Even a few years ago, December was the slowest month for tech journalists, who would often dedicate the month to looking back at the year that was. The tech cycle or more specifically smartphone cycle usually began in January with some chatter, followed by Samsung making a grand entrance, and then Mobile World Congress. IQOO has chosen a different route and it may work for the brand.
What we have is the IQOO 12, the first smartphone we are reviewing that comes with Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and, besides Pixel 8 and 8 Pro, it’s the first device to come with Android 14 out of the box… at least in India. And IQOO is not holding back on promises — you will get three years of software updates and four years of security updates.
The main camera doesn't oversaturate and there is very little noise
Clean design
IQOO has a reputation for delivering smartphones that are fast and the new model doesn’t disappoint at all. A very bright display, a powerful chipset, top-notch camera and a good design… what more can you ask for?Having a 6.78-inch 144Hz LTPO AMOLED display is no joke. As you would expect there is a premium design with aircraft-grade aluminum frame and a flat display. The back panel has porcelain enamel glass and I prefer the white variant, which looks very stylish and does a great job of hiding fingerprints and smudges. But the camera bump protrudes quite a bit but it’s the same on almost every other flagship phone.
IQOO 12 is sleek and the display is flat
Power and more power
As soon as device setup was over, the first thing to catch my eye was how smooth the interface was. There are a few unnecessary (but can be deleted) apps, yet the overall feel is that of premium phones. With FunTouch OS 14, the number of unnecessary notifications from the V-Appstore has reduced drastically. If the look of the lock screen is important to you, there are some good customisation options, including plenty of font styles. The quick-setting toggle looks cleaner and the icons look far more sophisticated than before, so do the animations. Multitasking has improved and now you have a mini-window option. There are plenty more features and we are exploring them for a future article on FunTouch OS 14.
The phone has a very sharp and bright screen
The display offers 1260 × 2800 resolution, which makes visuals very sharp, ensuring you experience all the fine details. Needless to say, there is LTPO support, so the refresh rate can vary depending on what application you are using. The fast refresh rate comes in handy if you care about gaming. And the display maxes out at 3,000 nits of peak brightness. That’s an insane figure. Plus, a stereo speaker setup, offering an excellent soundstage. That IQOO is thinking about design is evident from where the speaker grilles are placed, so that you don’t muffle them while gaming.
The phone is in the news for its processor — Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Mobile Platform, which is designed on a 4nm architecture. Throw into the mix, 16 gigs of RAM in the review unit. Even in standard mode, you will come face to face with impressive Geekbench scores. On top of that, there is SuperComputing chip Q1 that helps achieve game frame interpolation of 144FPS in supported games. If you swipe out the game menu when playing a complicated title, there is something called game frame interpolation, which inserts extra frames into a game to make things look fluid.
Graphics are also sharpened greatly. Even when playing something like Genshin Impact, I barely noticed any frame drop. There is a large cooling chamber to keep the temperature under control. I found it difficult to run down the battery even after long hours of gaming but if you manage to do that, there is support for 120W of fast-charging.
A 10x shot of Tickles going about paper-hunting duties
Strong camera performance
You have a 50MP primary shooter, a 50MP ultra-wide camera and 64MP telephoto camera. The main camera’s 12.5MP photos (binned down) are nice and detailed, combined with good dynamic range. The colours are not over the top. Low-light photos are also very good, coming with enough details. There is solid noise reduction and good colour saturation. Even the 4K videos from the main camera are good but not the best.
The main camera can shoot 8K@30fps but we didn’t try it out and there is support for 4K night-mode video, which is bright and detailed. And the telephoto lens does a decent job of capturing enough details. I tried to go up to 10x and the photos are up to scratch. A caveat: I didn’t get enough time to try the camera system, so a detailed review will be out soon. What I hope IQOO does in the future is make the camera UI simpler.
Should you buy it?
In case you want the fastest Android phone at the moment, this is a very good option. Even though I need to work on the review a bit more, the phone is packed with promises. IQOO 12 is trying to be the first out of the gate with a powerful feature set and it manages to deliver. At the time of going to press, we didn’t have the pricing.
At a glance
Device: IQOO 12
High notes
** Powered by Snapdragon 8 Gen 3
** Android 14 out of the box
** Good design
** Excellent battery performance
Muffled note
** Ultra-wide lens can be improved
