iQOO has launched its first smartphone in India, the iQOO 3. The new iQOO 3 is also the first 5G enabled phone featuring Snapdragon 865 processor. With iQOO 3, the company is looking to bring top of the line hardware and experience along with future proof 5G support in India. Here is the detailed iQOO 3 review with pros and cons in case you are looking to buy one.
Design and Build:
The first time you see or use the iQOO 3, you get the feeling of a pretty darn interesting device. The device has a very interesting design and a solid construction. The phone has a 6.44 inch Full HD+ display and one of the best aspects of the device is how compact the device is in terms of display and form factor. At 6.44 inches, there is a good balance in terms of screen size and also the in-hand feel. The phone has a metal chassis sandwiched between glass panels. The front glass is a Schott Xensation glass while we have Gorilla glass on the back panel. The device has curved edges giving a good in-hand feel.
The back panel has the neatly placed camera unit which has the Quad camera set up along with LED flash. The iQOO logo sits at the bottom of the back panel. The power and volume keys are on the right side with a orange finish given to the power button. You also get Monster Touch Buttons, which in fact uses two pressure sensitive buttons on the side frame of the device to help users achieve quick multi-finger operations while gaming.
On the left side, you have the customizable button, while the bottom panel has SIM tray, USB type C and speaker unit. The top panel has 3.5mm audio jack, which is an added feature because most of the flagships skip that feature. In terms of build quality, the iQOO 3 is a solid and well build phone and gives a great in-hand feel. One handed usage is pretty good with the device. At 9.2 mm and 214gms, the device is a tad thicker and heavy but thanks to the weight distribution, it does feel much.
Display:
The display is one of the highlights of iQOO 3. It packs a 6.44-inch (2400 × 1080 pixels) Full HD+ 20:9 E3 Super AMOLED panel with 2.5D curved glass. It is protected by Schott Xensation glass. The display also supports HDR10+ video playback standard and has a high 800nits of average brightness rating and it can even peak at 1200 nits when the phone’s brightness it turned up to the maximum, which is impressive performance. In our testing too, the outdoor visibility in sunlight was extremely good and we had no issues using the device outdoors. If you are a person who loves watch content over streaming platforms, you would love the HDR 10+ enabled display.
Software:
iQOO 3 runs on iQOO UI on top of Android 10. The new iQOO UI is based on Vivo’s Fun touch OS. While there are some customization like the changed quick toggles, the UI feels refreshing. The software brings with itself high levels of customization and tweaks to the table.
It has an app drawer which can be customized. You also get features like themes, ultra gaming mode, S capture, phone clone, smart split screen etc. The UI is slick and responsive and we did not see any issues here.
Performance:
Under the hood, the iQOO 3 is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 865 chipset which has been paired to 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage on the 5G variant of the device. iQOO 3 is the device with the highest AnTuTu rating with over 6 lakhs. The 865 is made from a 7nm process and clocked at 2.84Ghz with Adreno 650 GPU for extreme graphics. iQOO has also equipped the phone with UFS 3.1 storage and LPDDR5 RAM which goes up to 12GB.
iQOO 3 is also is tuned for ultimate gaming experience. It packs Monster Touch Buttons, which in fact uses two pressure sensitive buttons on the side frame of the device to help users achieve quick multi-finger operations while gaming. On top of this, there is also 4D vibration can simulate the recoil when shooting and the vibration of the steering wheel while driving makes it a realistic experience. To further enhance the gaming experience, iQOO 3 also comes with 180Hz Super Touch Response rate which improves the screen touch scan frequency by 50%. You can play games like PUBG mobile in smooth + extreme and to aid to it, there is multi-turbo software optimization.
The performance is blazing fast for any app you throw at it. RAM management is also very good on the device. So in terms of the performance, we literally don’t have anything to complain here.
Camera:
The iQOO 3 comes with a quad camera set up with 48 MP primary camera module, f/1.8 aperture and 0.8 micron pixel size. You also get a 13 MP telephoto camera with 2x optical zoom and a 13 MP ultra-wide camera, f/2.2 max aperture along with a 2 MP depth sensor. On the selfie camera, you have a 16 MP selfie camera housed inside the punch hole.
Looking at the camera samples shot with the device, the day light captures have great details, good color and good sharpness levels. The IMX582 48MP sensor does an impressive job in bringing the details. The phone also comes with ultra wide angle camera. Unlike the other smartphones with ultrawide angle camera, here iQOO has done justice to the camera with good colors and better ultra wide imaging. The telephoto lens can do 2X optical zoom and 20x digital zoom. The low light captures with the phone came out well, if not the best. There is some noise included in the low light photos and you can always switch to night mode when needed. The selfie experience with the 16MP shooter was also good. The selfies came out well with good details, sharpness and dynamic range. The video recording quality was also good. Here are some samples shot with the iQOO 3.
Battery:
iQOO 3 comes with a 4400mAh battery and it is pretty good in terms of the performance. Even with powerful hardware, there isn’t a compromise in terms of battery life. You can easily get more than a day with moderate usage. Even with heavy usage, you can get a day of battery life. To add to it, there is 55W fast charging, which can reach 0 to 100% in less than 50 minutes.
Verdict:
So that was the detailed iQOO 3 Review. The iQOO 3 is a great attempt by iQOO with their first phone in India and it is future ready. With shattering performance, great gaming, latest software and 5G device, the iQOO 3 is a great package. It is a great device for anyone looking for the best performance and gaming experience. The only downside is that the device is a bit bulky and also low light performance of the camera could be improved, otherwise a future ready package from iQOO in India.
iQOO is also provides free pick and drop service for any repair issues across the country covering more than 15000+ pin codes. For any on-call assistance, iQOO service experts are available 24*7 over the toll free number 1800-572-4700. More details available at https://www.iqoo.com/in/support.
Buying Options:
- Flipkart: bit.ly/2uVApls
- iQOO eStore: bit.ly/2IxN6WQ
