iQoo 11 Review: Slick But Scarce

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

It’s a pleasing 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 another telephones formally in these areas.

That’s an actual disgrace as this can be a very good telephone. It’s the primary to ship with Qualcomm’s high-end Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset and it reveals. This is without doubt one of 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, glorious cameras, and high efficiency that makes this a superb possibility for cell players if you will get your palms 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 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 telephone was consistently falling out of my (small) palms 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 want the black mannequin.

Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry

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

Steel 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 nevertheless it’s extra refined 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 because of its 6.78in AMOLED display. I believe it’s too massive, however I want small telephones because of my tiny palms.

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 outdoor.

With that top refresh fee additionally comes LTPO 3.0 which may intelligently differ the refresh fee between 60- and 144Hz to avoid wasting battery energy. It appears to be like nice, although not as easy to my eyes as comparable tech on the iPhone 14 Professional and Google Pixel 7 Professional.

Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry

It’s additionally virtually inconceivable to inform the distinction between 120- and 144Hz, so that you shouldn’t go for this telephone 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 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 enough 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 looks like a strong step up, at the very least on this telephone. Typically 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 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 way more outlandish in design than the refined black mannequin I used to be testing.

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

The telephone barely ran scorching even once I put it underneath intense load, which is perhaps 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 a substitute utilizing skinny layers of graphite and stainless-steel to dissipate the warmth created by the chipset and elements when gaming, for instance.

iQoo says this could 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 nearly as good as on the most recent iPhone however come fairly shut.

Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry

Digital camera & video

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

The cameras on the iQoo 11 are surprisingly glorious. The primary 50Mp sensor isn’t nearly as good or properly calibrated because the equal on the Vivo X80 Professional, nevertheless it looks like Vivo handed on a few of the picture processing tips of that nice digicam to this one.

Dynamic vary is superb, and pictures have a number of 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 exhibiting St Pancras Lodge was as orange as they give the impression of being – it’s the digicam capturing the scene properly relatively than making it weirdly orange.

Some photos are additionally over sharpened, giving a man-made feeling. I needed to faucet to focus a number of instances to get improved outcomes, which the principle sensor is certainly able to. Within the beneath picture, the dangling chains from a few of the cranes are usually not correctly processed, and the picture could be very over-sharpened:

Henry Burrell / Foundry

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

Henry Burrell / Foundry

The imaging inconsistency is anticipated at a telephone of this worth, and for the big half, the principle digicam excels. The ultrawide is serviceable however much less spectacular, although the 2x optical zoom of the telephoto lens is sweet to have and retains 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 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 offered in markets which may want these kinds of options.

Video seize can also be respectable, and zooming in whereas recording is easy and there’s diploma of stability, even at 10x. The telephone can file 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 unimaginable, notably when contemplating the ability of the chipset and the big, vibrant display. 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 essential SIM card in it, the telephone simply lasted a day and normally a number 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 essential when you may plug it in once you stand up and it’s totally 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, properly, 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 telephone’s menus nearly really feel like an Android telephone from 2017.

The telephone comes with a gross quantity of bloatware put in, too. After I first booted it up I got here throughout a pre-installed folder referred to as ‘Scorching Apps’ which, to be truthful, hasn’t really put in 60 (!) apps however they’re a one-click set up away. There’s an analogous folder referred to as ‘Scorching Video games’, each of which set up these apps by way of 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 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 utilize Google’s when you want.

Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry

There are a number of different pre-installed apps comparable to Viu, SnackVideo, Shopee and Lazada. Fear not, Google Play Retailer is right here and the telephone runs Google providers with no hitch. I ran the telephone with all my normal apps out there.

Higher software program additions are the gaming modes that auto-run once you hearth 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 out three gaming modes together with monster, which jacks up the telephone’s efficiency for one of the best gaming expertise potential.

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 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 simple to advocate. It has gorgeous efficiency in a plain design (when you get the black one) which is able to go well with players searching for a succesful telephone however don’t need a garish design.

The battery life is great, the flat display 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.

For those who dwell in a rustic the place the iQoo 11 is offered, then it’s a positive buy and one of the crucial performant telephones you will get on this worth vary. For anybody else, I recommend shopping for one thing in-country relatively 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 essential 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