iQOO 11 review
iQOO 11 5G (Legend, 8GB RAM, 256 GB Storage) | Snapdragon ® 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform | 2K E6 AMOLED Display | V2 Chip
Vivo’s subsidiary iQOO is known for smartphones with a focus on design and performance. The company is starting this year with a similar mantra, by launching India’s first smartphone powered by. the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2-powered processor, which is the iQOO 11.
Design
The iQOO 11 comes in two variants, the Legend variant has BMW M-series branding, and the black color Alpha variant comes in a matte finish with a bit of a texture. The black color variant uses glass, while the white variant of the iQOO 11 uses faux leather.
While the Alpha iQOO 11 does not attract any fingerprints, it is definitely slippery. I ended up using the phone with the bundled case, although I didn’t want to. The frame of the phone is made using aluminum, just like other smartphones in this price range. Also note this is a big phone and is not meant for one-handed usage. The front of the iQOO 11 mostly has the display, a flat panel screen with minimal bezels on all four sides. While having a flat screen makes it easy to apply screen protectors, a curved display would have made this phone feel even more premium. Overall, the iQOO 11 is a well-built premium looking smartphone with almost all the bells and whistles that one expects from a performance-oriented flagship smartphone of 2023.
Display
As I have mentioned before, a curved display would have further elevated the design and positioning of the iQOO 11. iQOO 11 has a fully flat display, protected by the first generation Corning Gorilla Glass Victus. The company does include a screen protector (soft type) with the phone, and I have been using the phone by removing it. As of today, there are no noticeable scratches on the display. However, I would recommend users install a 2D tempered screen protector to prevent scratches and accidental damage in the long run.
Camera
The phone gets a true triple-camera setup with a 50MP GN5 wide-angle lens (f/1.88), 13MP telephoto lens (f/2.46), and an 8MP ultra-wide angle lens (f/2.2). The iQOO 11 surprised me, especially with the primary 50MP camera.
Under the daylight situation, photos taken on the primary camera looked sharp and vibrant, with lots of details. What’s even more surprising was the night mode performance. While the same cannot be said about the telephoto and ultra-wide angle lenses, as the photos taken on these cameras looked a bit soft compared to the pictures from the primary camera.
Performance
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC, 16GB LPDDR5x RAM, and 256GB of UFS 4.0-based storage. The device posted 1,24,0651 points in our test. As per these numbers, the iQOO 11 is currently the most powerful smartphone that has ever launched in India
I also ran a CPU throttling test, where the iQOO 11 was able to sustain 90 percent of its peak performance for 15 minutes without overheating or thermal throttling. I played games like COD: Mobile for hours at high graphics quality and max frame rate, and did not notice any frame drop even after continuous gameplay for over an hour. Currently, there is no Android game that iQOO 11 cannot handle, which makes this even better than dedicated Android gaming smartphones.
The iQOO 11 is likely to remain one of the best-performing Android smartphones of this year, both from the benchmark and real-world performance perspectives. Features like the faster LPDDR5x RAM, fast storage, and even a V2 chip for image processing help the device deliver the best possible performance during gaming and multitasking.
Battery life
The iQOO 11 has a 5,000 mAh battery, and you get a 120W fast charger in the box, which can top up 50% of the battery in just 8 minutes. I suffer from battery anxiety, and this device with its 120W fast charging made me feel relieved about the battery life. The phone can easily last for over a day and deliver 7 hours of screen on time, even with the display resolution set to 1440p at 144Hz refresh rate. Heavy-duty gamers might have to use the charger at the end of the day.