iqoo review: iQOO 9 Pro smartphone review: High on style

IQoo may be relatively new in the Indian smartphone market but it has been making an attempt to make its presence felt. The IQoo “Legend” version of its flagship phone certainly looks strikingly different. The company recently brought out its flagship smartphone in India, the IQoo 9 Pro, which starts at Rs 64,990. We reviewed the 12GB+256GB Legend version of the smartphone and here are our key thoughts on the product.

IQoo 9 Pro: DesignThe IQoo 9 Pro is a large-sized phone, modelled along with the likes of the Galaxy Note series smartphones by Samsung. The display has slightly curved edges along the left and the right sides, which, again, looks reminiscent of the Samsung flagship devices.

The top edge of the phone carries two vents–small and smaller–for the microphone. The bottom edge has got the SIM card slot, a small vent for the microphone, a USB-C charging port and seven capsule-shaped vents for the speakers.

The right edge carries the volume and the power buttons (the power button with a gradient blue finish at the top) while the left edge is devoid of any buttons.

The back of the smartphone has a matte finish in an off-white shade. It is entirely fingerprint and smudge resistant and has the tricolour strip (red, black and blue) of BMW running vertically from top to bottom on the right side, stopping towards the bottom to make allowance for the IQoo logo and then continuing to the end. Towards the top of the smartphone back sits the big camera setup placed completely inside a rectangular enclosure that juts out of the body by less than 1mm.

This slight camera bump does not allow the smartphone to lie perfectly on its back on a table but it does not make the smartphone slip too. With the smartphone protective cover that comes in the box, this issue can be taken care of as with the cover on, the IQoo 9 Pro can lie perfectly on its back.

The overall look of the IQoo 9 Pro is more along with the likes of a Galaxy Note device but a wee bit thinner which is aesthetically pleasing, with smooth, rounded corners. The Legend variant of the device is undoubtedly a standout when compared to the Dark Cruise variant.

IQoo 9 Pro: Display

The IQoo 9 Pro has uniformly thick bezels on all the sides, with a 16MP front punch-hole camera in the top middle. There is no notch and no earpiece on the top, so the display gets the luxury to take up full space on the front of the device.

The IQoo 9 Pro features a 6.78-inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 3200 x 1440 pixels which gives you crisp visuals with sharp icons. The display can be quite bright if you ramp it up. The Auto-Brightness feature of the device works well mostly. There is no shift in screen colours with different viewing angles. Outdoors in bright sunlight, you might want to increase the brightness to full.

IQoo 9 Pro: Performance and battery

The IQoo 9 Pro is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC, the most powerful Android chipset right now and our phone variant comes with 12GB RAM, so you could expect the workload you can put on the device to be easily borne. The phone runs FunTouch OS 12 based on Android 12.

The UI is neat looking and it gives you the option to customise the look by the Widget option on the top, next to the Apps option. The apps fire up quickly but open in a smooth fashion and not instantly as it happens with some high-end gaming phones. There is some bloatware that can be uninstalled.

The dual stereo speakers on the device are really good, with a sound that can fill a room at about 70% volume only.

Gaming is mostly fluid on this phone, with the Ultra Game Mode allowing you to customise your gaming experience further with options like Game Sidebar, 4D Game Vibration, Screen Mistouch Prevention, etc.

The phone charges to full within 40-45 minutes of putting it on charge using the 120W power adapter. The battery it comes with is 4700mAh, which is more than enough for one day if you are a heavy user who takes a lot of pics and/or devotes about an hour or so to gaming every day. For light and medium users, the phone battery might go on for more than a day easily.

IQoo 9 Pro: Camera

The IQoo 9 Pro features a rear camera setup of 50MP + 50MP (150° Fisheye wide angle) + 16MP. The daylight camera shots with the device come out to be natural, sharp and grain-free. There is no blurriness in the photos anywhere, be they of an object like a potted plant or of houses and buildings captured from more than 15 metres away.

Flying birds in the distance were also snapped by the rear camera clearly, with no hazy or blurry outlines.

The camera does not add any tint to the captured image by itself. The objects and structures on the corners of the camera snap came out a bit hazy but in the major part of the image, everything, be it near or far, emerged sharply detailed.

When we snapped a pic of a potted plant from up close, the leaves in the middle of the focus popped up with their natural colours, the edges and the corners very sharply captured, with the dust particles accumulated on the surface of the leaves showing quite clearly, without any smudginess. The parts of the plant on the edge of the focussed area came out a slightly blurry and the stem and the pot came out hazy too. When it comes to the overall image, if you snap a pic of an object from very close, like about 15-20 cms away, the image may not be sharply detailed when it comes to the multiple focus points like leaves, especially on the periphery; but when it comes to a single object like a small figurine, the camera would have an easier time focussing and snapping a sharp and clear picture.

The camera performance is more or less equally competent with that of the day, the only major difference being the haziness which creeps in in case of the far away objects, trees and other structures, that are more than 200 metres away from the camera lens. Else, the photos, in presence of a few light sources (like street lights), come out to be mostly clear and natural, with minimal grain.

The Night Mode enhances the overall brightness of the photos slightly, while retaining the natural colours of the scene. There is no other major change and we can say that the Night Mode would not tamper with the quality of the image taken in very dark surroundings, with only a few lights around.

The portrait mode effectively blurs the areas around the object in focus, doing a neat job.

When it comes to selfies, the phone gives very detailed and natural-looking shots during the day both when outdoors and under the artificial light of indoors. In extremely low light conditions, the major part of the face came out quite clear in the selfies, with the natural skin tone intact and also without any blurriness or grain. There is no insertion of any tint anywhere in the photo in the night selfie snaps.

Verdict

The IQoo 9 Pro is a powerful flagship phone, featuring high-end specs. It is slightly heavy to hold at first but you can get used to the weight. The curved edges of the display look appealing on the device. The camera, both the rear and the front, are particularly good on the device, with the snaps coming out clear, sharp and natural during both day and night; the low-light shots also come out to be clear for the most part, without any grain and smudginess. Gaming is quite fluid on this phone but when it comes to playing high-end games on ultra game settings, it is not at the level of the premium gaming smartphones in the market today. The battery life is long and the audio on the dual stereo speakers is plain amazing on the device. If you are looking for a good Android camera phone with a competent display and long battery life in the premium segment, a phone that also looks different from the rest (speaking of the Legend variant), the IQoo 9 Pro can work for you.

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