iQOO 12 Review – A Beast that Amazed

Although we have pretty much approaching the end of 2023, brands are still keeping up with the latest and greatest for it’s consumer in order to keep the demands going. Usually SOC manufacturers may just be pushing their new stuff over, and this is no exception for Qualcomm with it’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.

We will look at the offering from Iqoo (a sub brand of vivo) and Qualcomm, the iQOO 12, which runs on technically one of the latest and fastest phone you can find for now.

Unboxing

• iQOO 12 Phone
• Translucent Case
• 120W Charger
• USB A to C Cable
• SIM Ejector

Design

iQOO did not forgo it’s own objective, that is designing a phone that combines both speed and some beauty in it. First of all, its back cover curves resembles a sports car, a brand collaboration between BMW and iQOO that is slated on to it, giving it a curves like a sports car. That being said, the Iqoo 12 still has all the bells and whistles that still makes it elegantly an all rounder flagship, with etched textures, Enameled glass and metal body. The phone is weighted around 202 grams with thickness measured at 8.2mm, surely it is not the slimmest or the lightest, but it is necessary to build a sturdier body that packs such powerful hardware inside, at least for now where it does uses the latest processor inside. At least all I can say is holding and operating on it does not felt heavy on the hands, that’s probably due to the way on how they arrange the internal hardware to be balanced inside.

The rest is your standard stuff, a USB C port, buttons, speakers on the bottom and another on the top along with dual microphone for communications and noise cancellation. Other than that you do get an infrared port for executing controls over your favorite electronic or electric devices, which is pretty handy when you need one.

Display & Audio

No doubt, the 6.78 inch LTPO AMOLED screen does display all the vibrant color it can produce with pretty good accuracy and images are very sharp too. Of course the very big advantage that the iQOO 12 has within the display department is the fast refresh rate of 144hz and will lower down the refresh rate when it’s idle or using non intensive apps. It can get pretty bright too, up to 1400nits of brightness while accuracy is still well maintained even in dark places with it’s Quad HD panel. To ensure the lowest flickering possible, the iQOO 12 came with 2,160Hz pulse width modulation (PWM) for better viewing comfort. For those who loves to stream movies on the phone, it is L1 certified for DRM streaming applications such as Netflix or Disney+.

Now let’s get on to the audio side, the iQOO 12 houses a pair of stereo speaker for fuller, better enjoyment accompanied with the tuning support from iQOO’s Super Audio, allowing 4 pre-determined audio mode that suits most general user needs, and the sound quality is loud with no distortion, and clear on tested genre of music selections and gaming needs.

Camera

Most gaming phone starts to pick up seriously on the camera, and this is no exception with the iQOO 12, where this phone is decently equipped with a 50MP wide angle lens with PDAF and OIS, while the next one is a 64MP periscope telephoto lens and finally a 50MP ultrawide lens.

Day time shots

Evening/Night Shots

Suffice to say it is rare to see a gaming oriented phone equipped with a telephoto lens, but moving forward I guess this will be a norm as the Iqoo 12 is aiming not just being a gaming phone, but more as an all rounder to balance between performance and capabilities within it. Heck you get a Supermoon mode too, which allows you to take photo of the moon when zoomed above 30X (up to 100X). We did not test with the moon mode however we took a mix of shots including super zoom ones and I am actually impressed with it when zooming towards opposite and there is only a tiny bit of accuracy loss which is not substantial at all and this shows Iqoo effort in improving and carrying over some of the nice features from vivo. Most shots are able to held good dynamic range however one should take note that the Iqoo 12 still has some soft portion of images when trying to take shots in ultrawide mode, but I believe can that be ignored as this mostly happens when taking night shots. Speaking of night shots, the Iqoo 12 did things quite decently by trying to enhance and brighten the images via post processing and AI, so I would say that images are pretty usable especially when facing surrounding such as neon lights and the streets. This can be simply a good point and shoot camera phone that one would use in your hands.

While it is all mostly good, the video taking is best set to 1080P or 4k at 60FPS retaining it’s OIS capability, while there is 8K with 30FPS, be prepared to have good steady hands while moving, as this video taking mode will disable the OIS mode, but then the mode is there and it is recommended to use with a tripod should you wanted to record in 8K, otherwise I am very happy with the 4K recording all the way with close to no tearing and so far, no artifacts were seen.

Performance, Interface, Benchmarks

This is the part where the iQOO 12 shines, and it goes bright with the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SOC with 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of internal storage. This is actually one of the best that one would get for now with the latest processor with good future readiness on applications and games that is ever coming publish out with more advances required soon, especially in 2024. Should you need more RAM, there is an extended RAM option which uses internal storage as virtual memory up to an additional 16GB of virtual memory. A 5000MaH battery is in place and according to my typical usage of a browsing mix, Social media, some gaming, calls, messages, it can last about 1.5 days, and if that’s not enough, the 120W supplied charger will get you back on track from 10% to full about a little over 25 minutes.

Extending to the performance and experience portion, the iQOO 12 features a Q1 Chip which is in house developed in enhancing the user’s gaming and application experience with better multitasking capabilities, multiple operational apps at the same time and maintaining a smooth framerate with game frame interpolation. Games such as Genshin, CoD Mobile or Mobile Legends should not have problem in sustaining frame rate longer up to 30 minutes before it drops while the vapor chamber keeps the processing cool.

The iQOO 12 is powered by Android 14 with Funtouch OS 14 that enhances experience with User Privacy and Security, new video editing tools, and smoother framerate controls among the main focus of the OS along with with all of the standard Android 14 updates including the revamped Material You Design from Google. Compared to the last UI iteration, the Funtouch OS 14 seems to be smoother and gave more responsiveness on day to day usage and gets better the more you operate on the phone.

Last but not least here’s the benchmarks and to no surprises, this is among the fastest performing phone in terms of processing power that you can get today, at the time of this writing within our test databases.

Technical Specifications

Verdict & Conclusion

The iQOO 12 is one of the eye opener attempt in bridging a formidable camera setup with the latest it has to offer in terms of performance and specifications, and they done it with good balance that makes one held on the device with an all rounder purpose, and this is no longer just a gaming phone, it is a phone that takes good images and processing power that goes on with multi tasking for a whole day. With the price of RM3399, this can be an easy recommendation should you want something that works, plays and entertain you.