iQoo 12 Review: Maximum Performance, Minimum Price

The iQoo 12 was launched in India earlier this week because the nation’s first smartphone geared up with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip. The gamer-focused handset is prone to set clients’ expectations for telephones arriving with Qualcomm’s top-of-the-line chip within the coming months. iQoo’s earlier flagship fashions have usually centered on efficiency, and whereas final yr’s iQoo 11 5G debuted with improved digicam specs, it additionally had the next price ticket than each its predecessor and the brand new iQoo 12.

The mixture of those high-end options and a comparatively low worth may make the iQoo 12 a compelling possibility — not less than on paper — for those who’re in search of a telephone with flagship-grade efficiency. Learn on for our evaluate of the telephone to search out out if you should purchase this telephone or look ahead to different Snapdragon 8 Gen 3-powered flagship telephones to reach within the coming months.

iQoo 12 worth in India

Pricing for the iQoo 12 begins at Rs. 52,999 for the 12GB RAM + 256GB storage mannequin, and the telephone can also be accessible in a 16GB + 512GB RAM and storage variant that may set you again by Rs. 57,999. The smartphone ships with a clear TPU case, a USB Sort-C to USB Sort-C cable, and a 120W SuperVOOC charging brick.

The telephone is accessible for buy by way of Amazon and is available in Alpha and Legend colourways with AG glass and porcelain enamel glass for the rear panels, respectively.

iQoo 12 Evaluate: Design

We examined out the iQoo 12 ‘Legend’ evaluate unit with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, which is white in color and has flat metallic sides with curved corners. The rear panel is shiny and feels barely slippery, however the TPU cowl that ships with the telephone helps you grip it extra successfully whereas stopping it from choosing up fingerprints and smudges.

iQoo 12 within the white Legend colourway

The digicam module situated on the left aspect of the rear panel is within the form of a rounded sq. surrounded by a metallic ring with a ridged edge. Whereas it is on one aspect, it doesn’t make the telephone wobble when positioned on its again. The iQoo 12 weighs 203.9 grams, and it would not really feel significantly heavy, even after holding it for some time.

The show has slim bezels on all sides, and a centre-aligned hole-punch cutout on the high of the display screen homes the selfie digicam. The telephone has the BMW Motorsport emblem on the backside on the rear panel, however it’s very delicate, in contrast to the lengthy racing stripe on the iQoo 11 5G. The handset has an IP64 ranking for mud and splash resistance, which is a primary for this sequence. It means the telephone needs to be high quality for those who’re caught open air with some rain.

iQoo 12 Evaluate: Specs and software program

The iQoo 12 runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor together with the corporate’s in-house Q1 chip that’s used to optimise gaming efficiency. It has a 6.78-inch AMOLED display screen with an under-display fingerprint scanner and is provided with as much as 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM, and you may stand up to 512GB of UFS 4.0 storage.

The smartphone gives assist for 5G, 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, and NFC connectivity, together with a USB 2.0 Sort-C port for knowledge transfers and charging its 5,000mAh battery. The telephone ships with a USB Sort-C to USB Sort-C cable and a 120W SuperVOOC charging brick.

The smartphone maker has promised three years of working system and safety updates, adopted by an extra yr of safety updates for the iQoo 12. The telephone runs on Google’s newest Android 14 working system, with Vivo’s Funtouch OS 14 working on high. It is easy to make use of and has options from Android 14, together with lock display screen customisation and Vivo’s enhancements to multitasking, RAM utilization, and movement blur whereas opening and shutting apps.

iQoo 12 notification spam from the V-Appstore over just a few days (faucet to develop picture)

You may see just a few preinstalled apps like Netflix, Spotify, Snapchat, Facebook, and PhonePe, however these will be uninstalled with a few faucets. Nevertheless, the built-in V-Appstore will repeatedly ship notifications each few hours, prompting you to check out new apps.

The V-Appstore may also ask you to obtain an inventory of apps infrequently — these are pre-selected, and the skip button is not the place you’d anticipate it to be. The shop additionally confirmed a popup to arrange Scorching Apps and Scorching Video games, after which the 2 promotional folders have been seen on the house display screen — each of those will be eliminated manually.

iQoo 12 Evaluate: Efficiency

The iQoo 12 is at present essentially the most highly effective Android smartphone you should buy in India on the time of penning this evaluate. The telephone can deal with a few of the most demanding video games like Genshin Impression and Fortnite. Genshin Impression runs on the “Highest” graphics setting, whereas Fortnite runs on the Epic setting at 90fps with the high-resolution textures pack. There was no throttling, lag, or stuttering, even after round 50 minutes of gameplay.

Funtouch OS is optimised for the iQoo 12 and runs easily with none glitches whereas scrolling by way of the interface. Switching between apps and several other apps is feasible with out the OS reloading them. I may bounce again into Genshin Impression with out reloading the sport on a couple of event — this was after just a few hours of utilizing different apps and capturing some photos with the digicam.

iQoo 12 runs on Funtouch OS 14 out-of-the-box

In our benchmark exams, the telephone scored 1,983,471 factors on AnTuTu v10. That is larger than most different smartphones accessible at this time — the OnePlus 11 scored 1,189,556 factors on AnTuTu v10 after we reviewed the handset earlier this yr. Nevertheless, you do should remember that OnePlus 11 has a QHD+ show whereas the iQoo 12 settles for a full-HD+ panel.

Within the Geekbench 6 single-core and multi-core exams, the handset scored 2,225 factors and 6,726 factors, respectively. As soon as once more, these are a lot larger than different telephones accessible at this time however are decrease than the iPhone 15 Professional with Apple’s A17 Professional chip that scores 2,903 factors within the single-core check and seven,223 factors within the multi-core check.

The telephone was capable of show content material at 143fps within the GFXBench T-Rex and Manhattan 3.1 exams — it managed 127fps within the GFXBench Automotive Chase benchmark. The iQoo 12 additionally “Maxed Out” 3DMark’s Slingshot, Slingshot Excessive (OpenGL), Wild Life, and Wild Life Limitless benchmarks.

The iQoo 12 sports activities a sizeable 6.78-inch quad-HD (1,260 x 2,800 pixels) LTPO AMOLED show with a 144Hz refresh price and a 1,200Hz prompt contact sampling price. The show — with a claimed peak brightness of 1,400 nits (3,000 nits in excessive brightness mode) — is evident, and hues are displayed precisely for those who allow the pure show mode.

iQoo 12 has an LTPO AMOLED display screen that may be considered when it’s vibrant outdoors

The show will get fairly vibrant in auto brightness mode, particularly while you’re open air in vibrant daylight. When it is darkish, the telephone will get fairly dim with 2,160Hz pulse width modulation (PWM) dimming assist. Contact response is great, and you will not have points whereas enjoying video games like Name of Obligation: Cellular or Battlegrounds Cellular India. The telephone is provided with stereo audio system that get fairly loud, with minimal distortion.

The iQoo 12 is provided with a 5,000mAh battery that may be charged at 120W, and we have been capable of cost the telephone from 0 to 100 in below half-hour (28 minutes on common). In our HD video loop check, the telephone managed 19 hours and 25 minutes on a single cost, which is common for a telephone on this section. Regardless of the highly effective processor on the telephone, it lasts for just a little greater than a day with a mixture of gaming, looking the online and social media, and recording photographs and movies.

iQoo 12 Evaluate: Cameras

There are three rear cameras on the iQoo 12 — a 50-megapixel main digicam with a 1/1.3-inch sensor with optical picture stabilisation (OIS), a 64-megapixel (OIS) periscope telephoto digicam with 3x optical zoom and a 50-megapixel ultra-wide-angle digicam with a 120-degree field-of-view. There is a 16-megapixel selfie digicam on the entrance with an f/2.5 aperture.

The digicam interface on the iQoo 12 with Funtouch OS 14 is simple to make use of, and many of the settings and choices are simply accessible with just a few faucets. Some options are tucked away into the interface, however the app will robotically counsel completely different digicam modes relying on the scene. It’s also possible to use a slider to maneuver between digicam modes. Photographs shot with the first digicam are clear, and hues are principally correct, and the digicam performs finest in conditions with ample lighting.

iQoo 12 portrait digicam pattern (faucet to enlarge)

The portrait mode on the first digicam tends to default to f/1.4, so that you may need to set it to f/4.5 or just a little larger for higher outcomes.

The 50-megapixel ultra-wide-angle digicam is the least succesful among the many trio on the iQoo 12. Whereas it’s able to capturing a number of element, it could actually’t seize colors as precisely as the first digicam. It additionally tends to overexpose the sky through the day. There are not any points with warping across the edges.

I discovered myself stepping backwards and taking photographs with the first digicam as an alternative of counting on the ultra-wide-angle digicam on a couple of event. This digicam doesn’t let in sufficient gentle in low gentle circumstances, and pictures captured are fairly darkish — another excuse to make use of the extra succesful main digicam as an alternative.

Alternatively, the telephoto digicam is kind of spectacular when capturing photos at as much as 10x — even 30, in case you have regular palms. The digicam app has a horizontal slider that allows you to choose customized zoom values, and you’ll start to see stabilisation points as you zoom previous 30x.

iQoo 12 helps as much as 100x digital zoom (faucet to enlarge)

There is a helpful preview that reveals you which ones a part of the scene you are zooming in on. Pushing the digicam as much as 100x digital zoom requires using a tripod, and the ultimate shot seems just a little overprocessed and smoothened, however you may clearly determine the topic.

The portrait mode within the digicam app has 1x, 2x, and 3x modes. The primary two use the first digicam, whereas the third one makes use of the telephoto digicam. The latter offers glorious portrait photos of individuals and pets, with simply the correct amount of bokeh — though it’s also possible to alter this for portrait photos clicked with the first digicam utilizing the inbuilt gallery app.

In low gentle eventualities, the smartphone makes use of the first digicam for each 1x and 3x photographs (digitally cropped), whereas through the day, it switches to the telephoto for the latter. The digicam prompts you to change to the built-in evening mode, however solely photos captured utilizing the first digicam (1x zoom) are value utilizing. Zooming in additional produces blurry photographs with little or no element — we took these photos with a tripod.

iQoo 12 macro photos are clear and detailed (faucet to enlarge)

The telephoto digicam additionally allows a helpful Tremendous Macro mode that takes extraordinarily detailed photos. Selfies clicked with the iQoo 12 are moderately clear, and pores and skin tones are principally correct, however it’s important to manually disable the pores and skin smoothening possibility that was enabled by default. You are most likely higher off counting on the rear digicam and a tripod if you wish to report a video of your self, because it had some points with focus and publicity when shifting from brightly centered areas to dim areas and vice versa.

The first digicam can report as much as 4K at 60fps with OIS, whereas 8K recording is capped at 30fps, and there is not any OIS on this mode. Movies shot in daylight with the iQoo 12 are clean and would not have any tearing or artefacts, and stabilisation works as anticipated when recording at as much as 4K at 60fps. In low-light conditions, it is best to report at 1x with the built-in Evening Mode — it helps digital zoom as much as 3x utilizing the identical main sensor.

The digicam app features a movement autofocus function that may be set to auto or handbook — the auto mode labored properly in my expertise. You may’t change between entrance and rear cameras when you begin recording. There’s additionally a helpful microphone selector software tucked away within the settings part that lets you select among the many telephone’s microphone, an exterior microphone related utilizing the USB Sort-C port, or one related by way of Bluetooth.

iQoo 12 Evaluate: Verdict

On the time of penning this evaluate, the iQoo 12 is the one smartphone with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip which you can purchase in India. It at present competes with the OnePlus 11, the Samsung Galaxy S23 FE, and the iPhone 13. All 4 smartphones are geared up with completely different processors and provide various quantities of software program assist.

Once we reviewed the iQoo 11 5G, we really helpful that its predecessor (the iQoo 9 Pro — Review) provided a greater digicam setup at a lower cost, because the iQoo 11 5G was launched at Rs. 59,999. Earlier this week, the iQoo 11 5G worth was lowered to Rs. 51,999, whereas a financial institution low cost brings the value right down to Rs. 49,999.

Nevertheless, that is the identical worth which you can purchase the brand new iQoo 12 in India, for those who avail of eligible financial institution card gives. Even at its MRP of Rs. 52,999, it gives a lot better worth than its predecessor, contemplating it can have an extended software program assist window.

iQoo 12 is at present the one Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 telephone in India

If you happen to’re trying to purchase a smartphone with a strong processor in addition to a dependable digicam, then the iQoo 12 is a good possibility to think about at its present worth level. The Samsung Galaxy S23 FE (Review) is provided with an Exynos 2200 chip, so it will not have the ability to match the iQoo 12 in efficiency — however it would not show promotional content material — whereas the iPhone 13 (Review) would not have a telephoto digicam, however gives higher ultra-wide-angle digicam photographs and low gentle images.

It’s also possible to take into account the OnePlus 11, which has a triple rear digicam setup, and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, which also needs to be able to dealing with high-end video games and heavy duties. It is also value contemplating that whereas the OnePlus 11 (Review) would not have a periscope telephoto digicam just like the iQoo 11, the low gentle images beats iQoo’s flagship telephone — which is kind of subpar on this regard — by a substantial extent.

Do you have to purchase the iQoo 12 at this time? It relies on whether or not you merely need to buy a telephone with the most recent chipset. If that is the case, you might look ahead to just a few weeks earlier than new telephones with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 — just like the OnePlus 12 — make their debut in India, however going by the value of their predecessors, the pricing for these telephones is unlikely to match the iQoo 12 when they’re launched within the nation.