After nearly a year, iQOO entered the mid-range market segment with the launch of new offerings – iQOO 7 and iQOO 7 Legend. As the mid-range smartphone market is a tough one to crack, customers seek to get more value for the price they offer. Given that the iQOO 7 features a 120Hz AMOLED panel, supports 65W super-fast charging, and has an octa-core Snapdragon 870 processor, will the smartphone be able to compete in this segment? Let’s take a look at the review of iQOO 7 from here.
Box Contents
- iQOO 7 smartphone
- USB Type-C Cable
- 66W fast charger
- Clear protective case
- User manual
Display, Hardware, and Design
With the first look, the iQOO 7 is among the best-looking smartphones of this year. The device flaunts a curved-edge rear and an AG matte glass back. It feels premium and also keeps fingerprints smudges away. The smartphone from iQOO measures 8.4mm in thickness and weighs under 200 grams. It opens up a new category of sleek and lightweight phones that perform well. The lightweight profile is possible with a polycarbonate build but it still feels premium.
At the rear, the iQOO 7 boasts a triple-camera setup that adds to the pleasant aesthetic of the smartphone. To summarize, the device is handy, premium, and fits with the current trend.
Moving on to the button layout, the right edge of the smartphone houses the power button and volume rockers, while the left edge is free from buttons. There is a flat bottom with the speaker grille, Type-C port, SIM tray, and a microphone. At the top, you will see a secondary microphone to help in noise cancellation.
When it comes to design, the iQOO 7 makes use of a 6.62-inches Full HD+ AMOLED panel with an aspect ratio of 20:9 and a refresh rate of 120Hz. The screen is quite bright even under direct sunlight and offers great brightness and viewing angles. If you are using this smartphone to play games or watch videos, then it will be a visual treat.
There is a punch-hole cutout at the top center of the screen to house a 16MP selfie camera sensor. The panel is surrounded by slim bezels. There is an intelligent display chipset for MEMC as well. On the whole, the display is sharp, smooth, produces rich colors, and is quite impressive. During our review, we enjoyed watching movies and web series, and it offered exceptional colors.
Camera
The iQOO 7 features a triple-camera setup at the rear comprising a 48MP Sony IMX598 with OIS, a 13MP secondary wide-angle camera, and a 2MP tertiary mono sensor that helps while clicking portrait shots. At the front, there is a 16MP sensor for selfies.
In terms of camera performance, the iQOO 7 captures ample details in proper daylight. The colors pop up nicely, and the dynamic range is pretty wide. Given its price, the iQOO smartphone does a good job. In low-light and night conditions, the iQOO 7 results in very minimal noise that is acceptable. In these scenarios, OIS comes to the rescue.
iQOO 7’s portrait camera does a good job in edge detection. Also, there are several style filters to keep things interesting. The wide-angle lens is used for impressive shots.
In terms of video recording, the iQOO 7 lets you record up to 4K videos at a frame rate of 60 fps. The OIS helps capture stable videos at 1080p and the quality of videos is average.
To summarize, the camera quality of the iQOO 7 is impressive in both daylight and low-light conditions. The performance lags behind in dark scenes but is better than what we get from other mid-range smartphones.
Software, UI, and Apps
iQOO 7 boots Funtouch OS 11.1 on top of Android 11. The UI looks and feels similar to other vivo smartphones. It comes preloaded with apps such as Flipkart, Netflix, Facebook, Snapchat, etc. and these can be uninstalled. Notably, the smartphone has a couple of features for gaming enthusiasts. These are seen under the Ultra Game Mode and allow you to enhance the visual experience, let run a game in the background, and keep the display turned off to save the battery life and access some settings quickly even amidst gameplay.
Fingerprint sensor And Face unlock
The iQOO 7 comes equipped with a blazing-fast and accurate fingerprint reader that is embedded within the display. It is positioned quite close to the bottom edge and could have been a bit higher. Also, the face unlocks feature also works pretty fine and accurately.
Music Player And Multimedia
The iQOO 7 uses a default Music Player bundled with audio effects and equalizer presets. The stereo speakers are quite loud. It comes with DRM L1 certification to stream Full HD content on streaming apps including Netflix, YouTube, and Prime. It also supports HDR on YouTube after an update that was pushed recently.
Dual SIM And Connectivity
In terms of connectivity, the iQOO 7 comes with support for 5G with n78 band for India, has dual 4G VoLTE, thereby supporting 4G on both SIM cards at the same time. It features other connectivity aspects such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.1, GPS and NFC.
Performance
On the performance front, the iQOO 7 gets the power from a Snapdragon 870 processor based on the 7nm process. Given that it is a yesteryear flagship processor, this chipset offers a lot of horsepower to the device. This processor is backed by the Adreno 650 GPU alongside up to 12GB and up to 256GB of storage space.
The smartphone is 5G compatible and comes with a graphite layer offering a full-coverage liquid cooling system for efficient heat dissipation. In our review, we used the iQOO to play Call of Duty, and it performed very well. However, the smartphone gets warm by using it for intense gaming for an hour. Apart from this, there is no glitch or lag while gaming.
For its asking price, the Snapdragon 870 brings great performance to the iQOO7. It doesn’t give the feel of using a mid-range smartphone. There is a capability to extend the RAM by 3GB but 12GB of RAM should suffice then usual tasks. Check out some synthetic benchmark scores below.
Battery Life
Let alone hardware performance, the iQOO 7 is fueled by a 4400 mAh battery along with support for 65W fast charging support. This battery lasts for a full day under moderate usage. Besides this, the charger that is bundled can refuel the battery completely in just 30 minutes.
Conclusion
The iQOO 7 offers flagship-level performance, and it checks almost all boxes. Despite this, the smartphone is priced at Rs. 31,990 offers a great value for money. The smartphone is sleek and lightweight, flaunts a 120Hz AMOLED display, supports 65W superfast charging technology, and uses a Snapdragon 870 SoC. If you are looking for a smartphone with premium features, then you will not have to look any further than 5G-enabled iQOO 7 will be a good buy. It is available from Amazon.in and iQOO.com.