An all-rounder true flagship with an attractive price tag!!
iQOO is known for its gaming-centric smartphones which focus primarily on performance and design with each of its smartphones in the various segments. Last year, iQOO came with the iQOO 11 (Review) which was a solid performer in the flagship segment as it was one of the cheapest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2-powered smartphones and all other specifications were flagship-level.
Now the iQOO 12 has arrived with all the flagship specifications which include a 144Hz 1.5K LTPO AMOLED display, a powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset as it is the fastest chipset in the Android side of things, a great triple camera setup, a 5000mAh battery with support for 120W fast charging, etc. However, the price has also been slightly reduced when compared to its predecessor i.e. the iQOO 11.
So can the iQOO 12 set newer levels of excitement in the market and create that adrenaline rush just like its predecessor i.e. iQOO 11? Let's find it in the full review.
iQOO 12 Design:
The iQOO 12 sports a premium glass build design which is available in two different versions - Alpha and Legend where if you choose the Alpha version, you get a back black colour with an almost sandstone finish with the AG Glass that looks premium with that shimmering effect when viewed from different angles thus providing a solid grip while holding in hands.
There is also the Legend variant that has a white back colour with the signature stripes of the BMW M Motorsport. We have seen this design in many iQOO smartphones in the past where three stripes of blue, red, and black would run from top to bottom, but here we have a small piece of design with the words etched "Fascination meets Innovation" alongside their is the iQOO logo present that looks very attractive.
This Legend model has a silver-coloured frame running all around as the frame is metallic all around and the same goes for the Alpha variant also. The back of the iQOO 12 houses a squarish circle-shaped camera module that houses the triple cameras and just outside the camera module are the dual LED flashlights. The camera module looks unique and is surrounded by two metallic rings outside.
The back has a flat frame but around the edges, it is slightly curved which makes it easier while holding it in hands. The back has an IP64 rating which makes it dust and splash-resistant. The smartphone weighs around 198.5 grams and is thicker at 8.4mm around the sides. On the right side, there is a power button with a set of volume buttons and to the left, there are no controls present.
To the top, there is a set of speakers present, and then there is a secondary noise-cancelling microphone and an IR Blaster to control various devices. At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a secondary noise-cancelling microphone, a secondary speaker setup and a dual SIM card tray which holds two nano SIMs. There is neither a 3.5mm headphone jack present nor an additional microSD card slot for storage expansion.
On the front, there is a single punch-hole display with uniform bezels around the sides which are thinner thus making it look good. In terms of display protection, the front display is protected by Schott Xensation UP glass which was seen in almost all iQOO smartphones in the past. Overall, the build and design feel premium on this smartphone.
iQOO 12 Display:
The iQOO 12 has a larger 6.78-inch 1.5K (1260x2800 pixels) LTPO AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 20:9. This is a 10-bit display which has good colour reproduction and also just like the iQOO 11, there is support for 144Hz refresh rate. Since the display is AMOLED, you get deeper blues and blacks with great viewing angles.
Now talking about the 144Hz refresh rate, since it is an LTPO panel, the display can switch as low as 1Hz all the way up to 144Hz depending on the content in the display. While viewing the display just by scrolling through the user interface, it shows 1Hz, but as soon as you watch YouTube video, the display switches to 60Hz, and then 90Hz for some applications.
The display mostly either switches between 90Hz or 120Hz constantly and reaches 144Hz only during gaming. There are three different modes to choose from - Smart Switch, Standard, and High. Switching to Standard mode provides a consistent 60Hz refresh rate in the display. Combined with this you get a 360Hz touch sampling rate and it bumps up to 1200Hz instantly during gaming.
There is also the MEMC mode present which further smoothens the frame rate while watching videos for example it upscales a 30fps video on YouTube to 60fps by adding frame rates for smoother play of the content. The display of the iQOO 12 can reach a peak brightness of 3000nits which is simply very high while watching any content in HDR but in normal situations, the display can reach a peak brightness of 1400nits.
In terms of colour reproduction, there are three different colour modes to choose from - Standard, Bright and Pro. Switching to a Bright mode provides saturated colours in the display which covers the DCI-P3 gamut and also similar is the case with the Standard mode. Switching to Pro mode provides accurate colours on the display which do not look much saturated and it covers the sRGB colour space.
Accordingly, you can set the display to a warmer or cooler tone. The display of the iQOO 12 has an optical in-display fingerprint scanner that works accurately and is faster. There is support for HDR streaming on YouTube and also you get Widevine L1 to stream HDR content on OTT platforms like Netflix, Prime, etc. Overall, the display of the iQOO 12 is great for multimedia consumption.
iQOO 12 Performance:
The iQOO 12 is the first smartphone which incorporates the flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset which is currently the most powerful chipset on the Android side. It has an octa-core setup that includes: a 1x3.3 GHz Cortex-X4 core with 3x3.2 GHz Cortex-A720 cores with another 2x3.0 GHz Cortex-A720 cores and 2x2.3 GHz Cortex-A520 cores. This chipset has a powerful Adreno 750 GPU.
In terms of performance, this chipset handles almost all the tasks easily without breaking a sweat. Everything feels smooth and faster whether it is scrolling through the webpages, playing games, rendering videos, etc. In terms of gaming, the iQOO smartphones have always impressed in the past and it is no different here with the iQOO 12.
All games like BGMI, Call Of Duty Mobile, etc. run at the highest settings and in BGMI, we could achieve very smooth gameplay with the settings set at HDR graphics with Extreme frame rates. There is also the Smooth graphics with 90fps frame rates option for gameplay. There is the game frame interpolation present which increases the frame rates while gaming.
There is the 4D vibration motor present for those crisp vibrations during gaming and also you can restrict unnecessary calls, see the messages as a pop-up during gaming, and also see the utilization of CPU and GPU during gaming with the dedicated Game Mode of iQOO. Then there is the Super Resolution where certain games which run at 720p and can be bumped up to 900p which is great.
After longer hours of gaming i.e. 3-4 hours, the back of the smartphone does heat up quite a bit, especially around the camera module but still, it is very negligible. iQOO has equipped the smartphone with a larger 6010mm2 vapour chamber that dissipates heat faster. In terms of the CPU throttling test, the smartphone could achieve 75-80 per cent of sustained performance which is really great.
In terms of benchmarks, the scores come out really well whether it is Antutuv10 or Geekbench 6. The iQOO 12 supports good carrier aggregation and has support for up to 12 bands of 5G. The iQOO 12 is available in two different variants - 12/16GB LPDDR5X RAM with 256/512GB storage having UFS 4.0 speeds. Overall, the performance and gaming feel really great.
iQOO 12 Software:
The iQOO 12 runs on the latest FunTouchOS 14 which is based on the newer Android 14 out of the box. There is nothing much changed from FunTouchOS 13 except for fewer things which are newer additions. Some of the new features present are the Recent apps menu which is present in two forms - carousel and horizontal tiles layout, the notification tray looks newer with bubble style toggles, etc.
Other features include a bunch of customizations for the lock screen, home screen, and animation effects under the Dynamic Submenu. For the Always-On display, you get different styles for clocks, colours, and backgrounds, then there are different charging animations, etc. Other than that there is a dedicated Game mode which works well during gaming and prevents distraction.
The FunTouchOS has its own specific set of applications that include - Gallery, Audio and Video player, system manager and Smart Remote. However, there are a bunch of third-party applications like iQOO Cloud, Agoda, TikTok, Spotify, LinkedIn, etc. which can be uninstalled easily. In terms of software updates, the iQOO 12 will receive another three years of AndroidOS updates and four years of security patches.
iQOO 12 Cameras:
The iQOO 12 sports a triple-camera setup that includes a: 50MP f/1.7 OmniVision OV50H sensor for the main camera with OIS, a 50MP f/2.0 Samsung JN1 sensor for the ultrawide camera, and a 64MP f/2.6 OmniVision OV64B sensor for the telephoto camera with support for OIS, 3x optical zoom, and 10x lossless zoom. On the front, there is a 16MP f/2.5 camera for selfies.
In terms of images from the primary camera, they come out with sharper details and have a good dynamic range but the colours do not look accurate as there is some amount of oversharpening present and also there is some amount of noise present in the background. The HDR performance is really good with proper colour saturation and good dynamic range.
All these images are saved at 12.5MP by default and in Natural mode, the images come out with high contrast, slight sharpening and a good amount of brightness. At 50MP mode, the images come out with slightly softer details and average dynamic range and there is a larger amount of noise present but you can downsize these images to 12.5MP resolution for better results.
The 2x zoom works very well on the main camera as the 2x zoomed images come out with an excellent level of detail and good dynamic range, and colours look natural without much oversharpening. However, there is some amount of noise introduced in the background though. The primary camera does an excellent job in terms of details that look sharper, have great dynamic range and noise is very low.
The shadows have a good amount of details and highlights do not look blown out in the background. The colours come out saturated without any oversharpening as such. Using the Night Mode does not make much of a difference as it boosts the saturation slightly and further reduces the noise in the background. The 2x zoomed images also look good but they have a considerable amount of noise with an average dynamic range.
The 50MP ultrawide camera has the Samsung JN1 sensor which does a good job in terms of details that look sharper and have a wider dynamic range with some amount of noise in the background. There is some amount of distortion around the edges present though. Similarly, at night, the images from the ultrawide camera come out with good details but have an average dynamic range and the colours look average.
But there is a considerable amount of noise present in the background. The 64MP telephoto camera does a good job in terms of details which look sharper, has a great dynamic range which is wider, colours look saturated and there is almost very little noise present in the background at 3x zoom levels. If you switch to 10x zoom levels, the details look good with good dynamic range and contrast.
However, there is a larger amount of noise present but colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening. All these images are saved in 16MP by default and there is also a dedicated 64MP mode to take images. At night, the 3x zoomed images from the telephoto camera come out with an excellent level of details that look sharper, have great dynamic range and colours that look accurate in the background.
Similarly, for the 10x zoomed images, the details look fine and the dynamic range is good but colours do look washed out slightly and there is some amount of noise present in the background. In terms of macro images, you can use either the ultrawide or the telephoto camera for the macro shots. Using the ultrawide camera results in the subject as close as 5cm from the camera as it has autofocus.
As a result, the images come out with good details and dynamic range with less noise in the background. Using the 3x zoom telephoto camera, the macro images come out with excellent details, great colour saturation with almost no noise in the background and also great dynamic range. In terms of portraits, you can use the main camera with 2x zoom.
The dynamic range looks great with sharper details and the skin tones also look natural without any oversharpening. The edge detection is perfect along with the excellent background blur. The 3x portraits also come out with great details, the edge detection is good and so is the background blur.
In terms of selfies, the images come out with good details that look sharper and have great dynamic range with accurate and natural-looking skin tones. The contrast is on the higher side and there is very little noise present in the background. In portrait selfies, the dynamic range looks good and also you get perfect edge detection with a good amount of background blur.
When it comes to videos, all rear three cameras can record 4K videos at 60fps while the main camera can only record 1080p video recording at 30fps. The videos from the primary camera come out with excellent details, the dynamic range is wide enough, the colours look natural without any such oversharpening, and the contrast is high.
Since there is OIS present, the videos come out stabilized on the main camera. Similarly, for the ultrawide camera, the videos come out with good details that look sharper, have good dynamic range, and also the colour saturation is well maintained except that there is some amount of noise present. The videos from the telephoto camera come out with great dynamic range and excellent details that look sharper.
The noise is almost not present in the videos taken from the telephoto camera since OIS is present. The videos from the front camera come out with good details but at times do look slightly softer and have some amount of noise present in the background. The skin tones look natural without any oversharpening and all these videos output at 4MP.
iQOO 12 Battery Life:
The iQOO 12 sports a larger 5000mAh battery which is similar in size as that of its predecessor i.e. the iQOO 11. In terms of normal usage which includes casual gaming, scrolling through webpages, viewing images in the gallery, etc., the smartphone easily lasts almost two days since even the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is based on a 4nm process. The standard screen-on time came around 6-7 hours which is very good.
In terms of heavy usage that includes playing games like Call Of Duty Mobile, BGMI, etc., running benchmarks, taking images and videos, etc. the smartphone easily lasts for one and a half days with some battery left. The standard screen-on time came around 3.5-4 hours which is really good. In terms of charging, you get support for 120W fast charging which takes the smartphone from 0 to 100 per cent within 35 minutes.
iQOO 12 Audio Quality:
The iQOO 12 sports a dual stereo speaker setup with one of the speaker setups located on the top and another set of speakers located at the bottom both of which provide a stereo sound effect and the bass level is very good. The audio does not feel muffled even at the highest volume settings and there is support for LDAC for Hi-Res audio. There is also Dolby Atmos present for enhanced sound output.
Verdict:
The iQOO 12 is a solid all-rounder smartphone which almost fulfils all the needs for a true flagship smartphone as it has a great build and design which feel premium, the display (though slightly lower in resolution compared to iQOO 11) along with a set of stereo speakers are great for multimedia consumption, then the performance and gaming are amazing, the camera experience feels great, FunTouchOS feels smoother to use and you get a good battery life with support for faster charging.
However, there are very few areas where the iQOO 12 could have been slightly. iQOO has missed out on IP rating which is seen on most of the smartphones in this segment, the FunTouchOS has some amount of bloatware present which can be uninstalled but still makes the software experience cumbersome and though the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is a powerful chipset, the back does feel slightly warmer after extended hours of gaming.
Overall, the iQOO 12 is a great smartphone that is a true flagship killer priced really well and can give serious competition to other smartphone brands in the market. iQOO definitely has another winner in his hands.
0 Comments
Please do not enter any spam link in the comment box