iQoo 11 Evaluation: Slick However Scarce

The very best praise I pays the iQoo 11 is I might fortunately use it as my major cellphone for the foreseeable future. That’s not one thing I can say about most of the telephones that come throughout my desk for assessment.

It’s a pleasing shock given this can be a cellphone 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 every other telephones formally in these areas.

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

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

And that’s the catch right here, as a result of the iQoo 11 is just 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 refined, plain matt black glass mannequin. It’s refined 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 cellphone was consistently falling out of my (small) arms and off couch arms.

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

On the rear of the cellphone is an oblong digital camera module that’s fairly giant however has flat glass panel protecting defending the triple cameras and flash. It’s a wise 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 suitable 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 digital camera housing however it’s extra refined than on another telephones on the market and is a small nod to conventional digital camera design and lettering. There’s additionally no IP ranking for mud and water resistance, which is a disgrace.

Display screen & audio system

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

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

It’s one of many first telephones to make use of Samsung’s E6 show, an AMOLED panel with a 144Hz refresh price 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 price additionally comes LTPO 3.0 which might intelligently differ the refresh price between 60- and 144Hz to save lots of battery energy. It appears to be like nice, although not as clean to my eyes as related tech on the iPhone 14 Professional and Google Pixel 7 Professional.

Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry

It’s additionally virtually not possible to inform the distinction between 120- and 144Hz, so that you shouldn’t go for this cellphone purely based mostly on that spec. Higher is iQoo’s clunkily named ‘twin monster contact’ which implies you may 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 sufficient 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 cellphone 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 strong step up, at the very least on this cellphone. 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 Responsibility Cell and Asphalt 9 have 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 cellphone which the corporate says will increase body price 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 refined black mannequin I used to be testing.

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

The cellphone barely ran scorching even after I put it underneath intense load, which is likely to be all the way down to the inclusion of what iQoo calls a vapour chamber liquid cooling system. So far as I can inform, this doesn’t really comprise liquid, as a substitute utilizing skinny layers of graphite and chrome steel to dissipate the warmth created by the chipset and elements when gaming, for instance.

iQoo says this could cut back the warmth enhance within the higher a part of the cellphone by greater than two levels centigrade.

The haptics on the cellphone 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 major sensor
• 13Mp telephoto/portrait digital camera
• 8Mp ultra-wide digital camera

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

Dynamic vary is excellent, and pictures have numerous vibrancy, however the auto mode boosts blue skies and inexperienced grass to fairly saturated ranges. The sky within the first 4 pictures of the slide present displaying St Pancras Lodge was as orange as they give the impression of being – it’s the digital camera capturing the scene effectively moderately than making it weirdly orange.

Some footage are additionally over sharpened, giving a synthetic feeling. I needed to faucet to focus a couple of occasions to get improved outcomes, which the principle sensor is certainly able to. Within the beneath picture, the dangling chains from among the cranes usually are not correctly processed, and the picture could be very over-sharpened:

Henry Burrell / Foundry

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

Henry Burrell / Foundry

The imaging inconsistency is predicted at a cellphone of this worth, and for the massive half, the principle digital camera excels. The ultrawide is serviceable however much less spectacular, although the 2x optical zoom of the telephoto lens is good to have and retains an excellent stage 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 sweetness modes have 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 cellphone bought in markets that may favor these kinds of options.

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

Battery & charging

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

Battery life on this cellphone is unimaginable, notably when contemplating the ability of the chipset and the massive, brilliant 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 major SIM card in it, the cellphone 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 cellphone. No extra plugging in in a single day needed when you may plug it in while 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 based mostly 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, effectively, boring. It consists of neat touches like a nano music participant widget however the Materials You color theming from Android 13 is nowhere to be seen. The cellphone’s menus nearly really feel like an Android cellphone from 2017.

The cellphone 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 the same folder referred to as ‘Sizzling Video games’, each of which set up these apps through Vivo’s V-Appstore.

Whereas it’s widespread for Android telephones outdoors of Western markets to have a couple of app retailer, it’s nonetheless galling to have what principally quantities to folders filled with app adverts pre-loaded onto a cellphone you’ll have paid good cash for. iQoo additionally pre-installs its personal Telephone and Messages apps however you should use Google’s if you happen to favor.

Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry

There are a couple of different pre-installed apps equivalent to Viu, SnackVideo, Shopee and Lazada. Fear not, Google Play Retailer is right here and the cellphone runs Google companies with no hitch. I ran the cellphone with all my traditional apps obtainable.

Higher software program additions are the gaming modes that auto-run while you fireplace up a sport. Swiping in from the left whereas in-game provides 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 cellphone’s efficiency for the most effective gaming expertise attainable.

Value & availability

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

The cellphone 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 simple to advocate. It has beautiful efficiency in a plain design (if you happen to get the black one) which is able to go well with avid gamers in search of a succesful cellphone however don’t desire a garish design.

The battery life is superb, the flat display screen is excellent, 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.

Should you reside in a rustic the place the iQoo 11 is bought, then it’s a positive buy and probably the most performant telephones you will get on this worth vary. For anybody else, I counsel shopping for one thing in-country moderately than importing the iQoo 11 and doubtlessly dropping 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 major digital camera 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