iQOO Neo9 Pro hands-on review | Infinium-tech

iQOO launched the iQOO Neo9 and Neo9 Professional final yr in China, however just one smartphone escaped the nation – the iQOO Neo9, which was launched because the Neo9 Professional in India. Probably the most notable distinction between the Chinese language Neo9 – referred to as Neo9 Professional globally – and the Chinese language Neo9 Professional is within the chipset and digital camera departments.

The Neo9 Professional is powered by Dimensity 9300 SoC and encompasses a 50MP ultrawide digital camera, whereas the Neo9 has the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip on the helm and sports activities an 8MP ultrawide digital camera. We used the Indian iQOO Neo9 Professional – sharing {hardware} with the Chinese language Neo9 – for over a month, and here is what we discovered about it.

Design

The iQOO Neo9 Professional is constructed round a 6.78″ 8T LTPO AMOLED show having a 3,000 nits peak brightness and 144Hz display refresh price. The display additionally has a punch-hole for the 16MP selfie digital camera and a fingerprint scanner embedded for biometric authentication.

The fingerprint reader was quick and correct, and we confronted no points whereas utilizing it. Nevertheless, it may’ve been positioned barely larger for ease of attain, facilitating a extra handy smartphone unlocking expertise.

Flip the telephone round, and also you see an LED flash and two cameras – 50MP major and 8MP ultrawide. The iQOO Neo9 Professional is available in Fiery Crimson and Conqueror Black colours, and it is the purple model that we obtained for assessment.

The Conqueror Black model’s again cowl is product of fingerprint-resistant Fluorite AG Glass, whereas the Fiery Crimson mannequin’s rear panel flaunts a Twin-Tone Vegan Leather-based Design. iQOO says that it’s carbon fiber vegan leather-based and skin-friendly lychee vegan leather-based “seamlessly built-in for an ultra-thin edge,” leading to a “distinctive and premium appear and feel.”

Effectively, the purple mannequin appears to be like good, and the fake leather-based – which is what it’s – helps with the grip, however not as a lot as we might have preferred. It additionally does not really feel as premium because the leather-based end we now have on the extra reasonably priced Realme 12 Professional sequence smartphones.

On the upside, the iQOO Neo9 Professional Fiery Crimson’s vegan leather-based end ensures it does not get smudged with fingerprints, which might require fixed wiping to maintain the telephone in its pristine kind in the event you do not use a protecting case.

No matter which model you purchase, the iQOO Neo9 Professional comes with flat frames and a again panel, with the latter having barely curved edges just like the iQOO 12, making the telephone snug to carry regardless of flat frames. The smartphone can also be gentle sufficient for extended utilization. Nevertheless, the protruding rear cameras make it wobble on flat surfaces and transfer when it vibrates upon receiving calls and notifications. That is not splendid for the reason that telephone may fall if stored close to the sting of a flat floor.

The iQOO Neo9 Professional’s right-side body has an influence button and quantity rocker with first rate suggestions, and on the backside is the USB-C port, flanked by a SIM card slot, major microphone, and a speaker grille. Up prime is one other microphone, joined by an IR blaster.

Ports and controls

The Neo9 Professional is IP54-rated, and we like its total design.

Show

The iQOO Neo9 Professional packs a 6.78″ 144Hz 8T LTPO All the time-On AMOLED show of two,800×1,260-pixel decision and 452 ppi pixel density. It is protected by Schott Xensation Up and helps 1.07 billion colours. It additionally has HLG, HDR10, HDR10+, and Widevine L1 certifications.

iQOO went with an X-Axis Linear Motor for the Neo9 Professional, which supplied nice haptic suggestions that made typing on the display enjoyable. It additionally offers 4D Sport Vibration when gaming, which boosts the general gaming expertise.

The show was additionally a lot shiny, which made it straightforward to observe media and skim textual content beneath direct daylight at max brightness.

The iQOO Neo9 Professional additionally comes with an impartial show chip referred to as Supercomputing Chip Q1, which, the model says, helps obtain low latency with excessive body price video games, decrease energy consumption at excessive body charges and determination, and decrease temperature throughout heavy gaming periods. The Sport Tremendous Decision and Sport Body Interpolation options are enabled with the Chip Q1, with the latter marketed to assist obtain a body price of 144 FPS in video games.

That mentioned, the iQOO Neo9 Professional has Sensible Swap, Commonplace (60Hz), and Excessive (144Hz) refresh price choices, with the display supporting 10 refresh charges in whole – 1Hz, 30Hz, 40Hz, 45Hz, 51Hz, 60Hz, 72Hz, 90Hz, 120Hz, and 144Hz. Nevertheless, iQOO says 144Hz is just for gaming – which is a bummer – so the utmost refresh price achievable throughout non-gaming utilization is 120 FPS.

With the display refresh price set to Excessive (144Hz), the refresh price bumped up from 1Hz to 120Hz for the system menus and apps when interacting with the show. It remained at 10Hz when viewing a picture in Google Images and at 30/60Hz when watching movies on Fb, Instagram, Twitter, Google Images, and YouTube.

The Commonplace (60Hz) mode was mainly the Excessive mode, besides the refresh price went as much as 60Hz. In Sensible Swap mode, the apps went as much as 90 FPS when interacting with the display, with solely the homescreen, app drawer, app switcher, Settings app, and the Play Retailer having 120 FPS assist. Nevertheless, just like the Commonplace and Excessive Mode, the Sensible Swap mode additionally switched to 10Hz when viewing a picture and 30/60Hz when watching movies.

We tried Name of Obligation Cellular, Lifeless Set off 2, Actual Racing 3, and Sky Drive Reloaded on the iQOO Neo9 Professional, and solely the final two video games ran at 120 FPS – that too in Excessive Mode – with others being capped at 60 FPS. COD is included within the record of video games supporting 144 FPS gaming, however that wasn’t the case throughout our utilization, even with Sport Body Interpolation enabled.

To conclude, if you would like the smoothest doable expertise, the Excessive refresh price mode is your only option.

Software program and Efficiency

The iQOO Neo9 Professional is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC and comes with as much as 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 256GB of UFS 4.0 storage. Ours is the top-end 12GB/256GB mannequin, working Android 14-based Funtouch OS 14 out of the field.

The iQOO Neo9 Professional comes pre-loaded with third-party apps, however most will be uninstalled. The general software program expertise is just like that of the iQOO 12, so that you may need to learn our iQOO 12 assessment to study extra about Funtouch OS 14.

We had no efficiency points with the iQOO Neo9 Professional for the reason that smartphone was easy and snappy in on a regular basis utilization. It additionally dealt with heavy video games throughout lengthy gaming periods very effectively whereas remaining moderately cool even in sizzling Indian summers. Nevertheless, as we already talked about, some video games that iQOO marketed with 144 FPS assist remained capped at 60 FPS.

Digicam

The iQOO Neo9 Professional sports activities three cameras – one of many entrance and two on the rear. The selfie shooter on the entrance makes use of a 16MP Samsung ISOCELL S5K3P9SP04-FGX9 1/3.1″ sensor. It has an f/2.45 aperture and might report movies in 1080p decision at 30 FPS.

The twin digital camera setup on the rear contains 50MP major and 8MP ultrawide models. The first digital camera makes use of the Sony IMX920 1/1.49″ sensor with vivo Digicam-Bionic Spectrum (VCS). It has OIS, f/1.88 aperture, and might report 1080p and 4K movies at 30 and 60 FPS, whereas 720p and 8K video recording is restricted to 30 FPS.

The 8MP ultrawide unit makes use of the OmniVision OV08D10-GA5A-001A with an f/2.2 aperture and an FOV of 119˚.

The iQOO Neo9 Professional’s major and ultrawide cameras had been fairly fast to seize pictures, and we not often noticed any shutter lag within the default Photograph mode. Within the 50MP mode, the first digital camera expectedly took a bit longer to click on the images, whereas Night time Mode took even longer in each the default and 50MP modes.

Throughout the day, the iQOO Neo9 Professional’s 50MP major digital camera took good images within the default Photograph mode. Nevertheless, generally, the images clicked with the first digital camera within the Photograph mode and 50MP mode had inconsistencies in colours.

Furthermore, the colours within the footage taken in Photograph mode with the first and ultrawide cameras seemed comparable however had been totally different within the 50MP high-res mode.

The iQOO Neo9 Professional’s 50MP major digital camera clicked first rate footage at night time as effectively, and within the 50MP high-res mode, it did a greater job of retaining particulars within the shadows than the Photograph mode. The colours had been additionally nearer to the supply, particularly the skies.

Images taken with the 8MP ultrawide digital camera at night time had been softer than those captured with the first digital camera, particularly across the edges. The colours additionally seemed a bit washed out at instances. Additionally, no matter whether or not you used the first or ultrawide digital camera, many low-light footage had lens flare.

Nevertheless, it is price mentioning that images clicked with the iQOO Neo9 Professional in low gentle weren’t as noisy and comfortable as these taken with the iQOO Neo7 Professional, which is appreciated.

You may verify some footage we took from the iQOO Neo9 Professional beneath.

Daylight Images

Let’s take a look at the daylight images first, captured with the 50MP major digital camera having an output of 12.6MP in Photograph mode.

Major digital camera, 12.6MP (23mm).

Major digital camera, 12.6MP (23mm)

Ultrawide digital camera, 8MP (16mm).

Ultrawide digital camera, 8MP (16mm)

Major digital camera, 50MP (Excessive decision, 23mm).

Major digital camera, 50MP (Excessive decision, 23mm)

Nighttime Images

Now, let’s check out some nighttime images.

Major digital camera, 12.6MP (23mm).

Major digital camera, 12.6MP (23mm)

Ultrawide digital camera, 8MP (16mm).

Ultrawide digital camera, 8MP (16mm)

Major digital camera, 50MP (Excessive decision, 23mm).

Major digital camera, 50MP (Excessive decision, 23mm)

Battery

The iQOO Neo9 Professional ships with a 5,160 mAh battery. We could not run our normal battery take a look at on the iQOO Neo9 Professional, however anecdotally talking, the smartphone ought to simply get most individuals by means of the day on a single cost. We received a screen-on time of over seven hours with a 120Hz refresh price, always-on show, 5G cell knowledge, and Wi-Fi hotspot enabled the entire time. Our utilization consisted of internet searching, utilizing social media apps, and streaming YouTube movies. With about an hour of heavy gaming, our common screen-on time dropped to 4-5 hours.

As soon as the iQOO Neo9 Professional’s battery is drained, you possibly can fill it up with the bundled 120W energy adapter. It is marketed to juice up the cell from 1% to 50% in 11 minutes, however in our testing, it charged 1% to 14% in 5 minutes, 32% in 10 minutes, 34% in 11 minutes, 43% in quarter-hour, 50% in 17 minutes, 56% in 20 minutes, 79% in half-hour, and 100% in 38 minutes.

These charging assessments had been run with the All the time-On Show turned on, and your mileage will doubtless fluctuate relying in your utilization and ambient temperature when charging the telephone.

Conclusion

The iQOO Neo9 Professional is likely one of the greatest mid-rangers you should purchase in India proper now. It has a handy guide a rough efficiency and handles video games effectively. It encompasses a 144Hz LTPO AMOLED panel with good out of doors legibility. The battery life can also be excellent, which, when paired with 120W quick charging, makes for an ideal mixture.

The iQOO Neo9 Professional’s 50MP major digital camera clicks first rate footage. They is probably not the very best on this vary, however then once more, the Neo9 Professional is not a camera-centric smartphone and primarily focuses on efficiency. Nevertheless, we might prefer to see some software program optimizations from iQOO for a extra constant digital camera efficiency from the Neo9 Professional.

The iQOO Neo9 Professional begins at INR34,999 ($420/€390) in India, and it’s price contemplating.