Is the iQOO 11 worth buying in the flagship segment?
iQOO has been a strong contender in the Indian and global markets as its focus on performance and design has been the highest priority. All the iQOO smartphones have had a huge amount of success in the past and last year we saw the launch of the iQOO 9T (Review) which has been one of the best budget flagship segments out there as it brought in the powerful Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset and some good specifications.
Now with the iQOO 11, iQOO is again providing a solid all-rounder package as it brings some good improvements over the iQOO 9T. The iQOO 11 is the first smartphone to come with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset and brings some outstanding specifications like a 2K LTPO AMOLED display, a good set of triple cameras, a 5000mAh battery with support for 120W fast charging and much more.
So can the iQOO 11 scale newer benchmarks in the market and will it live up to the expectations that an iQOO smartphone should have? Let's find out the full review.
iQOO 11 Design:
In terms of design, all iQOO smartphones have nailed it and similarly, the iQOO 11 brings a premium design where you get a glass sandwich design both on the front as well as the back. Here you get the Legend edition seen on previous iQOO smartphones where iQOO has worked in collaboration with the BMW M division in bringing this amazing design.
This back gets a white vegan leather finish with three strips of colour - Red, Black and Blue present with the iQOO branding and the Fascination Meet Innovation etched at the back. The vegan leather at the back provides excellent grip and does feel premium when you look at it. The back is slightly curved and does not have any sharp edges thus fitting perfectly while holding hands.
There is another colour - Alpha Black which is black in colour that has an AG matte finish which does feel slightly slippery compared to the Legend variant. The iQOO 11 has a larger rectangular camera module with the top larger half consisting of triple cameras with a LED flashlight and there is the V2 logo which shows that the smartphone uses Vivo's image processing for photos and videos.
The lower half has a silver finish which makes it look good. However, the camera module does protrude slightly so it does wobble when kept on a flat surface. The iQOO 11 weighs around 205 grams for the Legend variant and the Black variant weighs around 208 grams which makes both variants feel slightly heavier while holding in hands.
At the back, the smartphone does miss out on IP rating which is slightly disappointing considering this is a premium flagship smartphone. Around the sides, the smartphone is 8.7mm thick and you get a premium aluminium frame that houses the power button and the volume buttons on the right side whereas the left side is completely clean.
At the top, there is a secondary noise-cancelling microphone and an IR Blaster to control various devices. The bottom of the iQOO 11 houses a dual SIM card slot, a primary microphone, a USB Type-C port, and a loudspeaker grille. There is neither a 3.5mm headphone jack nor any microSD card slot for storage expansion.
The front display of the iQOO 11 has a flat panel instead of a curved one and has minimum bezels around the sides. The front has a single punch-hole camera located in the middle on the top and this display is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus which is very good. Overall, the build and design feel best in class but the lack of an IP rating is slightly disappointing.
iQOO 11 Display:
The iQOO 11 sports a larger 6.78-inches Quad HD+ (1440x3200 pixels) E6 AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 19.5:9. The display seems to be a good upgrade over the iQOO 9T that has a Full HD+ AMOLED display. This display is an LTPO 4 which is more efficient than previous LTPO panels on other smartphones.
Since you get an AMOLED display, the colours look punchier and viewing angles come out to be good. The display on the iQOO 11 has support for a 144Hz refresh rate and since this is an LTPO panel, the display can go as low as 1Hz while you are watching any static content e.g. viewing an image in the gallery. There are three different options to choose from - Smart Switch, Standard and High.
Setting the display to either High or Smart Switch, the display refreshes at 144Hz for some of the applications like benchmarks and games but almost all the time the refresh rate scales somewhere between 90Hz or 120Hz for most of the applications and if you switch to Standard mode, the refresh rate stays constant at 60Hz which does provide efficient battery life.
Combined with the 144Hz refresh rate, you get a 360Hz touch sampling rate which provides faster touch responses. The display of the iQOO 11 can reach a peak brightness of 1800nits while watching content in HDR but usually, the display has 1100nits of brightness while watching the display under direct sunlight. The display also has 1440Hz pulse-width monitoring to prevent flickering which is good.
In terms of colour reproduction, the display of the iQOO 11 has three different settings to choose from - Standard, Pro and Bright where setting it to Standard mode provides more realistic colours and covers the DCI-P3 gamut whereas the Pro and Bright modes provide saturated colours on the display and cover the sRGB content. You can set the display temperature to warmer or cooler accordingly.
Since this is an AMOLED display, you get an optical in-display fingerprint scanner that works fast and accurately. The iQOO 11 display has support for HDR support on YouTube and also you get Widevine L1 so streaming HDR content on OTT platforms like Netflix, Prime, etc. and Netflix does have support for HDR10 which is great. Overall, the display on the iQOO 11 is great for media consumption.
iQOO 11 Performance:
iQOO smartphones are known for their performance and here it is no different. The iQOO 11 sports the latest and the greatest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset which is the flagship chipset provided by Qualcomm this year and is the successor to the last year's flagship Snapdragon 8/8+ Gen 1 chipset. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 uses the Cortex X3 core compared to Cortex-X2 on the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 has a quad cluster setup that has: 1x3.2 GHz Cortex-X3 core + 2x2.8 GHz Cortex-A715 cores + 2x2.8 GHz Cortex-A710 cores + 3x2.0 GHz Cortex-A510 cores coupled with an Adreno 740 GPU and is built on an efficient 4nm process. In terms of raw performance, this chipset provides 40 per cent more efficiency and GPU is also 25 per cent faster compared to the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset.
In all the daily tasks and activities like web browsing, rendering videos, playing games, etc. the smartphone handled all these without breaking a sweat. All games like BGMI, Call Of Duty Mobile, etc. run at the highest graphics and frame rates easily like in BGMI, the iQOO can run on HDR graphics with Extreme frame rates easily but as of now there is no support for 90fps.
After 3-4 hours of gaming, the back of the iQOO 11 does not feel warm and the dedicated liquid cooling system does help dissipate heat faster. iQOO smartphones have always been meant for gamers and here also you get game frame interpolation which further increases the frame rate thus making the gameplay smoother.
In the CPU throttling test, the smartphone could easily maintain a sustained performance of around 85-90 per cent without any throttling which makes it stand out when compared to either the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset. The benchmark scores come out really well. In terms of network connectivity, you get support for good carrier aggregation and have 9 bands of 5G.
The iQOO 11 is available in two variants - 8/12GB LPDDR5X RAM with 128/256GB UFS 4.0 storage speeds. Overall, performance and gaming are the segments best thanks to the powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset.
iQOO 11 Software:
The iQOO 11 runs on the latest FunTouchOS 13 based on Android 13 out of the box. FunTouchOS provides a lot of features and customizations under settings in the Dynamic effects sub-menu, you get different options to change icon shape and size, different wallpapers, styles for fingerprint animation and an Always-On display where you get different faces of clocks, animations, colours and background.
There are some very good features like Ultra Game Mode as it blocks incoming messages or calls during gameplay thus also increasing the CPU and GPU power for smoother gameplay. Then there is the Privacy Dashboard which shows the applications that are using the camera, microphone as well as location. However, the FunTouchOS comes with a lot of bloatware in the form of Hot Games and Hot Apps.
These can be disabled but cannot be uninstalled but still, most of the third-party applications can be uninstalled. In terms of software updates, iQOO has had a good track record of updates and here you will get another three major AndroidOS updates and four years of security updates. The software experience is good but the presence of bloatware at this price segment is slightly disappointing.
iQOO 11 Cameras:
The iQOO 11 sports a triple-camera setup that consists of a 50MP f/1.9 Samsung GN5 sensor for the main camera, an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera and a 13MP f/2.5 telephoto camera. On the front, there is a 16MP f/2.5 camera for selfies. Here the ultrawide camera does seem to be a downgrade compared to the iQOO 9T which had a 13MP one.
The images from the main camera come out with details that look sharper and the dynamic range is good. The colours look natural without any oversharpening in the background and there is very less noise in the background. At night, the images come out with an excellent level of detail that looks sharper and the dynamic range is very good.
The presence of a V2 chip does provide better image processing so as a result, the white balance, exposure in very low-light scenarios and contrast is well maintained. Using the Night Mode results in slightly sharper images with almost no noise present in the background. However, there are slightly softer details in shadows present at times but it is negligible.
The 8MP ultrawide camera seems to be a downgrade over the 13MP ultrawide camera on the iQOO 9T so as a result, the images have a slightly lesser field of view. The images come out with a good amount of details but they look slightly softer and there is also some amount of distortion around the edges. Though colours look good, they look washed out at times when compared to the colours on the main camera.
At night, the ultrawide camera does struggle as the details in the images look softer and there is a considerable amount of noise in the background. However, colours come out natural but the contrast is not so good. The exposure takes a hit and the dynamic range is just average but with the dedicated Night Mode, the details look sharper and the noise is also reduced but still, there is very little difference.
The 13MP telephoto camera does a good job in terms of 2x zoomed images as the details look sharper and the dynamic range is very good. The colour looks slightly saturated but there is no noise in the background. Similarly, at night, the details look great and less noise is present in the background but with the Night Mode, the images have excellent dynamic range and details look sharper.
The iQOO 11 lacks a dedicated macro camera and its ultrawide camera also does not double as a macro camera so you cannot take macro images. In terms of portraits, the dynamic range comes out good and human skin tones look natural. The edge detection is good with a proper amount of background blur with both 1x and 2x zoom levels from both the main and telephoto cameras.
The portraits from the main camera have better light control in the background and colours look accurate compared to portraits taken from the telephoto camera. In terms of selfies, the front camera takes some very good selfies that have sharper details and skin tones and come out to be natural without any oversharpening.
The dynamic range is good and even in selfie portraits, you get proper edge detection and the level of background blur is good. In terms of video recording, the main camera of the iQOO 11 can record 8K videos at 30fps and also there is support for 4K video recording at 30 and 60fps. The ultrawide camera can only record 1080p videos at 30fps whereas the telephoto camera can record 4K videos at 60fps.
The videos from the main camera come out with good dynamic range and the details also look sharper but at 8K, the colours do look slightly overprocessed but switching to 4K, the colours are very pleasing and punchier. The videos at 4K at 30fps come out with great stabilization as OIS works perfectly. The videos from the ultrawide camera come out with a decent dynamic range and a lot of noise is present.
The telephoto camera can record 4K videos at 60fps and these videos have a good amount of details that look sharper and the noise is very less in the videos. However, going beyond 2x zoom, the videos come out with softer details and a lot of noise. The selfie camera can record only 1080p videos at 30fps as there is no support for 4K recording and these videos have good dynamic range and less noise.
iQOO 11 Battery Life:
The iQOO 11 comes with a larger 5000mAh battery which is 300mAh more than the iQOO 9T's battery. With heavy usage that includes playing games, running benchmarks, calling for longer hours, etc. with the display set to the Auto-Switch or the High option, the smartphone easily lasted for one and half days with some charge left.
With normal usage includes casually playing games, scrolling through web pages, streaming social media, etc. the smartphone easily lasted for two days with the display set to High or Auto-Switch mode. The battery life has been very good so far thanks to the LTPO panel and the efficient Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset. The standard screen-on time with normal usage is around 6-7 hours which is very good.
With heavy usage, the standard screen-on time came out around 3-4 hours. In terms of charging, the iQOO 11 supports 120W fast charging and you do get that charger bundled inside the box. This dedicated 120W fast charger takes around 20-25 minutes for a full charge from 0 to 100 per cent. However, there is no support for wireless charging which could have been better.
iQOO 11 Audio Quality:
The iQOO 11 sports a dual stereo speaker setup that sounds loud and clear. The level of bass is very good and even at the loudest settings, the sound does not feel muffled. However, the back does vibrate a lot when kept at the highest volume settings. There is no support for Dolby Atmos which seems to be a big miss and there is no 3.5mm headphone jack either.
Verdict:
Overall, the iQOO 11 is a great flagship smartphone and lifts the brand's appeal as it brings some excellent specifications like a premium build and design that makes it look unique, a 144Hz AMOLED display for media consumption, a flagship and powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset for gaming and performance, a good set of triple cameras, and provides good battery life with support for faster charging.
Though the flagship specifications are of a huge list, there are some areas where iQOO has cut a few corners like there is no proper IP rating considering its price, the 8MP ultrawide is a downgrade compared to the iQOO 9T, though FunTouchOS has a lot of features but the presence of bloatware makes it cumbersome for daily usage.
Other than these things, the iQOO 11 is a perfect all-rounder all set to make its way in the global markets against competitors from Apple, Samsung, OnePlus, etc. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 makes the smartphone a gem when it comes to gaming thus it is also a perfect recommendation who are enthusiastic about gaming.
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