Smartphone firms face intense competitors within the premium midrange phase in India, and any handset that debuts underneath the Rs. 40,000 mark wants to be a jack of all trades — with a strong chipset, dependable cameras, and a contemporary design. iQoo has now launched the Neo 9 Pro, a handset that’s geared up with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip and a 50-megapixel major rear digital camera. This handset will compete with the OnePlus 12R, the Samsung Galaxy A54, Nothing Phone 2, and Oppo Reno 11 Pro.
iQoo Neo 9 Pro value in India
The (*9*)iQoo Neo 9 Pro is priced at Rs. 37,999 for the 8GB+256GB RAM and storage configuration, whereas the 12GB+256 variant is priced at Rs. 39,999. A 3rd variant with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage shall be out there at Rs. 35,999 on March 21. The cellphone ships with a USB Type-C to Type-C cable within the field, together with a 120W SuperVOOC charger and a clear TPU cowl.
The handset is obtainable by way of Amazon in a Conqueror Black colourway with an AG Glass Fiery Red end, and a Fiery Red color possibility with a dual-tone vegan leather-based again materials.
iQoo Neo 9 Pro Review: Design
Depending on which model of the cellphone you purchase, the iQoo Neo 9 Pro is supplied with a rear panel that’s manufactured from glass or vegan leather-based. I examined the Fiery Red mannequin geared up with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of inbuilt storage. This handset has a flat AMOLED display screen together with flat edges which can be crimson in color with a matte end that does not decide up fingerprints.
There’s a centre-aligned selfie digital camera situated in a gap punch cutout on the prime of the display screen. The show has a pre-applied skinny plastic scratch protector. At the again, there is a vertical twin rear digital camera module situated on the prime left nook, with a metallic ring across the digital camera glass.
The iQoo Neo 9 Pro Fiery Red colourway has a vegan leather-based rear panel
There’s a small iQoo brand situated on the backside of the display screen, and the phrases “Neo” and “Power to Win” are faintly embossed on the white vegan leather-based materials, underneath the rear digital camera. Aside from these, there is no different textual content or branding on the handset.
The rear panel is an element white, half crimson and feels mushy to the contact. Due to the sunshine colors, it is probably to decide up marks and stains over time, so that you’re in all probability higher off with a clear case if you would like to exhibit the cellphone’s shiny colors. The cellphone is not very slippery, even with out the included TPU case.
iQoo Neo 9 Pro Review: Specifications and software program
iQoo has geared up the Neo 9 Pro with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC— Qualcomm’s premium cellular processor launched in late 2022 — paired with the corporate’s devoted Q1 chip. This cellphone sports activities a 6.78-inch AMOLED display screen. The handset is supplied with up to 12GB of RAM and up to 256GB of inbuilt storage. It helps Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, 5G, 4G LTE, and GPS connectivity. The cellphone has a USB Type-C port for information transfers and charging. There’s no headphone jack on the iQoo Neo 9 Pro.
Running on Android 14-based Funtouch OS 14 out-of-the-box, the Neo 9 Pro options the identical interface that’s out there on the corporate’s different smartphones, together with the iQoo 12 that was launched final yr. There are 4 preinstalled apps on the cellphone — Netflix, Spotify, Snapchat, Facebook, and PhonePe. iQoo says the cellphone will get 3 years of OS updates with an extra yr of safety updates.
The iQoo Neo 9 Pro runs on Android 14-based Funtouch OS 14
The handset comes with Amazon, Facebook, LinkedIn, Netflix, PhonePe, and Snapchat — you possibly can uninstall all of those apps. While reviewing the iQoo 12, I used to be recurrently spammed with notifications asking me to strive apps, with multiple notification on some days. However, with the iQoo Neo 9 Pro, I found that clearing the V-Appstore’s information and by no means opening it — or disabling the notification permission for the app — prevented any promotional messages from being displayed.
iQoo Neo 9 Pro Review: Performance
With a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset and up to 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM (the mannequin that I examined), the iQoo Neo 9 Pro is a really highly effective smartphone that ought to find a way to sort out practically something you possibly can throw at it. This consists of day to day duties like responding to work emails, chatting on WhatsApp, to modifying and exporting high-resolution movies.
In phrases of gaming, I used to be ready to play Fortnite with the “Epic” (90fps) graphics preset and there was no lag or stutter after about 40 minutes of playtime. Meanwhile, MiHiYo’s very demanding Genshin Impact additionally ran on the “High” setting, with little to no affect on efficiency. This cellphone also can run different widespread video games like Asphalt 9 and Call of Duty: Mobile effortlessly, with none throttling after an hour of gameplay.
Performance on the Neo 9 Pro is on par with different handsets with the identical chipset
With Funtouch OS 14 primarily based on Android 14, the iQoo Neo 9 handles multitasking fairly nicely, with 12GB of RAM. The smartphone’s reminiscence can also be optimised, and apps are retained in reminiscence even when a demanding app or recreation is launched, or the digital camera is used. Copying recordsdata to and from the gadget — particularly the previous — can also be very quick, thanks to the UFS 4.0 inbuilt storage.
On the AnTuTu v10 benchmark take a look at, the iQoo Neo 9 Pro scored 1,585,868 factors. That’s so much increased than the Mi 13 and Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, which have 1,541,517 and 1,496,078 factors, respectively. iQoo’s new handset scored 2,050 and 5,741 factors within the Geekbench 6 single core and multi core exams, beating the Galaxy S23 Ultra which scored 1,900 and 5,034 factors in the identical exams.
I additionally ran three GFXBench exams on the iQoo Neo 9 Pro — it ran at 120fps within the GFXB T-rex benchmark, and 119fps and 85fps within the Manhattan 3.1 and Car Chase exams, respectively. The cellphone “Maxed Out” the 3DMark Slingshot, Slingshot Extreme (OpenGL), and Wild Life exams. It scored 12,789 factors on the 3DMark Wild Life Unlimited benchmark.
The AMOLED display screen on the iQoo Neo 9 Pro is seen in shiny daylight
The cellphone is supplied with a big 6.78-inch 1.5K (1,260×2,800 pixels) LTPO AMOLED display screen with a 144Hz refresh fee and 451ppi pixel density. While it is actually not as shiny as flagship Android smartphones, the show is shiny sufficient to be utilized in direct daylight. You also can use the cellphone in low gentle eventualities with out straining your eyes — it will get fairly dim with 2,160Hz pulse-width modulation (PWM) dimming.
Equipped with a 5,160mAh battery, the iQoo Neo 9 Pro ran for 21 hours and 27 minutes on a single cost throughout our HD video loop playback battery take a look at, and I might go a complete day with out draining the battery fully — with a little bit of gaming and average day-to-day app and digital camera utilization. If you allow the built-in energy saver mode, you need to be ready to rise up to a day and a half of battery backup.
You can use the included 120W SuperVOOC charger to totally cost the cellphone inside 26 minutes. There’s no wi-fi charging on this handset, however that is par for the course with practically all smartphones on this value phase. The cellphone has an IP54 ranking for mud and splash resistance — it must be positive in the event you get caught in gentle rain whereas open air with out an umbrella. The in-display fingerprint sensor is generally responsive, however it’s not the quickest on a cellphone on this value phase.
iQoo Neo 9 Pro Review: Cameras
The iQoo Neo 9 Pro is supplied with a twin rear digital camera setup that features a 50-megapixel major digital camera with a 1/1.49-inch Sony IMX920 sensor and an f/1.88 aperture and optical picture stabilisation (OIS), together with an 8-megapixel extremely wide-angle digital camera with a OmniVision OV08D10 sensor with an f/2.2 aperture. On the entrance, there is a 16-megapixel digital camera with a Samsung S5K3P9SP04-FGX9 sensor with a f/2.5 aperture for selfies and video chats.
Images shot through the day have a variety of element (faucet to increase)
The firm has geared up this smartphone with a completely featured digital camera utility, full with a Pro mode. You can swipe on the viewfinder to swap between modes, and a few modes might be discovered by swiping to the More possibility on the far proper. After clicking a number of pictures with the iQoo Neo 9 Pro, I discovered that I ended up utilizing the first digital camera essentially the most, as it’s the most dependable on the handset.
Images captured with the first 50-megapixel digital camera are filled with element at each 1x in addition to the inbuilt 2x in-sensor zoom. When open air, there’s quite a lot of element and colors are displayed precisely. You can decide from three results — Vivid, Textured, and Natural. Selecting the primary one will lead to pictures with vibrant colors, whereas the Textured mode ends in sharpened pictures with a barely moody tone — in my expertise, the Natural mode delivered the perfect outcomes.
iQoo Neo 9 Pro auto mode and low gentle mode (faucet to increase)
The ultra-wide-angle digital camera on this smartphone captures respectable pictures, however you may miss out on a variety of element in contrast to pictures taken utilizing the primary digital camera. The color accuracy can also be a bit off — examine the color of the sky within the picture samples above. That mentioned, pictures captured with this digital camera are completely usable for posting on social media, particularly when you possibly can’t get too shut to a very massive topic.
Switching to the 2x in sensor zoom will make the cellphone seize 50-megapixel pictures after which crop into the center of the picture. You get clear and sharp pictures with this mode, particularly in the event you’re shut sufficient to the topic. If the topic is additional away, you may begin to see a number of the particulars are softened when zooming into pictures captured at 2x zoom.
The 2x in-sensor zoom enables you to take extra detailed pictures (faucet to increase)
The major digital camera captures quite a lot of element with the built-in night time mode. It takes just a few seconds to seize the shot, so this works finest for idle topics and static eventualities. Even while you’re not utilizing the devoted night time mode, the primary digital camera takes barely longer than typical to seize a barely brighter picture that additionally captures ample element, contemplating it is quicker than the night time mode. I could not discover a method to disable this within the digital camera settings, so it is value conserving in thoughts when clicking pictures in low gentle eventualities.
You also can use the built-in portrait mode at 1x and 2x zoom for detailed portrait pictures with a pleasing bokeh impact. You can alter this within the digital camera app or use the Bokeh possibility within the Gallery app to alter it after the picture has been captured. There’s no seen halo or blurring round topics and the 2x zoom mode delivers nice portrait pictures.
The iQoo Neo 9 Pro takes good portrait pictures of people and pets (faucet to increase)
The iQoo Neo 9 Pro enables you to seize video at up to 8K decision at 30fps — this mode would not have OIS enabled — whereas the 4K and 1080p decision choices supply 30fps and 60fps modes. I discovered the 4K/ 60fps mode provided the highest quality, with none tearing and artefacts — except you’ve an 8K show to play your recorded movies.
iQoo Neo 9 Pro: Verdict
Should you purchase the iQoo Neo 9 Pro in the event you’re available in the market for a brand new smartphone round Rs. 40,000? The handset is supplied with a succesful processor — the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 — and a dependable major digital camera that may deal with most eventualities. It additionally presents quick 120W charging and comes with a charger within the field.
This cellphone’s largest competitor in India is the OnePlus 12R, which can also be geared up with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip, LTPO AMOLED display screen, and runs on Android 14 out-of-the-box. However, it has UFS 3.1 storage and might be charged at 100W — each of those are slower than the Neo 9 Pro. The OnePlus 12R has a 2-megapixel macro digital camera, however you are not lacking out on a lot there.
There are different choices on this value phase such because the Oppo Reno 11 Pro, Nothing Phone 2, and the Samsung Galaxy A54 5G. However, their processors are slower than the one contained in the iQoo Neo 9 Pro. They are additionally geared up with slower inner storage and supply slower charging speeds than iQoo’s handset.
If you are searching for a gaming-oriented smartphone with respectable cameras and dependable battery life, then it is easy to advocate the iQoo Neo 9 Pro for many customers at its present value — the corporate’s ongoing sale presents also can decrease the value by up to Rs. 3,000. Don’t neglect to learn our evaluation of the OnePlus 12R that was launched in India final month earlier than you decide.
