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Introduction
The iQOO Neo 9 Pro has launched in India and The pricing is really aggressive. If I talk about the iQOO Neo 7 Pro, it was the cheapest 8 Gen 1 smartphone. This iQOO Neo 9 Pro is the cheapest phone on the 8 Gen 2. The base variant is going to be around Rs 30K. The hype around this is unprecedented. Because it packs a lot with a very low price. So let’s see what it has to offer.
iQOO Neo 9 Pro Unboxing
Let’s open the Neo 9 Pro Box. It comes in two colours. We have the Fiery red colour. iQOO provides a decent case, then you have documentation, sim card tool, a big 120W charger and an USB Type C to Type C charging cable. There are two camera sensors in the camera module. It’s a very functional camera. This phone has 5160 mAh battery, but it doesn’t feel heavy. The phone’s weight is only 191 grams. So It’s on the lighter side. It’s a very thin phone and in hand feel is excellent.
Design
The vegan leather back has dual tone colours. There’s also a black colour variant, which comes with a glass back. And the Neo branding is very subtle. It has iQOO written on the bottom. But it’s very subtle and looks beautiful. Talking about ports and buttons, At the bottom there’s a sim card tray which supports dual nano sim but doesn’t support memory card, a microphone, USB Type C port and speaker grill. On the right side there’s power button and volume rocker. At the top there’s an IR blaster and noise cancelling microphone. There’s nothing on the left hand side.
Display
There’s a flat 6.78 inches 1.5K 144Hz fast refresh rate AMOLED display with 3000 nits peak brightness and supports HDR10+. And comes with a Schott Xensation Up glass for protection. If I talk about the bezels, Bezels and chin are of the same size and are very thin. It’s an immersive display and despite being 6.78” it’s quite compact. Even if you have average hands, you won’t feel it’s too big. You get 144Hz refresh rate while gaming and 120Hz in normal usage. there’s IP54 certification, so dust and water is registered to a certain extent.
Specifications
There are three different variants, the base variant comes with 8GB/128GB which is UFS 3.1 storage type. Other two varients are 8GB/256GB and 12GB 256GB which is UFS 4.0 storage type. And if I talk about the RAM type, it’s LPDDR5X RAM type. So we tested the read and write speed and UFS 4.0 speeds are 4000 Mbps read speeds. There’s also virtual RAM support, if you buy 8GB, you’ll get 8GB virtual RAM and if you buy 12GB, you’ll get 12GB.
It has an 8th Gen 2 processor, 5160 mAh battery and 120W fast charging. If I talk about the AnTuTu score on paper, it’s 1.6M. I’d say that this score is one of the highest for the 8th Gen 2. It’s above 1.6M which is excellent. And not just the specs, we also ran a lot of tests. For example, we tested the CPU throttle and scored 87% which is very good. Generally, it’s above 80% so we’d say that 87% is really good.
| iQOO Neo 9 Pro Specifications | |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 163.5 x 75.7 x 8.0 mm or 8.3 mm |
| Weight | 190 g or 196 g |
| Display | 6.78 inches, LTPO AMOLED,1260 x 2800 pixels, 20:9 ratio 144Hz, 3000 nits (peak) |
| Chipset | Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 (4 nm), GPU-Adreno 740 |
| OS | Android 14, Funtouch 14 |
| RAM and Memory | 128GB 8GB RAM, 256GB 8GB RAM, 256GB 12GB RAM |
| Rear Camera | Dual, 50 MP f/1.88, Wide Angle, Primary Camera 8 MP f/2.2, Ultra-Wide Angle Camera Video – 4K, 1080p, gyro-EIS |
| Front Camera | Single, 16 MP f/2.45, Wide Angle Video – 1080p@30fps |
| Camera Features | Rear: Snapshot, Night, Portrait, Photo, Video,50MP, Panorama, Slow Motion, Time Lapse, Pro,Pro Video, Supermoon, Ultra HD Document,Long Exposure. | Front: Portrait, Photo, Video |
| Battery | 5160 mAh, 120W: 50 % in 11 minutes |
| Sim and Network | Dual Nano Sim, Supports- 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G |
| Connectivity | Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.3, USB Type-C |
Gaming Performance
You can play COD Mobile on 120FPS. We also played Genshin Impact and it didn’t go below 59FPS for half an hour. It was consistently giving 59-60FPS. So performance, especially in terms of gaming, is excellent. And the biggest reason for Thermal to be in the checks is that it has the biggest vapour cooling chamber. It’s a 6000mm square vapour cooling chamber in the 4 zone cooling system. So even in Genshin Impact, when we were playing, it was around 40 to 42 degree Celsius. That’s it, not more than that.
There’s an AI Voice Game Changer feature in gaming. There are many voice packs, so you can change your voice. So there are AI features in this. If I talk about the Q1 chipset, it upscales in gaming. It upscales from 720p to 900p. And not just in gaming, but in multimedia too. If you’re watching Netflix or Prime videos, it also upscales. You get good multimedia experience, especially if you’re watching videos, web series, movies etc. That experience is going to be very good. And yes, there are stereo speakers too. So from a multimedia, gaming and performance perspective, there are absolutely no complaints anywhere.
Software
iQOO Neo9 Pro comes with Android 14 and FunTouch OS 14 is on top of it. And if I talk about updates, there are 3 major updates and 4 security updates. But the good thing is, the hot games and apps that are always seen in FunTouch OS, are not visible in this time. Yes, there are few 3rd party apps, but they’ve removed unnecessary hot apps and games. So overall it is a really good OS.
Sensors
There’s an in-display fingerprint sensor, face unlock, Light sensor, Proximity sensor, Accelerometer, Compass, Gyroscope. So every necessary sensors is available.
Connectivity
There’s 5G band support, dual 4G VoLTE WiFi calling, Bluetooth 5.3, IR blaster, but NFC is not there. there’s no notification light, there’s camera to API support. SAR values are within limits. So all those things that you expect are there.
Camera
There is a dual rear camera setup in this phone, you get a 50MP primary sensor, which is Sony’s IMX920 sensor and supports OIS. The secondary sensor is 8MP ultrawide, there is no 2MP macro sensor. you get a 16MP sensor on front. The primary sensor is same as in the Vivo X100, which is the flagship camera centric smartphone. There are many things borrowed from the Vivo X100, like the photos are good quality photos. If I talk about sharpness, colours, dynamic range, they are quite good. I wasn’t expecting that the night or low light photos would be this good. But because it’s using IMX920, it’s good at low light photos. If you shoot with the primary sensor, you can shoot 8K videos, 4K 60FPS videos. there’s also 4K night video mode. But There’s only 1080p at 30FPS on front. it would’ve been even better, if it was 4K on front.
Camera Features
There are a lot of photo and video modes like Snapshot, Night, Portrait, Photo, Video Mode, Slow Motion, Time Lapse, etc. There’s a long exposure mode, you can scan an Ultra HD document, there’s a native 50MP mode, Low light mode etc. So, you won’t have any complaints.
Conclusion
The base variant of the phone wil launch at around Rs 30K, the upper variant, 8GB/256GB will be around 33K and 12GB/256GB variant will launch at 35K. If this phone comes at this price, I’d say it’s offering a lot more. And it’s not like the iQOO phones are only focused on performance. The aesthetics are good, The camera setup is decent, the display is good and the performance is also very good. So overall, people are going to like it a lot. When you’re spending money, you’re getting a better phone.
If you want to buy it, there are a lot of offers till 26th Feb. There’s an Instant Bank discount of Rs 2K, if you do exchange offers, you’re getting an extra Rs 4K. So, if you buy it effectively, you’ll get it at a lower price. I’m showing you the offers on the screen, go check it out. This is the iQOO Neo 9 Pro.
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