iQOO today launched the Neo 10R smartphone in India in the new Neo 10 series and is the first from the company in the new R series. This has good specifications on paper including a high refresh rate OLED display, good performance, and a large battery. Is this the best phone in the market for gaming in the under 30K price range? Let use dive into the review to find out.
| Box Contents |
| Camera |
| Battery Life |
| Conclusion |
Box Contents
- iQOO Neo 10R 12GB + 256GB version in MoonKnight Titanium colour
- Clear Silicon case
- USB Type-C Cable
- 80W Super FlashCharge wall adapter
- SIM ejector tool
- Quick start guide and Warranty information
Display, Hardware and Design
The iQOO Neo 10R sports a 6.78-inch (2800×1260 pixels) 1.5K 20:9 aspect ratio AMOLED display with 144Hz refresh rate. The screen has up to 4500 nits peak brightness. The colour output good as well since it has 1.07 billion colors.
You can select between 1080p and 1.5K display options. The 144Hz refresh rate, 300Hz touch sampling rate and 2000Hz instant touch sampling rate offer a smooth user experience, especially when you are scrolling through the UI and when gaming.
You can select from standard (default), professional and bright screen colour modes. You can select smart switch or force it to 60Hz or 144Hz. Visual enhancement optimizes the color and contrast of some pictures for more vivid display effects, says the company. There is 3840Hz PWM Dimming that is automatically activated when you are using the phone in low brightness. There is also DC Dimming. The screen has SCHOTT Xensation Up glass protection.
The phone has a new 32MP front camera inside the notch, compared to 16MP in the most models, including iQOO Neo 9 Pro. There is an earpiece on the top edge which also works as a secondary speaker. You can see ultra-narrow 1.54mm bezels on the sides, but the bottom bezel is 2.39mm. The haptic feedback is good.
Coming to the button placements and ports, the power button is present on the right side along with the volume rockers. There is nothing on the left side. The dual SIM slot, primary microphone, USB Type-C port and the loudspeaker grill are present on the bottom and the secondary microphone is present on the top along with the IR blaster. The phone has a plastic frame, but comes with a matte finish so it doesn’t attract fingerprints.
It weighs 196 grams, which is decent even though it packs a 6400mAh battery. The weight distribution is good.
The MoonKnight Titanium colour that we have reimagines strength with its distinctive 3D moon texture, and the titanium finish reflects the rugged beauty of the moon’s surface, says the company.
The phone also comes in a Raging Blue colour that features a dual tone design with pixel texture which is inspired by the racing track. It has IP65 ratings for dust and splash resistance.
Camera
- 50MP rear camera with 1/ 1.95″ Sony IMX882 sensor, f/1.79 aperture, OIS
- 8MP ultra-wide angle lens with GC08A3-WA1XA sensor, f/2.2 aperture
- 32MP GC32E1-WA1XA front-facing camera, f/2.45 aperture
The camera UI is the same as other phones running Funtouch OS. It includes several features such as AR stickers, long exposure, 50MP mode, supermoon, fisheye 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 32MP.
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. There is a 8MP ultra-wide camera is decent. The portrait mode has good edge detection.
Low-light images are decent as well, but there is noise when you zoom in. The night mode is useful, thanks to the optimization. There is also supermoon mode with up to 20x zoom, compared to 10x in the normal mode. The supermoon option is a good addition, but you can’t compare it to flagships.
The new 32MP camera does a good 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 4k resolution at up to 60 fps from the rear camera, and the front camera finally supports 4K 30 fps recording, which the older mid-range iQOO phones lacked. It has standard and ultra stabilization, but the resolution is down to 1080p in ultra option since it crops the content. OIS does a good job in stabilization. It doesn’t have HDR video recording, but it has portrait video recording at 1080p 30 fps.
Software, UI and Apps
Coming to the software, the phone runs on Android 15 with Funtouch OS 15 on top. It recently got Android security patch for March 2025. The iQOO Neo 10R will get 3 years of Android OS updates and 4 years of security updates.
Funtouch OS 15 brings vivo’s Priority Scheduling model for 15% faster app startup time, has zRAM compression algorithm, resulting in a 40% boost in compression speed, vivo’s Origin Animation for a more natural and intuitive user experience. The Lightning-Speed Engine offers faster app launches, and Aqua Dynamic Effect adds a visually pleasing touch to system interactions.
AI Image Lab uses artificial intelligence to automatically improve photo quality with AI Photo Enhance, remove shadows from documents, erase unwanted content with AI eraser and image cutouts. Live wallpapers are now seamless, and there is also customized call background. There is Link to Windows that enhances collaboration between your vivo device and PC. It also has Circle to Search feature.
Out of 12GB of LPDDR5X Ultra RAM about 11.03GB is usable, out of which 4GB is free when the default apps are running in the background. There is additional 12GB RAM expansion feature. Out of 256GB of UFS 4.1 storage, 194GB is free out of the box. The 128GB version of the phone use UFS 3.1 storage.
Since the phone has an IR blaster, it comes with a Smart Remote app. Apart from the usual set of utility and Google apps, it comes preloaded with a lot of apps such as Amazon, Facebook, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Netflix and PhonePe. These apps can be uninstalled, but they come back after reset.
Fingerprint sensor and Face unlock
The phone has an optical in-display fingerprint sensor which immediately unlocks the phone just by keeping your finger on the sensor. You can add up to 5 fingerprints. There are different animation styles that display when you unlock, which you can disable. 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. There is audio super resolution, and super audio features. Audio through the stereo speakers is crisp 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 also supports HDR playback on Netflix and YouTube.
Dual SIM and Connectivity
It has the usual set of connectivity features such as 5G with support forSA: n1/n3/n5/n8/n28/n38/n40/n41/n77/n78 and NSA: n1/n3/n40/n41/n77/n78
bands, and supports Airtel and Jio 5G out of the box. There is also dual 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 6 802.11be (2.4 GHz, 5 GHz), Bluetooth 5.4, GPS + GLONASS, but it lacks NFC support. It also has USB OTG support, and it has USB 2.0. We did not face any call drops and the earpiece volume is good.
The iQOO Neo 10R’s body SAR is 0.96W/Kg and head SAR is at 0.97/Kg which is almost similar to iQOO Neo9 Pro, which is way under the limit in India which is 1.6 W/kg (over 1 g).
Performance and Benchmarks
This is one of the few phones to be powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 SoC in India. It uses the same microarchitecture as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, but the CPU cores are underclocked and this uses a different GPU.
It uses 1 x Kryo Prime CPU (Arm Cortex-X4 based) at up to 3GHz, 4 x Kryo Performance CPUs (Arm Cortex-A720 based) at up to 2.8GHz and 3x Kryo Efficiency CPUs (Arm Cortex-A520 based) at up to 2GHz.
The SoC is fabricated using the TSMC 4nm Process Technology, same as Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. The phone has 6043mm² canopy VC liquid cooling.
The Adreno 735 GPU has Real-time Hardware-Accelerated Ray Tracing, but it doesn’t have support for Unreal Engine 5 Lumen Global Illumination and Reflections System present in the 8 Gen 3 since there is change in the GPU which offers similar performance as the Adreno GPU present in the 8 Gen 2.
We did not face any issues or frame drops in the graphic-intensive games like COD, BGMI and Genshin Impact. It supports 90 fps gaming in BGMI. It reached maximum 41º in our testing indoors in 5G, but this might vary outdoors.
In 3D Mark wild life stress test, it scored 81% which is decent. The temperature shot up from 36 to 46 degrees, which is decent. That said, check out some synthetic benchmark scores below.
As you can see, the iQOO Neo 10R is only slightly better than some phones, and the Neo9 Pro with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is on top.
Battery life
Coming to the battery life, the phone packs a 6400mAh (typical) battery, which huge. It can easily last for a day with heavy use, thanks to the optimization.
I got close to 8 hours of screen on time with over 2 days of use, mostly on Wi-Fi, and occasional 5G use with Smart refresh rate. This is way better than the iQOO Neo 9 Pro and other iQOO phones.
Since the phone has support for 80W fast charging, it can charge up to 50% in about half an hour and up to 100% in less than an hour. You will have to enable fast charging option if you want to reduce the charging time, but the phone gets a bit hot. There is also a bypass charging feature when gaming, so the charging current bypasses the battery to go straight to the motherboard, so it doesn’t affect the battery.
It doesn’t have wireless charging support, but has 7.5W reverse charging to charge other devices. The company says that the battery health will be ≥80% even after 1600 full charge cycles.
Conclusion
At a starting price of Rs. 26,999, the iQOO Neo 10R offers good performance and battery life, and the camera is decent as well in most cases. Wish the phone had NFC support, and started at 256GB model instead of 128GB model.
Pricing and availability
The iQOO Neo 10R comes in MoonKnight Titanium and Raging Blue colours and is priced at Rs. 26,999 for the 8GB + 128GB version, Rs. 28,999 for the 8GB + 256GB model and the 12GB + 256GB model costs Rs. 30,999. With offer, the effective starting price is Rs. 24,999.
It will be available from Amazon.in and iQOO online store from March 19th with pre-booking starting from today, March 11th with availability for pre-book users on March 18th.
Alternatives
The POCO F6 is the direct competitor at a cheaper rate. The iQOO Neo9 Pro refurbished unit is available from the official iQOO India online store for Rs. 24,999 for the 12GB + 256GB model.
Pros
- 144Hz 1.5K AMOLED HDR display is good
- Smooth performance and good gaming performance
- Decent camera performance in most cases
- Excellent battery life with 80W fast charging
Cons
- No NFC support
- 128GB entry level model
- A lot of preloaded apps