When iQOO first introduced the launch of its iQOO 9-series, we had been anticipating two mid-range handsets and one worth flagship smartphone. As an alternative, iQOO launched an excellent premium gaming-focused flagship with the newest Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset and the industry-leading 120W fast-charging tech. Beginning at Rs. 64,990, the iQOO 9 Professional places the model is in large leagues with established smartphone manufacturers in India equivalent to Samsung, Xiaomi, OnePlus, Apple, and Oppo.
Score: 3.5/5
- Loopy Quick 120W Quick-Charging
- Gorgeous Design
- Vibrant 2K AMOLED Show
- Stable Gaming Efficiency
- Promising Digital camera {Hardware}
- Helpful Sport Centric Options
CONS
- No Correct IP Score (Solely IP52)
- Lack Higher Thermals
- 2-Years Android Improve Promise Appears Much less In 2022
And since iQOO is pretty new to this value phase, the model determined to compensate for the model worth by acing the spec-sheet. Along with the aforementioned specs, the iQOO 9 Professional additionally brings a beautiful 10-bit 2K AMOLED show with fluid 120Hz adaptive refresh charge, gimbal-stabilized triple-lens digital camera setup, and Android 12 out-of-the-box. Will or not it’s sufficient to create a reputation within the premium value class?
We discover this out by testing the 12GB variant of the iQOO 9 Professional.
iQOO 9 Professional Design
The iQOO 9 Professional is a stunner, particularly the ‘Legend’ shade variant. It simply has one of many best-designed again panels on a flagship cellphone. The massive digital camera module sits on a white-colored anti-glare glass that stays smudge-free. The textured base has a matte end and a carbon-like texture that provides a premium contact. The look is additional enhanced by the signature BMW M stripes and the chrome lining on digital camera lenses.
Steel Body With Superb Curves
A inflexible aluminum body holds the 2 sides collectively and in addition enhances the grip, due to its wonderful matte texture. The {hardware} buttons are additionally made up of the identical materials and provide wonderful clicky suggestions. We additionally like what iQOO has carried out with the body on the highest and the underside. The body widens across the excessive high and backside with a wonderful curve that provides the handset a singular design attribute.
General, the iQOO 9 Professional provides a really satisfying in-hand really feel. It seems premium and has a sturdy construct high quality. You too can purchase the iQOO 9 Professional within the Darkish Cruise variant that flaunts a bulletproof aramid fiber materials developed by DuPont.
No Correct IP Score Is A Large Letdown
It’s arduous to imagine that the premium cellphone prices Rs. 65,000 lacks a correct IP score, which makes it weak to mud and water injury. iQOO solely outfitted their flagship cellphone with a naked minimal IP52 splash resistance score, which is an enormous disappointment, particularly when you think about the excessive value of the handset. In case you are paying a sum of Rs. 65,000 in 2022, you deserve a stable IP score. Is not it iQOO?
iQOO 9 Professional Show Efficiency
The iQOO 9 Professional flaunts a 6.78-inch 120Hz LTPO 2.0 show. The curved 2K E5 AMOLED panel is supplied by Samsung and is backed by stereo audio system assist. The mixture makes the iQOO 9 Professional a superb system for multimedia consumption; particularly for streaming movies as the large actual property coupled with good shade replica of a 10-bit panel (as much as 1 billion colours) makes every part look immersive.
The high-quality video content material seems extraordinarily vivid and immersive, due to a stable 518ppi pixel density and 1,440 x 3,200 px decision. We had been additionally impressed by the panel’s efficiency below direct daylight. With a claimed peak brightness of 1500 nits, we did not face any visibility points on a shiny sunny day.
Clean Scrolling & UI Navigation
Shifting on, the UI navigation, scrolling, and recreation taking part in can be buttery clean because the panel helps a 120Hz adaptive refresh charge and 300Hz Contact Sampling charge. We’d advocate you to make use of the handset with the display screen colours set on the ‘Skilled mode’ because it produces probably the most correct colours. The mode corresponds to the sRGB shade profile.
Audio Efficiency May Have Been Higher
The audio supply may have been higher if iQOO had supplied a devoted second speaker unit. The present stereo speaker setup doubles the earpiece because the secondary unit. The general sound supply is nice however may have been extra immersive at this value level. You possibly can nonetheless get pleasure from movies and video games even when you do not have headphones useful; nonetheless, some units provide higher total sound supply at an identical or lower cost.
As an illustration, the Xiaomi Mi 11 Extremely’s audio system sound richer and extra immersive. We can’t wait to see what Xiaomi has in retailer with the upcoming Mi 12 Extremely.
iQOO 9 Professional {Hardware} Specs
The iQOO 9 Professional+ is powered by the flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 cellular processor, speedy LPDDR 5 RAM, and UFS 3.1 storage. You should buy the handset in two configurations- 8GB RAM and 256GB inside storage and 12GB RAM with 256GB inside storage.
The brand new chipset claims to supply as much as 20% larger efficiency as in comparison with the SD888 chipset. Energy effectivity needs to be higher by as much as 30% than the predecessor.
iQOO 9 Professional Efficiency Assessment
The iQOO 9 Professional is loopy quick and delivers steady efficiency so long as it isn’t operating too sizzling. The stable {hardware} delivers on all points, be it day-to-day cellphone duties or demanding operations equivalent to 4K video recording/enhancing, taking part in probably the most graphics-heavy recreation titles, and technically every part that an Android cellphone is able to doing in 2022. Apps load in a jiffy and switching between them is glitch-free.
The cellphone allows you to run the {hardware} at its peak efficiency in ‘Monster’ mode, which after all provides you the perfect efficiency at the price of some heating impact. The ‘Balanced’ mode is really helpful for normal day-to-day operations because it retains the system’s core temperature in test.
The monster mode could be enabled/disabled with only one faucet from the short settings panel. It’s value mentioning that the 90fps mode in BGMI will not be but obtainable on the iQOO 9 Professional, which is a letdown. Apart from, the connectivity efficiency, each Wi-Fi and Bluetooth additionally appear to be higher on the brand new Snapdragon chipset. The in-screen fingerprint scanner can be blazing quick and unlocks the cellphone immediately.
Helpful Sport-Centric Instruments
The iQOO 9 Professional has a discrete graphics chip that upgrades the SDR video games to HDR and enhances the general visible expertise. You additionally get a number of game-centric utilities equivalent to 4D vibration that is useful whereas taking part in video games like BGMI and Asphalt 9.
The cellphone additionally has an E-Sports activities mode that optimizes the {hardware} and limits notifications. You possibly can management such utilities through the sport house overlay, a really useful software for hardcore players.
Are There Any Overheating Points?
You’ll absolutely really feel some warmth radiating from the again panel of the handset whereas taking part in video games, recording 4K movies, and through power-intensive duties. The cellphone additionally heats up with longer information consumption. As an illustration, the metallic body and the again panel warmed up whereas downloading the useful resource packs of video games equivalent to Genshin Influence and BGMI. Occasional body drops had been seen after 35-40 minutes of steady gameplay.
We recorded even larger temperature readings whereas operating some benchmarks. The cellphone’s core temperature spiked to 48-degrees Celsius whereas operating number-crunching CPU benchmarks. The warmth signatures had been principally recorded on the again panel and the metallic body that change into too sizzling to carry the system. We needed to cease utilizing the handset for no less than 10-minutes to let it quiet down earlier than use. This 4nm chipset runs sizzling! This brings us to the benchmark scores.
iQOO 9 Professional Benchmarks Scores
That is our first handset to be powered by the all-new Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. The cellular CPU packs plenty of fast-running cores and is supported by the Adreno 730 GPU. The {hardware} setup scored 1228 within the Geekbench’s single-core take a look at and 3611 within the multi-core take a look at. To present you context, the SD888-powered Xiaomi Mi 11 Extremely scored 1110 and 3397 in the identical take a look at.
Within the PC Mark’s Work 3.0 take a look at that evaluates the cellphone’s total computing efficiency by operating a collection of duties, the iQOO 9 Professional recorded 11110, which once more explains the cellphone’s clean day-to-day efficiency. To check the cellphone’s graphics efficiency, we ran the GFXBench’s 1440 Aztec Ruins Vulkan take a look at and it returned a graphics rating of 47 fps, which beats all earlier flagships we now have examined just lately.
Furthermore, the smartphone scored a finest loop rating of 2576 within the 3D Mark’s Wildlife excessive stress take a look at. The cellphone’s temperature spiked to 53-degrees throughout the demanding 25-minute heavy load take a look at. So far as the Antutu take a look at is anxious, the iQOO 9 Professional scored 849150 within the total computing take a look at beating the SD888 powered units.
iQOO 9 Software program Efficiency
As somebody expects from a top-of-the-line premium smartphone, the iQOO 9 Professional runs the newest Android 12 out-of-the-box. The personalized pores and skin, i.e. the FunTouch OS 12 runs clean and has a fair proportion of utilities and customizations options. Nevertheless, iQOO ought to do one thing in regards to the excessive variety of bloatware that comes preloaded on the premium handset. The customized pores and skin additionally does not really feel as intuitive as Samsung OneUI or realme UI.
Most significantly, the smartphone will solely obtain two main Android software program installments. As compared, manufacturers like Samsung are promising 4 years of software program upgrades. For somebody spending over Rs. 65,000, the two-year software program improve cycle appears an enormous letdown.
iQOO 9 Professional Digital camera {Hardware}
The iQOO 9 Professional borrows some key components from Vivo’s camera-focused smartphones. The tripe-lens digital camera system includes a 50MP gimbal-stabilized Samsung (S5K) GN5 1/1.57″ main sensor backed by a 5-axis gimbal stabilization. It’s accompanied by one other 50MP sensor (Samsung (S5K)JN1 1/2.76″ sensor) with a fisheye lens for wide-angle images and a 16MP Samsung made 1/3.1″ telephoto sensor with 2.5x optical zoom functionality.
For selfies, the iQOO 9 Professional comes outfitted with a 16MP fixed-focus Samsung S5K3P9 1/3.1″ sensor. The digital camera app appears a bit cluttered and will use some fine-tuning. For those who discover, all the digital camera system is engaged on sensors supplied by Samsung. This is the way it carried out in our testing.
iQOO 9 Professional Digital camera Efficiency- Crisp Photos However Software program May Use Some Tuning
- The 50MP main sensor captures crisp pictures, each within the high-resolution mode and within the pixel-binned formation that delivers 12.5MP photographs. Photos come out shiny and present a large dynamic vary. Resolved element appeared spectacular.
- Portraits come out fairly good with each the primary digital camera and the telephoto sensor.
- The primary digital camera generally goes overboard with crucial components. Photos have a tendency to seem over-processed and present greater than required sharpness and unnatural colours, one thing quite common with Samsung-made sensors. Some fine-tuning is required from iQOO’s aspect.
- A professional tip: Shoot within the 50MP high-res. mode and scale back the picture measurement in post-processing to see higher total outcomes.
Spectacular Large-Angle Photographs & First rate Macros
- The pixel-binned 12.5MP wide-angle photographs look excellent and the sensor can ship some wonderful panorama photographs.
- For the reason that 50MP wide-angle lens has autofocus, it may possibly additionally shoot first rate macros. The intense close-up photographs (Vary- 3-4cm) captured in shiny gentle look good and present first rate particulars and shade science.
Fascinating Large-Angle Mode Implementations
- The fish-eye lens makes it potential to take some attention-grabbing photos. You possibly can select between the usual fish-eye mode or can click on photos in three distinctive modes equivalent to Asteroid, Fish Eye, and Crystal Ball.
- Picture high quality appears a bit low with these modes however the distinctive perspective provides worth to the general digital camera setup. Extra manufacturers ought to discover this function.
- The iQOO 9 Professional additionally captures a number of the finest nighttime photographs. The primary digital camera impressed us with its low-light picture high quality.
Video Recording Efficiency
- The iQOO 9 Professional allows you to report 8K 30fps, 4K 30/60 fps and 1080p 30/60fps movies with its predominant digital camera. You possibly can shoot 4K, and 1080p movies with the wide-angle lens however the body charge is proscribed to 30fps. The telephoto sensor does not get recording capabilities. There are three stabilization levels- Commonplace, Extremely, and Horizontal Line. Each gimbal stabilization and EIS (Extremely mode) can be found for the primary digital camera and the ultrawide lens solely will get EIS.
- As anticipated, the primary digital camera shoots the steadies movies, due to each gimbal stabilization and EIS. The 1080p 60fps video footage got here out very steady and vibrant. The 4K 30fps with solely gimbal enabled additionally regarded very comparable by way of stability and high quality.
- The wide-angle movies additionally signify wonderful particulars and good shade science.
General, the iQOO 9 Professional’s promising digital camera {hardware} additionally delivers outcomes the real-life situations. With some software program tuning, the digital camera can carry out even higher.
iQOO 9 Professional Battery Life & Quick-Charging Velocity
The iQOO 9 Professional is powered by a modest 4,700 mAh battery cell that did not impress us a lot but additionally by no means allow us to down. The cellphone often lasted for a day with a average to some heavy utilization that principally concerned calling, Twitter, making some reels on Instagram, taking notes, taking part in two to a few BGMI Loss of life Area classes, and a few digital camera utilization. We solely wanted the charger on the finish of the day because the battery energy was diminished to >15%.
Since there’s an excessive amount of give attention to gaming right here, we performed some demanding titles on a stretch and as anticipated, it took a toll on the battery life. Fortunately, the handset helps the quickest fast-charging tech obtainable in India, i.e. the 120W FlashCharge. It refuels the cellphone’s 4,700 mAh battery from flat to 100% in about 21-minutes. Furthermore, the handset additionally helps 50W wi-fi charging, which is larger than a number of the wired fast-charging tech supplied on flagship units.
Verdict
iQOO’s first flagship handset is a promising product and will not disappoint you with its total options and efficiency. Like another flagship system from the home of BBK Electronics, the iQOO 9 Professional packs plenty of expertise at pretty aggressive pricing in the event you contemplate Samsung or Apple units. It is a good cellphone for gaming lovers and images lovers/bloggers that shoot and edit movies on their smartphones.
However since it is a pretty new model in India, spending near Rs. 70,000 could make anybody assume twice in regards to the long-term returns. In such instances, you possibly can contemplate the Samsung Galaxy S22, Apple iPhone 13 or can look forward to the upcoming OnePlus 10 Professional and the Xiaomi Mi 12 Extremely.