iQOO 9 Pro Review: Beauty and a beast

iQOO 9 Pro review

There is a new entrant in the flagship smartphone space. And it is one from iQOO, the Vivo sub-brand that launched the iQOO 7 Legend as its flagship killer smartphone in India. In its quest to capture more of the second-largest smartphone market in the world, the company is taking a massive jump by launching not one but three flagship smartphones in India - the iQOO 9, iQOO 9 Pro and the iQOO 9 SE. Out of the three smartphones, the company sent us its top-tier flagship, the iQOO 9 Pro. The iQOO 9 Pro packs a lot of firepower under the hood. It also gets a flagship camera setup, best-in-class camera setup and a premium design.

The flagship segment is no longer limited to two or three options as several smartphone companies have been launching their premium offerings in India year on year. The question here is, is the iQOO 9 Pro capable enough to make its way in the premium segment of the world’s second-largest smartphone market? After using the device for more than a week, here is our iQOO 9 Pro review.

iQOO 9 Pro Review

As we mentioned earlier, the iQOO 9 Pro has a lot of firepower under the hood. Therefore, before we begin our iQOO 9 Pro review, here’s a quick look at the iQOO 9 Pro specifications:

Display: 6.7-inch AMOLED 2K display with a 120Hz refresh rate support, 300Hz touch sampling rate.

Processor: Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC based on 4nm process.

iQOO 9 Pro has a BMW Motorrad-inspired colour scheme

RAM/ Storage: 8GB + 256GB, 12GB + 256GB.

Rear Camera: 50MP Samsung GN5 camera with 5-axis Video Image Stabilisation (VIS); 50MP, 150-degree ultrawide camera; 16MP Portrait camera with 2.5x optical zoom.

Front camera: 32MP 

Battery: 4700 mAh battery with 120W fast charging, 50W wireless charging, 10W reverse wireless charging.

Software: Android 12-based Funtouch OS 12.0 out of the box. 

Now that the specifications are out of the way, here is our iQOO 9 Pro review.

Design and Display

iQOO 9 Pro display comes with a 120Hz refresh rate support.

Being a flagship, iQOO 9 Pro packs the latest and best of display hardware available on a phone in 2022. You get a vibrant E5 AMOLED display that supports a crisp 2K resolution. Club that with a tall 6.78-inch 10-bit panel and the smartphone is one of the best for multimedia consumption. It is also plenty bright, both indoors and outdoors. The iQOO 9 Pro’s display comes with an HDR10+ certification and comes with a peak brightness of 1500 nits. As expected, there is support for a 120Hz refresh rate. The 9 Pro uses an LTPO 2.0 panel, which allows the refresh rate to switch between 1Hz and 120Hz depending on the type of content on the screen. The dynamic switching between refresh rates contributes to providing some extra minutes of battery life.

To offer an immersive viewing experience, the display is curved on the sides. The screen curvature is not as aggressive but enough to seamlessly blend into the device’s metal frame without having to worry about accidental touches. 

The metal frame has a blue-coloured power button, with the volume buttons located above. The left frame is completely flush, making room for the SIM tray next to the USB Type-C port and the primary speaker grille at the bottom edge.

iQOO 9 Pro features a hole-punch cutout at the top centre of the display.

The earpiece above the display doubles up as a secondary speaker. There is no partnering with any audio maker here but the speakers are among the best we have heard so far on a smartphone. Be it something as simple as listening to music, watching videos or while playing games, the audio at about 80 percent is very clear. However, we felt that the dedicated primary speaker is slightly louder than the earpiece. The difference is marginal but something that is noticeable only at a lower volume.

iQOO 9 Pro also comes with a large ultrasonic in-display fingerprint scanner. iQOO tells us that the sensor emits ultrasonic waves to the surface of the finger and receives the echo, following which it detects the density in between the skin on the surface of the fingerprint and the air to construct a 3D image. This information is compared with the one that was registered while setting up the device. To our surprise, we had to tap only once on the ultrasonic scanner for registering our fingerprint while setting up the device. And just like the set up process, unlocking the device is also amazingly-fast. 

iQOO 9 Pro comes with a glass back.

There is no skimming out on the in-hand feel either. The phone weighs about 210 grams. The phone’s tall form factor and the curved edges of the rear panel help get a hefty in-hand feel. As expected from a top-tier flagship, the iQOO 9 Pro has a glass back. Our iQOO 9 Pro review unit comes in the BMW Motorrad-inspired colour scheme. It has a White textured rear panel with three stripes in the shades of Red, Black and Blue. It is not just the phone’s racing stripe design that reminds you of speed but also the performance unit. While we are at it, let’s dive into the phone’s performance and battery life.

Performance and Battery Life

iQOO 9 Pro comes with a 4nm-based Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC under the hood. The device is among the first to launch in India with the flagship mobile platform from Qualcomm. It comes with performance and efficiency improvements over the Snapdragon 888 and 888+ processors. Its predecessors are still quite powerful to handle any task that you throw at them. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC on the iQOO 9 Pro adds some more power under the hood to offer rock-solid performance. And as they say, with great power comes great responsibility - which in this case translates to dealing with thermal issues.

iQOO 9 Pro features a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC.

Surprisingly, the iQOO 9 Pro does a good job here. When we played games like Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI), Call of Duty Mobile and Asphalt 9, there was no lag or any jitters, as expected. The top half of the phone, particularly below the camera module, does get slightly warm but that is quite normal. The phone has a liquid cooling system that seems to be doing the trick here. While we are at the gaming bit, the iQOO 9 Pro also comes with a display chip that increases the frame rate and optimises the colour as well. Games like BGMI are currently optimised to take advantage of the intelligent display chip.

We also performed an AnTuTu stress test on the device and saw that the temperature peaked at 45 degrees, which is slightly on the higher side. However, most users would not even put the phone under such stress throughout its lifetime, forget on a daily basis.

iQOO 9 Pro running BGMI

It is too soon to say if Qualcomm has finally managed to keep the heat under control until more phones with Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC launch in India. Meanwhile, if you have a use case like ours (playing the mentioned games, scrolling through social media, clicking photos, taking video calls, etc.), you would not experience any major issues.

Coming to the battery life, the iQOO 9 Pro has a reasonably large 4700 mAh battery. It is not the beefiest of battery packs found on flagship smartphones. The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra has a 5000 mAh battery inside, and so does the OnePlus 10 Pro. However, it all trickles down to the overall optimisation of the device. With the iQOO 9 Pro, we managed to achieve a maximum screen-on time of 7 hours. This was with the dynamic smart switch feature enabled on the day when there wasn’t a lot of work being done on the phone. On days when we played BGMI and other games, and also used the phone’s camera system to click sample images for our iQOO 9 Pro review, the battery lasted for slightly over five hours straight on a single charge. 

iQOO 9 Pro comes with a dual speaker setup.

We would obviously prefer a longer battery life. However, the iQOO 9 Pro supports a ridiculously fast 120W charging tech. The company claims that the iQOO 9 Pro, using the company’s proprietary 120W charging adapter, can charge completely within 20 mins. During our review period, the phone charged in about 23 minutes, which is still very fast. The Xiaomi 11T Pro (Review), which also supports 120W fast charging, took about 30 minutes in our testing. However, the phone packs a 5000 mAh battery, which is slightly larger than the iQOO 9 Pro’s 4700 mAh battery. The phone also supports 50W wireless charging. We did not have the proprietary wireless charger to check its performance.

Software

iQOO 9 Pro comes with Funtouch OS 12 out of the box. The custom skin is based on Android 12, which should be the case for all flagship smartphones launching in 2022. The new Vivo software comes with the basic Android 12 features that Google announced. No, there is no Material You-like interface here but some of the core privacy features have been introduced. For instance, the software will let you know when an app is using the camera or microphone by showing a green badge at the top right corner of the screen. 

iQOO 9 Pro runs Android 12 out of the box.

On top of this, the Funtouch OS 12 update has Vivo’s Nano Music Player, which is a one-stop widget for all third-party music players on the device. As always, Vivo also offers a bunch of animations that users can customise for various tasks. You can also add a bunch of widgets, which has been available on Android smartphones for years.

There is bloatware pre-installed. Apps like Josh, Moj Lite, Cred and ShareChat that come pre-installed can be removed easily. The phone also has Hot Apps and Hot Games recommendations enabled by default. However, you can simply remove that by going to Settings > Lock Screen & Wallpaper > Home Settings and disabling the second-last toggle. Ideally, flagship smartphones should come with less bloatware. However, on the bright side, there are options to delete unnecessary apps that come pre-installed.

iQOO 9 Pro software comes pre-loaded with some third-party apps that can be uninstalled.

With regards to software updates, iQOO told us that the iQOO 9 Pro will get two years of software upgrades and three years of security updates. This is more or less similar to some other players like Xiaomi, Realme, Oppo, etc. The likes of Apple and Samsung continue to dominate when it comes to providing software support. While Apple has been doing so, Samsung recently joined the club by offering a promise to update its flagship smartphones with as many as four generations of Android updates and up to five years of security support.

Camera

iQOO 9 Pro camera setup.

iQOO is following Vivo’s footsteps when it comes to the camera performance on the iQOO 9 Pro. We have said this before that the Vivo X70 Pro+ (Review) has the best camera setup among smartphones launched in 2021. The iQOO 9 Pro tries to match that with its triple-camera setup on the back. The huge camera block on the rear panel has a 50MP Samsung GN5 sensor. The large sensor helps capture great shots in both day and night. The dynamic range is excellent in images shot during the main camera. The colours are vibrant and you get plenty of detail across. The camera does tend to saturate the blues slightly more at times. Folks who prefer Instagram-ready images that are slightly more saturated will like the images that the camera produces. 

While daylight images are great, it is the lowlight performance that is particularly impressive on the iQOO 9 Pro. There is little to no noise in the darker portion of images. The software also manages to not overflow the highlights while trying to retain the details in the shadows. iQOO 9 Pro also gets the gimbal stabilisation feature found on the Vivo X70 Pro Plus. It has a five-axis video image stabilisation that offers better stability and a less jittery output than the traditional optical image stabilisation tech.

iQOO 9 Pro has two 50MP camera sensors and a 16MP portrait camera.

iQOO 9 Pro is the first smartphone in India to come with a 150-degree ultrawide camera sensor. The images offer a fair amount of detail while capturing a wider frame than the main camera. It also comes with a bunch of dedicated modes like Fisheye, Crystal Ball, Asteroid and Rabbit Hole. If implemented well, you can get some creative images using these modes.

The third sensor is a 16MP portrait sensor with a 60mm focal length. It supports up to 2.5x optical zoom. Images clicked using the portrait mode on the iQOO 9 Pro offer creamy bokeh. The edge detection is great here. Vivo’s software does tend to smoothen the skin slightly. Disable the beauty mode and you will still be happy with the overall output of the image. For selfies, there is a 32MP front camera housed inside the hole-punch cutout at the top centre. Selfie lovers can blindly get this one for the quality of images it clicks. There are many filters and styles to choose from as well. Click here to see some of the sample images we clicked for our iQOO 9 Pro review.

Verdict 

iQOO has almost gone all out with the iQOO 9 Pro to mark its entry in the ultra-premium smartphone category. Yes, at a starting price of Rs 64,990, the iQOO 9 Pro is an expensive phone. Is it overpriced? We do not think so. iQOO has launched its top-tier Android smartphone with the best set of specifications that one can offer in 2022. You get a flagship performance unit, an excellent display, a versatile camera system and a best-in-class charging solution packed inside a body that sports a premium design.

iQOO 9 Pro comes with a matching case in the box.

Special mention for the in-box case that matches the design of the rear panel. This way, users get a better grip and an additional protective layer while showing off the BMW Motorrad racing stripes on the phone’s back. The only complaint we have here is the lack of an official IP68 rating for water and dust resistance. Almost all phones in the price range come with an IP68 rating to let users play with their devices even in rain or a dusty environment. The iQOO 9 Pro does get an IP52 rating, which is good enough for splash resistance.

iQOO 9 Pro has an IP52 rating for splash resistance.

In comparison to other flagships, the iQOO 9 Pro is priced below the Vivo X70 Pro+ (Review). It is also priced lower than the newly-launched Samsung Galaxy S22 series, which have a starting price of Rs 72,999. The iQOO 9 Pro, in comparison to the Galaxy S22, offers a larger display, the same performance unit and a larger battery with the segment’s fastest charger in the box. We would not judge the camera performance based on the on-paper specifications until we have our hands on the Galaxy S22. However, if you want a compact phone with some compromise in the battery department, the Galaxy S22 is a no brainer here. Apple’s iPhone 13 mini is also available for Rs 69,900. It has the best camera that you can get for videos and photos. While Apple’s compact iPhone (and the iPhone 13) bring quality in terms of better dynamic range and processing, the iQOO 9 Pro has many camera features like FishEye mode, filters and styles. 

Overall, consumers have a bunch of options to choose from. Analyse your use case and primary requirements and if it fits the bill, we would certainly recommend getting the iQOO 9 Pro.