Continues the trend of a value-for-money package in the market!!
In the world of flagships, many manufacturers try to launch a bunch of flagship smartphones by packing the best of everything to give cutthroat competition to each other. However, some flagships come with a premium price tag, and this is where the iQOO brand changed the game. It offers almost all the flagship specifications at a lower price tag compared to many flagships out there.
iQOO has been known for launching various smartphones in different price segments that pack the best hardware, which is found in flagships double the price. A primary example is the iQOO Neo 7 Pro (Review), which launched last year with a powerful Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset and very good specifications for the price. Similarly, the flagship iQOO 12 is the proper premium flagship offering in the market.
With the iQOO Neo 7 Pro, the brand had a huge amount of success so this year its successor i.e. iQOO Neo 9 Pro has entered the market to make a statement for itself in the budget flagship segment. It brings a few upgrades over the iQOO Neo 7 Pro which includes a slightly better chipset, a larger battery, and a better camera setup while retaining almost a similar experience. So is the iQOO Neo 9 Pro the perfect flagship killer?
Let's find out in the full review.
Let's find out in the full review.
iQOO Neo 9 Pro Design:
The iQOO 9 Pro sports a premium design in two different colours: Fiery Red and Conqueror Black. If you choose the Fiery Red variant, the back has a vegan leather finish that feels soft to the touch. There is a dual-tone finish, with the major portion having a red colour, whereas the other portion has a white colour. The vegan leather finish provides great grip and prevents smudges all over.
Now talking about another variant ie Conqueror Black which has the Flourite AG glass finish or satin-like finish that catches almost no fingerprints or smudges but this variant has a polycarbonate back. At the back, the edges are curved which makes it easier to hold in hands. The back of the smartphone houses two camera modules along with an LED flashlight and the cameras are surrounded by metallic rings that look premium.
Under the cameras there is the logo "Power To Win" and "Neo" embossed in the white colour present on the second half if you consider the Fiery Red variant. Around the sides, there is a polycarbonate frame that houses the power button with a set of volume buttons on the right whereas the left side remains clean completely. However, the side has a red coloured frame that looks unique.
The top of the smartphone houses a secondary noise-cancelling microphone along with an IR Blaster which is useful in controlling different devices whereas the bottom part houses the USB Type-C port, a dual SIM card slot, a primary microphone, and a loudspeaker grille. There is neither a 3.5mm headphone jack nor a microSD card slot for storage expansion.
The secondary speaker lies on the top edge just above the camera and also doubles up as a stereo speaker. On the front, there is a single punch-hole display which is located on the top to the centre and around the side, the bezels are almost thin. In terms of protection, the display of the smartphone is protected by Schott Xensation glass just like all other iQOO smartphones.
In terms of protection, there is an IP54 rating which makes it splash and dust resistant. The Fiery Red variant weighs around 190 grams whereas the Conqueror Black variant weighs around 196 grams, both of which do not feel heavier.
iQOO Neo 9 Pro Display:
The iQOO Neo 9 Pro sports a larger 6.78-inch Full HD++ (1260x2800 pixels) AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 20:9. It is a 10-bit display which has great colour reproduction and you get good viewing angles too. The display now supports a 144Hz refresh rate and it is available in three different settings - Smart Switch, Standard, and High.
Now talking about the refresh rate, switching the display at Smart Switch lets the display switch between different refresh rates with the lowest being 10Hz and going as high as 144Hz during gaming. Suppose if you are watching some video content, the display switches to 60Hz, while viewing a static image in the gallery, it switches to 10Hz, and like that depending on the content, the refresh rate varies.
Switching to the Standard mode provides a 60Hz refresh rate throughout the interface which does provide the best battery life. If you set the display to the High mode, then the display mostly refreshes at 120Hz for almost all the applications except for some like YouTube or Netflix which are still capped at 60Hz, but while watching videos, the display either refreshes around 60Hz or 90Hz.
Combined with the 144Hz refresh rate, there is a 300Hz touch sampling rate which is great for multitasking and even in games, the smartphone provides an instant touch sampling rate of 1000Hz which is great. In terms of display brightness, the iQOO Neo 9 Pro display can reach a peak brightness of 3000nits which is slightly improved over the brightness of its predecessor.
The display has good visibility under direct sunlight and usually reaches around 1400 nits of brightness in the High Brightness Mode. The display has three different colour profiles to choose from - Standard, Pro, and Bright. By default, the display is set to Standard which provides natural-looking colors and Pro mode provides a good balance of color saturation with deep blacks and blues.
In Bright mode, the colours have higher contrast and look punchier on the display. iQOO has equipped the smartphone with a Supercomputing chip Q1, which helps achieve low latency while playing games at higher frame rates, maintains lower temperature during/after playing games for longer hours, and combines with the MEMC technology that lets you upscale a video of 30fps to 60fps on the display.
iQOO also claims that the display has a Wet Touch technology where you can use the display if you have wet hands. Since it is an AMOLED display, there is an optical in-display fingerprint scanner that works fast and accurately. The display supports HDR on YouTube, and Widevine L1 is present, which helps stream HDR content on OTT platforms, thus enhancing the multimedia experience further.
iQOO Neo 9 Pro Performance:
The iQOO Neo 9 Pro sports last year's powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, also found in this year's OnePlus 12R (Review). This chipset can handle all the tasks thrown at it without breaking a sweat. In terms of daily activities like switching between applications, taking calls, playing games, taking images and videos using the camera, etc. feels smoother to use.
In terms of gaming, the smartphone can handle almost all games including a few high-end games like Genshin Impact, BGMI, Call Of Duty Mobile, etc. In BGMI, the gameplay was smooth with the graphics set to HDR and frame rates set to Extreme. Similar was the experience after setting the graphics to Smooth and frame rates to 90fps. The gaming experience is excellent with no frame drops.
Like all iQOO smartphones, there is the 4D vibration motor which provides crisp vibration and great haptic feedback during gaming. there are motion-based controls and also the game frame interpolation is present which increases the touch response to 1000Hz instantly during gaming. After longer hours of gaming, the back of the smartphone does not feel warmer except around the camera module.
iQOO has equipped the smartphone with a larger vapour chamber that dissipates heat faster. There is a dedicated Game Mode that provides features like blocking incoming messages or calls during gaming, generating a small pop-up of application, as well as showing the CPU and GPU usage during gaming. In the CPU throttling test, the iQOO Neo 9 Pro could maintain a sustained performance of around 80-85 per cent which is very good.
This is a slight improvement over last year's iQOO Neo 7 Pro. In terms of benchmarks, the scores came out very good and were the best in class. In terms of network connectivity, there is support for good carrier aggregation and support for up to 11 bands of 5G. The iQOO Neo 9 Pro is available in three different variants - 8GB RAM with 128/256GB storage and another 12GB RAM with 256GB storage.
Here the 128GB storage variant has UFS 3.1 speeds whereas the 256/512GB storage variant gets UFS 4.0 speeds and all of them have LPDDR5 RAM support.
iQOO Neo 9 Pro Software:
The iQOO Neo 9 Pro runs on the latest FunTouchOS 14 based on Android 14 out of the box. FunTouchOS provides a lot of customizations in the Dynamic Effects sub-menu where you change your icon shape, size, and, colour, different wallpapers, styles for Always-On Display, and fingerprint scanner animation. The Always-On Display lets you choose different clock styles, colours, backgrounds, etc.
There are a lot of gestures which you can use throughout the interface. The quick toggles look similar to the FunTouchOS 13 but now they are slightly bigger. The FunTouchOS launcher has its own set of applications like a gallery, system manager, audio, and video player. There is a Theme store and a Vivo Store present. With FunTouchOS 14, the Vivo Store has reduced sending the notifications also.
The Smart Remote applications work well for the IR Blaster. iQOO has reduced quite a few bloatware compared to its previous lineup of smartphones which includes the Hot Apps and Hot Games, but here you do get some applications that are pre-installed under Recommended Apps which can be uninstalled easily.
In terms of software updates, the smartphone will receive another three years of AndroidOS updates and four years of security patches which is really great as it is similar to the flagship iQOO 12 in terms of updates.
iQOO Neo 9 Pro Cameras:
The iQOO 9 Pro sports a dual camera setup with a 50MP f/1.8 Sony IMX920 sensor for the primary camera with OIS and an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera with a 119-degree field of view. On the front, there is a 16MP f/2.4 camera for selfies.
The images from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range. The colours look slightly oversaturated but almost no noise in the background. The white balance is handled well and you do get good contrast. In HDR images, the contrast is on the higher side and the details look sharper.
These images are shot using the Photo mode, and if you use the dedicated 50MP mode, the details look sharper, but the images are slightly cropped to prevent noise. At night, the images from the primary camera come out with sharper details, and the dynamic range is wider. The exposure is well handled, and there is no scene of overexposure in the background.
The highlights in shadows are well handled. The noise is very low in the background, and with the Night Mode turned on, it reduces further. The colours look saturated with no oversharpening. There is no dedicated telephoto camera, but you can use the primary camera for a 2x zoom, which is digital and results in sharper details with good dynamic range.
The colours look accurate but there is some noise present in the background but you do not notice much. Similarly, at night, the 2x digital zoom images have a good amount of details that look sharper and the dynamic range is great but there is some amount of noise. However, the colours look saturated and exposure is well-handled in the background.
Regarding the ultrawide camera, the details look sharper and have good dynamic range but some distortion around the edges. However, the colours look saturated but not as similar as that of the primary camera samples but there is no oversharpening in the background. The contrast looks good and the white balance is handled well.
At night, the images from the ultrawide camera come out with good details that look sharper and have a decent dynamic range. There is a larger amount of noise in the background and the colours look washed out slightly. There is no dedicated macro camera but you can use the main camera for macro shots by doing a digital zoom which results in good details and dynamic range.
In terms of portraits, the main camera does a good job in terms of edge detection and the images come out with great dynamic range and have sharper details. The background blur is well implemented. There are two different zoom levels of portraits which include 1x and 2x. The colours look saturated in the portraits. On the front, the 16MP selfie camera does a good job in terms of selfies.
iQOO Neo 9 Pro's front camera provides two different modes - Natural and Vivid mode for selfies where Vivid provides punchier colours in skin tones and background and Natural mode yields realistic colours thus having some oversharpening in the background. The dynamic range is good when using both modes but there is some amount of noise present in the background.
In terms of video recording, the primary camera of the smartphone can record 8K videos at 30fps and also 4K videos at 60fps. The 8K videos have great dynamic range and details look sharper with almost no noise in the background. The colours look saturated and exposure is well handled except that the stabilization is slightly better on 4K videos whereas the 8K videos do have some distortion in videos.
The ultrawide camera and the selfie camera can only record 1080p videos at 30fps which results in good details and dynamic range but the ultrawide camera has noise on the higher side whereas the selfie camera has less noise. The highlights look blown out in the videos taken from a selfie camera which needs improvements. However, colours look natural without any oversharpening in both cameras' videos.
iQOO Neo 9 Pro Battery Life:
The iQOO Neo 9 Pro sports a slightly larger 5160mAh battery which is slightly larger in capacity compared to its predecessor that packed in a 5000mAh battery. In terms of normal usage which includes scrolling through webpages, streaming social media, playing games for 1-2 hours, etc. the smartphone lasts around one and a half days with some battery left.
With heavy usage that includes playing games like COD Mobile, and BGMI for 4-5 hours, rendering videos, taking videos using the camera, attending continuous calls for longer hours, etc. the smartphone easily lasts for a day with some charge left. The standard screen-on time with normal usage is 4-4.5 hours and with heavy usage, the standard screen-on time came around 6-6.5 hours which is good.
In terms of charging, iQOO has packed in a 120W FlashCharge fast charger inside the box that takes around 35-40 minutes for a full charge from 0 to 100 per cent completely and also 0 to 50 per cent is easily achieved within 15 minutes. The fast charger is a USB Type-C to Type-C one so it supports PD charging which means you can use the charger to charge your laptops or other gadgets at 120W.
iQOO Neo 9 Pro Audio Quality:
The iQOO Neo 9 Pro sports a dual speaker setup that sounds loud and clear with proper levels of bass and treble. The sound does not feel muffled or distorted and the sound output comes out equally from both the bottom-firing speaker and the speaker on top of the earpiece. There is Dolby Atmos for enhanced sound output while playing games, listening to music, etc. However, you do miss out on a 3.5mm headphone jack.
Verdict:
The iQOO Neo 9 Pro is a solid budget flagship that ticks almost all the boxes for the position of a flagship killer. It brings a good build and design that looks premium, the 120Hz AMOLED display along with stereo speakers is great for multi-media consumption, a good set of cameras, good battery life with fast charging, and a good software experience.
The biggest strengths of the iQOO 9 Pro have been the performance and gaming as it is equipped with last year's flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset that handles all multi-tasking activities like gaming experience is on a different level as iQOO has focused on gaming by optimizing some things which does not hamper the gaming experience.
But there are some areas where there is some room for improvement. Though the design is good looking but still the material is still polycarbonate with a vegan leather finish instead of a glass finish, the ultrawide camera performance is not so good in terms of low light, and FunTouchOS is filled with bloatware which needs to be reduced or removed as this is a budget flagship smartphone.
Other than these, the iQOO Neo 9 Pro is a solid buy in the budget flagship segment as it is a complete smartphone thus making it worth buying. Compared to the iQOO Neo 7 Pro, it does bring in a few upgrades in terms of performance, camera, battery, and display whereas the rest of the experience remains almost similar to the iQOO Neo 7 Pro.
If you consider the above factors, then upgrading the iQOO Neo 9 Pro makes a better option or else the iQOO Neo 7 Pro is still a good choice.
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