Are the performance and gaming enough to buy the iQOO Neo 7?
iQOO has positioned itself as a performance-oriented brand since it came into the market in 2020 with its first offering in the form of iQOO 3. Later, it expanded its foothold in the market with different series of smartphones priced at different segments, including the budget, mid-range and flagship segments. The Neo series from iQOO feels like a balanced offering as you get some very good specifications for the price.
Last year we had the iQOO Neo 6 (Review) which was a solid offering in the premium mid-range segment as it brought some good specifications like a 120Hz AMOLED display, a powerful Snapdragon 870 chipset, a 4700mAh battery and a good set of triple cameras. If you even see our previous comparisons between the iQOO Neo 6 and other smartphones, the iQOO Neo 6 has impressed a lot being one of the top picks in the premium mid-range segment.
However, this year we have its successor i.e. iQOO Neo 7 which is a great package as it brings some very good upgrades over the iQOO Neo 6 in terms of the display, and chipset and has a slightly larger battery with faster charging. There is a triple camera setup as on the iQOO Neo 6 but something may have gone wrong. So is the iQOO Neo 7 worth buying and is it worth the upgrade over the iQOO Neo 6?
Let's find out in the full review.
iQOO Neo 7 Design:
In terms of build and design, the iQOO Neo 7 is not much different from its predecessor i.e. iQOO Neo 6 as you get a polycarbonate back which is slightly curved around the sides just like the iQOO Neo 6 which makes it easier to hold in hands. The camera module is squarish similar to the one we saw on the iQOO Neo 6 but here there are some changes.
The squarish camera module has a circular portion which houses two cameras and just below the circular portion is a third camera with a LED flashlight. There is the Neo logo beside the LED flashlight and the good thing about the camera module is it is not protruded. The iQOO Neo 7 is available in two different colours - Frost Blue and Interstellar Black.
If you choose the Frost Blue colour, you get a smooth matte finish that provides a good grip and does not catch many fingerprints. The iQOO Neo 7 weighs around 193 grams making it lighter which makes it easier while holding it in hands. The back of the iQOO Neo 7 has an IP53 rating which makes it splash and dust resistant up to some extent.
Around the sides, the smartphone has a polycarbonate frame that houses a power button and volume buttons on the right side whereas the left side remains completely cleaner. At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a dual SIM card slot, a loudspeaker grille and a primary microphone. The top of the smartphone has a secondary noise-cancelling microphone and an IR Blaster to control different devices.
On the front, there is a single punch-hole display with the punch-hole being located on the top at the centre and now compared to the iQOO Neo 6, you have slightly thinner bezels all around the sides. Like the iQOO Neo 6, you have Scott Xensation for protection on the display. Overall the design looks good but a glass back could have been better instead of polycarbonate.
iQOO Neo 7 Display:
The iQOO Neo 7 sports a slightly larger 6.78-inches Full HD+ (1080x2340 pixels) Samsung E5 AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 20:9 compared to the iQOO Neo 6 which has a 6.67-inches display. As it is an AMOLED display, the colour reproduction and viewing angles come out good and like the iQOO Neo 6, there is a 120Hz refresh rate which makes things work smoother on the display.
Talking about the refresh rate, for the iQOO Neo 7, there are three different options to choose from - 60Hz, 120Hz, and Smart Switch option where if you switch to the Smart Switch option, the display automatically refreshes between 30Hz, 60Hz, 90Hz or 120Hz automatically depending on the content on the display.
You can also keep the display at complete 120Hz or 60Hz where switching to 60Hz provides better battery life. Combined with the 120Hz refresh rate, there is a 300Hz touch sampling rate for faster touch responses. As it is an AMOLED display, there is an optical in-display fingerprint scanner that works accurately and is faster.
In terms of display brightness, the iQOO Neo 7 can reach a peak brightness of 1300nits which is very good and best in class but these results are achieved while watching content in HDR. As usual, the brightness stays at 1000 units while viewing the display under direct sunlight or while using the smartphone. There is Visual Enhancement that optimizes the colours and contrasts in videos on YouTube.
There are different colour modes to choose from - Standard, Pro, and Bright where switching to Standard mode produces realistic colours and Bright mode shows up saturated colors thus covering the DCI-P3 gamut whereas the Standard and Pro mode cover the sRGB colour space. There is also an additional colour temperature slider to set it to a warmer or cooler tone.
The iQOO Neo 7 display has support for HDR on YouTube and Widevine L1 support so you can stream HDR on OTT platforms currently Netflix has support for HDR which is very good. Overall, the display is great for multi-media consumption.
iQOO Neo 7 Performance:
The iQOO Neo 7 sports a powerful and flagship MediaTek Dimensity 8200 chipset which is based on an octa-core configuration having: 1x3.1 GHz Cortex-A78 core with 3x3.0 GHz Cortex-A78 cores and another 4x2.0 GHz Cortex-A55 cores and is coupled with a Mali-G610 GPU. This chipset is a slight upgrade over the MediaTek Dimensity 8100 chipset as you are getting almost 9% more clock speed.
But the MediaTek Dimensity 8200 is built on an efficient 4nm process compared to MediaTek Dimensity 8100 chipset so there is not much difference in terms of performance. In terms of daily tasks, the smartphone can handle all tasks easily and all heavy games are easily handled without any frame drops noticed since this is a gaming smartphone iQOO has stuffed in a lot of features.
In games like BGMI, the smartphone can run at Smooth graphics with Extreme frame rates and also it can run at HDR graphics with Ultra frame rates. However, still, there is no support for 90fps or HDR graphics with Extreme frame rates. iQOO has provided some very good features like a 4D gaming vibration motor, and motion-based controls called Motion Gestures which work for some games like Apex Legends and BGMI.
In most of the games, the iQOO Neo 7 maintain a steady 80-90fps which is very good, especially in Call Of Duty Mobile but demanding titles like Genshian Impact do stutter quite a bit after long hours but still, it is negligible as the game plays smoothly at 60-70fps. iQOO claims that it has equipped the smartphone with a larger 2392mm2 vapour cooling chamber which dissipates heat quite faster.
In terms of benchmarks, the scores came out very good and are the segment best if you see scores in Antutu v8 and Geekbench 6.1. In the CPU throttling test, the smartphone maintains a sustained performance of around 80-85 per cent which is very good with minimal throttling detected. The smartphone is available in two different storage variants - 8/12GB LPDDR5 RAM with 128/256GB UFS 3.1 storage.
In terms of network connectivity, there is support for good carrier aggregation and now you get support for 8 bands of 5G which is better than the iQOO Neo 6 which has support for only 4 bands of 5G. Overall, the performance and gaming feel the best in class.
iQOO Neo 7 Software:
The iQOO Neo 7 runs on the latest FunTouchOS 13 based on Android 13 out of the box. FunTouchOS comes with a lot of features where you get a lot of customizations where you can change icon shape and size, different styles for Always-On display and fingerprint animations and also there are different themes and wallpapers present.
Other features include a sidebar where you can store your favourite applications for usage, enhanced Privacy settings where you can see which applications are using the location, camera as well as microphone, and based on the home screen wallpaper, a similar colour theme gets applied to some parts of the user interface and also the look and feel resembles close to Stock Android.
However, there is some amount of bloatware present which can be uninstalled easily but there are no ads present throughout the user interface. In terms of software updates, the iQOO Neo 7 is assured to get another two years of AndroidOS updates and three years of security updates and iQOO is quite faster in pushing updates.
iQOO Neo 7 Cameras:
The iQOO Neo 7 sports a triple camera setup which includes a 64MP f/1.8 Samsung ISOCELL GW3 sensor for the main camera, a 2MP f/2.4 macro camera and a 2MP depth sensor. However, there is no ultrawide camera which is slightly disappointing and does feel like a big miss here since it was previously present on the iQOO Neo 6. On the front, there is the 16MP f/2.5 camera for selfies.
The images from the main camera come out with a good amount of details that look sharper and the dynamic range is very good. The colours look oversaturated thanks to the AI-based scene optimizations and it uses Vivo's algorithm of boosting colours which do look pleasing to the eyes. All the images shot are saved in 16MP by default and you can shoot using the 64MP mode also.
Using the 64MP mode, you get sharper details and good dynamic range but there is some amount of oversharpening taking place. The images do get slightly cropped in to reduce noise in the background. At night, the images come out with a decent level of detail and good dynamic range but there is a lot of overexposure in the background and noise is slightly on the higher side.
In some areas, the details look crushed in the shadows but the dedicated Night Mode works quite well as turning it on would result in slightly sharper details, and good contrast and also the noise gets reduced to quite some extent. So it is better to use the Night Mode for all images that need to be taken during the night. Other than that, there is the 2MP macro camera and the 2MP depth sensor.
The 2MP macro camera takes some macro shots which result in poor details and since it is a fixed focus camera, it cannot go much closer to the subject thus resulting in some blurry images with slightly more noise and poor dynamic range. The 2MP depth sensor does help for some good portraits from the main camera that come out with good edge detection and have proper background blur with good dynamic range.
But there is some oversharpening present in the portraits and contrast comes out slightly higher. The selfies from the front camera come out with sharper details and good dynamic range but the skin tones look slightly softer but the contrast was good. The noise is very low and the Portrait mode also works here well resulting in selfies having good edge detection and background blur though some overexposure is present.
In terms of videos, the main camera can record 4K videos ta 60fps which results in videos having good dynamic range and details looking sharper with less noise in the background thanks to the presence of OIS. However, there is some amount of oversharpening taking place in videos. On the front, there is only support for 1080p videos at 30fps and these videos have a decent level of detail with an average dynamic range and a lot of noise in the background.
iQOO Neo 7 Battery Life:
The iQOO Neo 7 sports a slightly larger 5000mAh battery which is 300mAh more in capacity than the iQOO Neo 6. In terms of normal usage which includes casual web browsing, streaming social media, and minimal calling, the smartphone easily lasted for two days with some charge left. This battery life is achieved thanks to the 4nm fabrication process of the chipset and FunTouchOS 13 is well optimized for it.
With heavy usage that includes playing games for 4-5 hours continuously, calling on WiFi or mobile data for 6-7 hours, using the camera for clicking photos and videos, etc., the smartphone easily lasted a single day with some charge left. The standard screen-on time was around 5-6 hours which is good with normal usage and with heavy usage, the standard screen-on time was around 3.5-4 hours which is good.
In terms of charging, the iQOO Neo 7 does bring an upgrade as it supports 120W fast charging compared to 80W fast charging on the iQOO Neo 6. Hence the iQOO Neo 7 takes around 20-25 minutes from a full charge from 0 to 100 per cent and the charger is bundled inside the box.
iQOO Neo 7 Audio Quality:
The iQOO Neo 7 sports a dual stereo speaker setup that sounds adequately loud and clear with a good level of loudness and clarity is good even at the highest volume settings where the bottom loudspeaker and the earpiece sound equally well. There is no 3.5mm headphone jack present but iQOO does bundle a USB Type-C to 3.5mm converter inside the box which is good.
Verdict:
Overall, the iQOO Neo 7 is a well-balanced smartphone that brings some of the best specifications that include a good build and design, a great display for multimedia consumption with stereo speakers, the performance and gaming are the segment best, the cameras are quite good and battery life with fast charging is the icing on the cake. The software experience is also good with faster software updates.
However, there are some things that the iQOO Neo 7 does fall short of as there is no ultrawide camera present, the build and design feel good but still, you have the polycarbonate back which does not feel as premium as glass, the user interface has quite a handful of bloatware and the camera performance could have been better, especially in low-lighting scenarios.
But still, if you consider the iQOO Neo 6 which is priced slightly lower than the iQOO Neo 7 as it has the ultrawide camera which the iQOO Neo 7 lacks and has some of the best specifications in its price segment. But if you are someone who wants a slightly better display, slightly faster charging, gaming and performance thus making the sacrifice for the ultrawide camera, then the iQOO Neo 7 is worth the upgrade.
The iQOO Neo 7 primary focus is gaming and performance which it delivers to its full extent. Though there is no ultrawide camera, it fulfils almost all the criteria for being one of the best mid-range smartphones out there in the market making it worth buying.
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