Additionally, you have the choice of setting motion control or virtual pressure-sensitive buttons for a rapid in-game response.
A 50-megapixel ISOCELL GN5 primary sensor with OIS is the focal point of the triple-rear camera system’s photography capabilities. The aperture on it is f/1.88.
A 13-megapixel telephoto sensor, similar to a 50mm portrait sensor, an f/2.5 aperture, and a 2x optical zoom is also included in its features list. The remainder is a digital zoom. The third camera you receive has an 8-megapixel ultra-wide angle lens and an f/2.2 aperture. It has a 116-degree field of view. A 16-megapixel front-facing selfie camera with an f/2.5 aperture is included with the smartphone.
The images taken in daylight come out excellent, and the camera also captures fine details, vivid colours, and acceptable sharpness levels. Additionally, very well done are the dynamic range and shadows. However, the sky’s colours, particularly the greens, look a little overexposed and saturated, but this is in no way objectionable.
When you pixel peep, it’s easy to see how great the details and sharpness levels are in the natural colour option. Except if you want highly realistic images or don’t like saturated photos, the daylight shots have turned out fantastic overall, and there isn’t anything to complain about here.
Nevertheless, there is a specific natural colour mode in the settings. If you like muted colours, you can toggle it. More lifelike colours can be seen while using the natural colour mode.
Due to the phone’s 8-megapixel sensor, the ultra-wide-angle camera also captures excellent detail equivalent to the primary camera. Although there is a loss of sharpness at the borders and sides, the photographs are still good. However, that is not a severe issue. We still believe that, given that it’s a flagship device, the manufacturer ought to have chosen a 13-megapixel ultra-wide lens akin the iQOO 9T. Additionally, the dynamic range is excellent while the overall clarity is ideal. The primary sensor’s colours are somewhat comparable to these.
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A 13-megapixel telephoto lens with a 2x optical zoom is available. The zoom lens appears to be of good quality and keeps the primary sensor’s sharpness and degree of detail. Additionally, the dynamic range is good.
As we move on to close-up photographs, we notice that the sharpness levels are impressive and that there are many fine details. The colours are slightly enhanced and saturated once more. It’s unfortunate that this smartphone doesn’t have a macro mode, which is surprising given how expensive it is.
When it comes to portraits, in this case, a 2x telephoto 50mm lens is used. They are of good quality, have lovely skin tones, and are really crisp. Even with intricate backgrounds, the subject separation remains flawless. By using the setup choices, portraits can also be taken at 1x.
Great details can be seen in low-light indoor pictures under artificial lighting. The photographs turned out nicely because the colours are also good and the noise is kept to a minimum. There is a Night Mode that provides good clarity and detail levels. The noise is very tightly controlled, and the highlights are beautifully kept.
What you don’t see is the over-binning of nighttime photographs for shadows; yet, here, you can feel true light rather than brightening the images. The V2 chip, which performs well in extremely low light circumstances, makes the night mode available for all three cameras, and it once again works pretty well.
The 16-megapixel camera on the iQOO 11 is in charge of taking selfies. The skin tones are done fairly well, and the selfies seem good. Given that selfies are more of a personal preference, the colours are good and the dynamic range is nice and wide. Additionally, portrait selfie edge detection is handled fairly well.
The phone also supports 4K at 60 frames per second when utilising the primary and telephoto lenses, in addition to 8K at 30 frames per second. The colours are decent, but not as good as a primary camera, and the ultra-wide is only capable of 1080p. The video looks good in [email protected]/30fps in terms of quality, and they are also stable. EIS is also available for 1080p at 60/30fps, and overall quality is good. The telephoto lens performs well with a 2x zoom in videos, and you can digitally zoom up to 10x with the video while maintaining decent image quality.
Over that, there is also Ultra Stable mode, which has a 1080p at 60 frames per second cap. The V2 processor in the phone also offers night mode for video recording at up to 4K at 30 frames per second. Even though there is noise, it is tolerable given the extremely low lighting conditions. The details are excellent.
Although you can adjust the aperture parameters in portrait mode, no stabilisation is available. iQOO 11’s front camera can only capture videos in 1080p at 30 frames per second; 60 frames per second is not supported.
Regarding the backup battery, iQOO 11 has been updated to a sizable 5,000 mAh battery. However, the device’s endurance is just slightly over average when subjected to a moderate usage pattern that includes occasional internet surfing, some gaming, and camera use. It does support 120W charging, and it takes roughly 30 minutes to fully charge the phone from empty to full. And yes, the fast charger is part of the package.
Verdict
There you have it, a detailed iQOO 11 review. The phone boasts an excellent camera setup, so consumers won’t feel let down. However, we would have valued it more had the company offered a better ultra-wide camera; the absence of a macro lens/mode is also not great.
For a starting price of Rs 60,000, it offers a tonne of fantastic premium specifications. This is the first gadget with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip to reach India, as said. This time, iQOO also made use of the most recent memory technologies, including UFS 4.0 storage and LPDDR5X RAM. The gameplay and performance elements of the device are flawless. If you are looking for top of the line gaming or entertainment mobile device, your search end here.
iQOO 11 Pros
Fast charging
Powerful gaming
Stunning display
iQOO 11 Cons
IP rating missing
Lacks wireless charging
The cameras could have been better
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