iQOO launched its Z6 Lite 5G smartphone in India last month, and it is the company’s most affordable 5G phone in India. This is the first phone in the world to be powered by the latest Snapdragon 4 Gen 1. Is this the best 5G phone in the price range? Is this worth the price? Let use dive into the review to find out.
| Box Contents |
| Camera |
| Battery Life |
| Conclusion |
Box Contents
- iQOO Z6 Lite 5G in Stellar Green colour
- USB Type-C Cable
- SIM Ejector tool
- Clear protection case
The phone doesn’t come with a charger in the box.
Display, Hardware and Design
The iQOO Z6 Lite 5G sports a 6.58-inch (1080 x 2408 pixels) Full HD+ 20:9 aspect ratio LCD screen with 120Hz refresh rate. The display is bright, the viewing angles are good, and the sunlight legibility is good as well.
You can select from standard (default), professional and bright screen colour modes. The 120Hz refresh rate offers a smooth user experience, especially when you are scrolling through the UI and when gaming. You can select smart switch or force it to 60Hz, 90Hz or 120Hz. There is 240Hz touch sampling rate.
The phone has a 8MP front camera inside the notch. There is an earpiece on the top edge.
You can also notice a small bezel below the screen. The haptic feedback is decent.
Coming to the button placements and ports, the power button embedded with the fingerprint scanner along with the volume rockers are present on the right side. The hybrid dual SIM slot is present on the top. The 3.5mm audio jack, microphone, USB Type-C port and the loudspeaker grill are present on the bottom. The phone has a polycarbonate frame with a matte finish.
The back of the phone has a camera part with dual rear cameras. It also has iQOO branding. Even though it has a polycarbonate back, it looks and feels good to hold, and has a smooth matte finish that doesn’t attract fingerprints. The phone is just 8.25mm thick and weighs 194 grams since it has a huge 5000mAh battery.
Camera
- 50MP rear camera with f/1.8 aperture
- 2MP macro camera with f/2.4 aperture
- 8MP front-facing camera with f/2.0 aperture
The camera UI is the same as other phones running Funtouch OS 12. It includes several features such as AR stickers, Pro mode, 50MP mode and more. Even though the phone has a 50MP rear camera, the final output is 12.5MP in size after pixel binning, and the front camera output is 8MP.
Coming to the camera quality, the daylight shots are good, and it is recommended to enable HDR option which automatically switches on HDR according to the shot, so that the dynamic range is good. The camera can focus quickly. Macro shots are good as well, but the 2MP macro camera is just useless since the resolution is low. The phone doesn’t have a wide-angle camera.
There is portrait mode, and you can adjust the aperture manually in the portrait mode for the best background blur. The eye autofocus feature lets you focus the subject clearly. Low-light images are decent, but it could have been better. The night mode is slightly better, but doesn’t offer much. Also, the 4GB RAM model lacks the Night Mode option.
The 8MP camera is decent in daylight, and the front camera portrait is decent as well, but it is not the best when it comes to low-light.
Check out some camera samples below
It can record videos at 1080p resolution at up to 60 fps from the rear camera, and the front camera supports 1080p 30fps recording.
Software, UI and Apps
Coming to the software, the phone runs on Android 12 with Funtouch OS 12 on top. It has Android security patch for September 2022. The company has promised two years of Android updates and three years of monthly security updates. Funtouch OS 12 brings new home screen widgets such as Nano Music Player, Album highlights, Stickers, grid view for multitasking, extended RAM technology allocates part of the ROM storage to the RAM and increases RAM space as well as Android 12 features such as privacy dashboard, security enhancements, Microphone & camera indicators and more.
Out of 6GB of LPDDR4X RAM about 5.5GB is usable, out of which 2.5GB is free when the default apps are running in the background. Out of 128GB of UFS storage, 105GB is free out of the box. We got about 500MBps sequential read speed on Android Bench.
Apart from the usual set of utility and Google apps, it comes preloaded with a lot of apps such as Facebook, Spotify, Byjus, Amazon, LinkedIn, Moj and more. These apps can be uninstalled, but they come back after reset.
Fingerprint sensor and Face unlock
The phone has a side-mounted fingerprint sensor which immediately unlocks the phone just by keeping your finger on the sensor. The phone also has face unlock that can unlock the phone in seconds, but it is not as secure as fingerprint.
Music and Multimedia
The default Music Player also has equalizer and DeepField sound effects. It doesn’t have FM Radio support. Audio through the bottom-ported speaker is good and loud. Audio through the headphones is good as well. This has Widevine L1 so that you can play HD content on Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and other streaming apps. It doesn’t supports HDR playback on Netflix or YouTube, even though the DRM Info apps shows that it is HDR certified.
Dual SIM and Connectivity
It has the usual set of connectivity features and has G with support for n77 and n78 bands, dual 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 ac (2.4 + 5GHz), Bluetooth 5.1, GPS + GLONASS, but doesn’t have NFC support. It also has USB OTG support. The phone also has carrier aggregation. We did not face any call drops and the earpiece volume is good, even though it is present on the top edge.
The iQOO Z6 Lite 5G’s body SAR is 0.66W/Kg and head SAR is at 1.18/Kg which is slightly high compared to some mid-range phones, but it well under the limit in India which is 1.6 W/kg (over 1 g).
Performance and Benchmarks
This is the first phone to be powered by Snapdragon 4 Gen 1 6nm Mobile Platform that uses Qualcomm Kryo CPUs. It has 2 x Kryo Performance CPUs (A78-based) at up to 2GHz, 6 x Kryo Efficiency CPUs (A55-based) at up to 1.80GHz.
The Adreno GPU offers a smooth gaming performance, and the phone doesn’t hot when gaming, thanks to 4-component cooling system that includes graphite cooling film, cooling copper foil, thermal gel, and temperature sensor that can effectively cool down the phone when it is under high load.
The phone gets a bit warm on intensive gaming, but it doesn’t too hot. We did not face any issues or frame drops in the graphic-intensive games like COD, BGMI and Genshin Impact. It reached maximum 39º in our testing indoors in Wi-Fi, but this might vary outdoors in 4G. That said, check out some synthetic benchmark scores below.
This shows that the phone comes close to Snapdragon 695 SoC, and beats the Dimensity 810 in most benchmarks.
Battery life
Coming to the battery life, the phone packs a 5000mAh (typical) battery, which common in most mid-range phones. It can easily last for up to two days with typical use and a day with heavy use with 4G enabled, thanks to the optimization. I got over 6 hours of screen on time with 2 days of use, mostly on Wi-Fi. Since the phone has support for 18W fast charging, it can charge from 0 to 50% in about an hour, and up to 100% takes over 2 hours. Wish the company offered a charge in the box.
Conclusion
At a starting price of Rs. 13,999, the iQOO Z6 Lite is a decent phone in the budget. The phone offers smooth performance, and there is no heating issue when gaming. The camera is good in daylight and the battery life is good as well. There is no ultra-wide camera, those who go for the 64GB version might need a dedicated microSD slot.
Pricing and availability
The iQOO Z6 Lite 5G is priced at Rs. 13,999 for the 4GB + 64GB model and the 6GB + 128GB version costs Rs. 15,499. It is available from Amazon.in and iQOO.com. Even though there might not be Rs. 2500 instant discount that was available at the launch, buyers still get discount on select cards.
Pros
- Large, 120Hz display is good
- Smooth performance and good gaming performance
- Good battery life
Cons
- Average low-light camera performance and no night mode in the 4GB model
- No charger in the box
- Only two 5G bands