iQoo 11 Assessment: Slick However Scarce

The very best praise I will pay the iQoo 11 is I may fortunately use it as my predominant telephone for the foreseeable future. That’s not one thing I can say about lots of the telephones that come throughout my desk for evaluate.

It’s a nice shock given this can be a telephone from the sub-brand of Vivo, an organization that hardly sells telephones in Europe and has no presence within the US. iQoo itself doesn’t promote the iQoo 11 or some other telephones formally in these areas.

That’s an actual disgrace as this can be a excellent telephone. It’s the primary to ship with Qualcomm’s high-end Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset and it reveals. This is among the quickest, most responsive Android telephones I’ve ever used.

The software program may nonetheless use some enchancment and there’s a gross quantity of bloatware pre-installed, however you’ll be rewarded with nice battery life, glorious cameras, and high efficiency that makes this a superb choice for cell avid gamers if you will get your fingers on it.

And that’s the catch right here, as a result of the iQoo 11 is barely on sale in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and India.

Design & construct

• No frills design…
• …Except you get the white one
• Very, very slippery

The iQoo 11 I reviewed is a delicate, plain matt black glass mannequin. It’s delicate however one of many slipperiest telephones I’ve ever used. Though I dislike a budget plastic case included within the field, I used it as a result of in any other case, the telephone was consistently falling out of my (small) fingers and off couch arms.

This mannequin is in sharp distinction to the opposite model, which is a vibrant white with BMW branding and a blue and pink stripe down the again. I desire the black mannequin.

On the rear of the telephone is an oblong digicam module that’s fairly giant however has flat glass panel masking defending the triple cameras and flash. It’s a sensible look that takes its cues from telephones such because the Samsung Galaxy S20 Extremely.

Metallic rails across the edge are solely damaged by a quantity rocker on the appropriate above an influence button, with a USB-C port, SIM tray, mic and speaker grille on the underside.

I don’t love the ‘ULTRA SENSING’ branding beneath the digicam housing however it’s extra delicate than on another telephones on the market and is a small nod to conventional digicam design and lettering. There’s additionally no IP score for mud and water resistance, which is a disgrace.

Display & audio system

• Flat Samsung E6 panel
• 6.78in, 144Hz, AMOLED
• Twin stereo audio system

Like many fashionable telephones, the iQoo 11 is totally huge due to its 6.78in AMOLED display screen. I feel it’s too huge, however I desire small telephones due to my tiny fingers.

It’s one of many first telephones to make use of Samsung’s E6 show, an AMOLED panel with a 144Hz refresh fee and a 2K decision of 3200 x 1440. It’s superb and has a peak brightness of 1,800 nits making for clear studying outside.

With that prime refresh fee additionally comes LTPO 3.0 which might intelligently range the refresh fee between 60- and 144Hz to save lots of battery energy. It seems to be nice, although not as clean to my eyes as comparable tech on the iPhone 14 Professional and Google Pixel 7 Professional.

Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry

It’s additionally virtually unimaginable to inform the distinction between 120- and 144Hz, so that you shouldn’t go for this telephone purely primarily based on that spec. Higher is iQoo’s clunkily named ‘twin monster contact’ which implies you’ll be able to function the left and proper sides of the display screen concurrently in panorama mode whereas gaming with as much as 4 contact factors for extra versatile management.

Twin stereo audio system are good to see (and listen to!) and are completely ample for gaming and a few informal YouTube watching.

Specs & efficiency

• Snapdragon 8 Gen 2
• Vivo’s V2 chip
• 256GB storage/16GB RAM

Vivo and iQoo made certain the iQoo 11 was the primary telephone to market with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset. It’s nice to see, as typically we see new chips launched however telephones introduced later nonetheless with the earlier era of silicon.

The 8 Gen 2 seems like a stable step up, at the least on this telephone. Generally upgrades are incremental however wanting on the uncooked benchmark scores in addition to efficiency when multitasking and gaming, the iQoo clearly delivers.

Rounds of Name of Obligation Cellular and Asphalt 9 had been flawless with body charges sky-high and no seen lag.

Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry

iQoo has a gaming focus as a model and that’s evident with the inclusion of Vivo’s V2 chip within the telephone which the corporate says will increase body fee and reduces energy consumption. I’m unsure if it’s the chip doing that particularly, however the gaming expertise is high notch and comparable with different gaming telephones, most of which look much more outlandish in design than the delicate black mannequin I used to be testing.

It additionally helps that the telephone comes with 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM, a quick and succesful reminiscence customary which means this telephone flies by way of every thing. Plus, 256GB storage is greater than sufficient for me too, however there’s no expandable choice.

The telephone barely ran sizzling even once I put it below intense load, which could be right down to the inclusion of what iQoo calls a vapour chamber liquid cooling system. So far as I can inform, this doesn’t really include liquid, as an alternative utilizing skinny layers of graphite and stainless-steel to dissipate the warmth created by the chipset and parts when gaming, for instance.

iQoo says this may scale back the warmth enhance within the higher a part of the telephone by greater than two levels centigrade.

The haptics on the telephone are additionally superb, with little pips for the keyboard vibrations that aren’t pretty much as good as on the most recent iPhone however come fairly shut.

Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry

Digital camera & video

• Glorious 50Mp predominant sensor
• 13Mp telephoto/portrait digicam
• 8Mp ultra-wide digicam

The cameras on the iQoo 11 are surprisingly glorious. The principle 50Mp sensor isn’t pretty much as good or properly calibrated because the equal on the Vivo X80 Professional, however it seems like Vivo handed on among the picture processing tips of that nice digicam to this one.

Dynamic vary is superb, and pictures have loads of vibrancy, however the auto mode boosts blue skies and inexperienced grass to fairly saturated ranges. The sky within the first 4 photographs of the slide present displaying St Pancras Lodge was as orange as they appear – it’s the digicam capturing the scene properly reasonably than making it weirdly orange.

Some footage are additionally over sharpened, giving a synthetic feeling. I needed to faucet to focus a couple of instances to get improved outcomes, which the primary sensor is unquestionably able to. Within the beneath picture, the dangling chains from among the cranes aren’t correctly processed, and the picture may be very over-sharpened:

Henry Burrell / Foundry

However within the beneath photograph the extent of element is superb and the dynamic vary may be very consultant of the scene:

Henry Burrell / Foundry

The imaging inconsistency is anticipated at a telephone of this value, and for the massive half, the primary digicam excels. The ultrawide is serviceable however much less spectacular, although the 2x optical zoom of the telephoto lens is good to have and retains a great degree of element and high quality regardless of utilizing a much less highly effective f/2.46 13Mp sensor.

I additionally had to verify default settings for filters and wonder modes had been turned off to keep away from some funky software program processing. It’s maddening that a few of these are turned on by default, however this can be a telephone bought in markets that may desire these kinds of options.

Video seize can also be first rate, and zooming in whereas recording is clean and there’s a great diploma of stability, even at 10x. The telephone can document as much as 8K at 30fps, too.

Battery & charging

• Excellent battery life
• Tremendous fast 120W quick charging
• In-built cooling for gaming

Battery life on this telephone is unbelievable, notably when contemplating the facility of the chipset and the massive, vibrant display screen. In PC Mark’s battery check, it ran for 17 hours and 51 minutes, the all-time rating we’ve recorded for a flagship, and the second-best we’ve ever recorded (behind the loopy 24 hours 52 minutes for the mid-range Sony Xperia 10 IV).

Day-to-day utilization on 4G and 5G with my predominant SIM card in it, the telephone simply lasted a day and normally a couple of hours right into a second earlier than I used to be reaching for a charger.

The 120W charger comes within the field and actually modified how I charged my telephone. No extra plugging in in a single day vital when you’ll be able to plug it in if you stand up and it’s absolutely charged in a mind-boggling 27 minutes. There’s no wi-fi charging compatibility, although.

Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry

Software program & updates

• Android 13
• Tons of bloatware
• Solely two years of updates

The iQoo 11 runs Vivo’s Funtouch OS primarily based on Android 13. It’s good to see the most recent model out of the field, although the corporate solely guarantees two platform updates to Android 15.

It’s a disgrace that Funtouch OS is so, properly, boring. It contains neat touches like a nano music participant widget however the Materials You color theming from Android 13 is nowhere to be seen. The telephone’s menus virtually really feel like an Android telephone from 2017.

The telephone comes with a gross quantity of bloatware put in, too. Once I first booted it up I got here throughout a pre-installed folder referred to as ‘Sizzling Apps’ which, to be honest, hasn’t really put in 60 (!) apps however they’re a one-click set up away. There’s an analogous folder referred to as ‘Sizzling Video games’, each of which set up these apps through Vivo’s V-Appstore.

Whereas it’s frequent for Android telephones exterior of Western markets to have a couple of app retailer, it’s nonetheless galling to have what principally quantities to folders stuffed with app adverts pre-loaded onto a telephone you’ll have paid good cash for. iQoo additionally pre-installs its personal Cellphone and Messages apps however you should use Google’s in case you desire.

Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry

There are a couple of different pre-installed apps resembling Viu, SnackVideo, Shopee and Lazada. Fear not, Google Play Retailer is right here and the telephone runs Google companies with out a hitch. I ran the telephone with all my common apps out there.

Higher software program additions are the gaming modes that auto-run if you fireplace up a recreation. Swiping in from the left whereas in-game offers you a panel with learn outs of CPU and GPU utilization and tabs to pick three gaming modes together with monster, which jacks up the telephone’s efficiency for one of the best gaming expertise doable.

Value & availability

The iQoo 11 is on sale in Indonesia for IDR10,999,000 which is about $720/£590 on the time of evaluate in January 2023.

The telephone can also be on sale in India from ₹61,999, in Thailand from ฿27,990.00, and in Malaysia from RM3,499.

Verdict

The iQoo 11 is straightforward to advocate. It has gorgeous efficiency in a plain design (in case you get the black one) which can swimsuit avid gamers in search of a succesful telephone however don’t need a garish design.

The battery life is superb, the flat display screen is great, and the cameras are excellent for the worth vary. Extra annoying is the quantity of bloatware and the overall blandness of Funtouch OS, with a measly two years of model updates.

If you happen to dwell in a rustic the place the iQoo 11 is bought, then it’s a superb buy and one of the performant telephones you will get on this value vary. For anybody else, I counsel shopping for one thing in-country reasonably than importing the iQoo 11 and probably shedding out on guarantee and after-purchase service from the corporate.

Specs

• Android 13 with Funtouch OS 13
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2
• 6.78in 3200 x 1440 144Hz AMOLED show
• 256GB non-expandable UFS 4.0 storage
• 16GB LPDDR5X RAM
• 50Mp f/1.88 predominant digicam sensor
• 8Mp f/2.2 ultrawide
• 13Mp f/2.46 2x optical telephoto
• 5000mAh battery
• 120W wired quick charging
• Bluetooth 5.3
• GPS
• NFC
• 164.86 × 77.07 × 8.40 mm
• 208g