Qualcomm announced theSnapdragon 8 Gen 2late last year, promising to deliver the power thatthe best Android phonesneed to succeed. Since then, a lot of companies have already announced products featuring the Qualcomm flagship. One of the first to brace the global markets was the iQOO 11, beating theSamsung Galaxy S23 Ultraand many other flagship phones to the punch. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is certainly the highlight of the iQOO 11, by far the most important part of this phone.
If you’re unfamiliar with iQOO, it’s a sub-brand of Vivo, which is part of the BBK Electronics conglomerate that also owns OnePlus and Oppo. iQOO focuses on high-end, gaming-compatible specs coupled with great hardware build quality, and it’s been making a name for itself in South Asian markets like India and Malaysia since its international debut in 2020. As such, its products are always among the first to pioneer new hardware features, with last year’siQOO 9 Proand iQOO 9 introducing the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 andQualcomm’s fast and big 3D Sonic Max fingerprint scanner. Let’s take a closer look at the latest iQOO product.
The iQOO 11 is a showcase of a phone with the latest and greatest technology, but you likely won’t be able to get your hands on it.
The iQOO 11 isn’t coming to the US, but it’s still exciting
Let’s get the biggest caveat out of the way: The iQOO 11 isn’t officially coming to the US, and neither is its flagship sibling, the iQOO 11 Pro. Instead, it’s reserved for China, India, and a few South East Asian countries. If you choose to import the iQOO 11, which could cost you about $700 before taxes, it should still work well enough with most US carriers, though you’ll run into some issues like limited 5G support and VoLTE issues. You can checkcompatibility with your carrier on Kimovil.
I’m based in Germany, where carriers are less restrictive, and band compatibility is rarely an issue. Though your experience in the US may differ, the iQOO 11 still gives us a good idea of what we can expect in 2023. As mentioned, the company is routinely among the first to add new hardware and features, which is no different when it comes to the iQOO 11. In addition, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 in it will also power most Android flagships in 2023.
The iQOO 11’s design is a total winner
Similar to its predecessors, the iQOO 11 sticks with its design. The company couples high-quality materials with a sleek look. Like many other phones from Vivo and the rest of the BBK empire, the black variant comes with an etched finish on the glass back to help grip it and give it an interesting texture — a design first popularized by OnePlus and its sandstone-textured debut phone. This is paired with an understated but big camera array tucked in the top left corner, taking up a little less than a quarter of the back.
The back glass smoothly curves to the frame that separates the front and back, and it houses the usual hardware features: power and volume control on the right, a USB-C port and a SIM card slot on the bottom, and an IR blaster at the top. Up front, you’re met by a flat display with a punch-hole selfie camera in the top middle.
Overall, the phone feels like a flagship when you wield it. Its sturdy build prevents it from squeaking even when you try to twist it, and its weight is perfectly balanced for long scrolling sessions without feeling too light and, thus, cheap.
The iQOO 11’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is predictably a performance powerhouse
What’s more interesting is the iQOO 11’s interior. While it doesn’t offer the crème de la crème like its slightly more expensive sibling, the iQOO 11 Pro, it comes with decent flagship qualities. At the center is the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, coupled with a whopping 16GB (or 8) of RAM and 256GB of storage. Paired with the 1440 x 3200 OLED screen with a refresh rate of up to 144Hz, the phone feels like it just flies, no matter what you throw at it.
This is particularly true for gaming, even if the iQOO 11 doesn’t cater its hardware and software design to gamers like some of thebest gaming phones. For example, when playing Genshin Impact — one of the computationally more challenging games for phones — you’ll barely run into frame drops or issues.
While the iQOO 11 has a vapor chamber liquid cooling system, it still gets noticeably warmer during long sessions. If you play Genshin Impact, you’ll definitely notice that during the initial download session — a task that has many phones struggling with the heat. Other phones can get so warm they’re uncomfortable to hold, but the cooling system in the iQOO 11 seems to do its job wonderfully and keeps it touchable. In everyday usage, the cooling system can shine even more. The phone won’t warm up during simple scrolling, reading, and texting, which is something I can’t say about Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 phones or theGoogle Pixel 7 Pro.
Given the extraordinary amount of RAM, it’s still jarring how often you run into prematurely killed apps when you switch between tasks. iQOO’s software is aggressive and ruthless when it comes to closing background activities. For instance, Sync, my preferred Reddit app, usually retains its scroll position for hours upon hours on other phones, but here, it routinely throws me back to the top of the home screen when I return to it after just a few minutes. This gets better when you switch to a more performance-oriented battery mode or grant exemptions for your favorite Android apps, but you shouldn’t have to deal with those things.
Battery life
Speaking of the battery life, it’s also clear that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is more resourceful than its predecessor. Its new architecture is laid out in a way that uses much less energy for background tasks, allowing for longer standby time. We can’t pin that on the processor in isolation, though — we always have to look at the full package and all components to gauge something like this. iQOO does have a few tricks up its sleeve to eke out as much battery life as possible.
In its default software configuration, which limits the display to 1080p rather than 2K and opts for an adaptive screen refresh rate that doesn’t keep it at 144Hz at all times, battery life is no concern in everyday usage. During my time with the phone, there was barely a day I finished below 50% battery.
Even on a day of navigating public transit and taking images, out and about from morning till midnight, I didn’t even come close to killing this thing. Even when you enable more power-intense options like the full resolution and the always-on 144Hz option, you should still have enough headroom.
Thanks to the included 120W charger, juicing up your phone when it runs out is not a hassle. iQOO claims the 5,000mAh battery can be topped up from zero to 100 in 25 minutes. My tests proved these estimates accurate — it doesn’t take more than half an hour to fill up.
The iQOO 11 software doesn’t quite match the processor’s raw power
Raw power isn’t everything, though, and iQOO still has work to do in other departments. The system UI occasionally experienced full freezes, and sometimes apps would crash, something I would pin on optimization rather than the processor itself.
The software is where I see the biggest downsides to the IQOO 11. First, the in-app Material You theming didn’t properly kick in with the default wallpaper, something I could only fix by re-applying the wallpaper. Worse, when you set your password manager as your default autofill provider, the option doesn’t stick, forcing you to copy and paste your passwords unless you want to open the autofill provider settings every time you log in somewhere.
Funtouch flaws
There are also some little things that make Funtouch OS annoying to use. When using face and fingerprint unlock, you can’t just always tap the fingerprint scanner to open your lock screen like you can on the Google Pixel 7 Pro. Instead, you need to swipe up when the phone uses your face to unlock. This routinely makes you guess what you have to do when you unlock your phone: press the fingerprint scanner or swipe up?
Funtouch OS additionally lacks some quality-of-life shortcuts seen on many other Android phones. For example, there is no quick rotate shortcut popping up at the bottom of the screen when you hold the device horizontally. You also can’t open the camera with a double click on the power button, though there is an option to assign a long press to the volume button to that. Couple that with the excessive addition of bloatware, and you’re left with a subpar experience.
Many of these issues aren’t new to Funtouch OS 13 — they’ve existed before. What makes this even more frustrating is that Funtouch OS adds some neat quality-of-life features. For example, like on older Funtouch OS versions, you’re able to swipe down with three fingers to jump right into split-screen mode, a feature I wish every Android manufacturer would steal.
The iQOO 11’s camera is okay, but that’s it
The camera doesn’t like contrasty backgrounds and fast subjects
As is the case for most Chinese phone makers, the camera software is targeted toward its home market. Out of the box, a beauty filter is enabled in portrait mode that you should turn off if you want more realistic-looking images of yourself and your subjects. Luckily, the software reminds you to do just that when you first use portrait mode, and whatever option you choose will stick until you change it manually again. I would still appreciate more manufacturers providing the natural version by default, just like Google does with its Pixel lineup.
With that out of the way, the camera experience doesn’t manage to impress me too much. The iQOO 11’s setup consists of a 50MP primary, an 8MP wide-angle, and a 13MP telephoto. A 16MP camera serves double duty for selfies and face unlocking. While the hardware potential is there, the post-processing algorithms don’t seem to be there just yet.
When you deal with fast-moving subjects like pets and kids, you may expect blurry results more often than not, even in decent lighting. Of course, you could pin that on the nature of how these things go, but even when taking fairly simple portrait shots of my wife in good lighting, her face wasn’t focused. That’s a recurring issue for all kinds of subjects for me.
I also don’t love how iQOO handles colors and dynamic range, though that’s more of a matter of taste. iQOO opts for a more natural approach to dark and light patches in images, meaning that if you take a photo of a subject against a bright background, your subject will appear much darker. Most other smartphone makers have long opted to make all parts of images as bright as possible, which many people prefer who just want to point and shoot without thinking too much. Changing the HDR option toalways onautomatically helps with that, though.
Should you buy the iQOO 11?
In the US, you probably shouldn’t buy the iQOO 11 — you’ll run a real risk of having compatibility issues with your carrier. However, the iQOO 11 is still a great showcase for what the latest and greatest hardware can achieve right now — first and foremost, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. While it’s impossible to point to a single component as the one that makes a product great, there is a good chance that the processor plays a big part in the smooth and cool performance of the iQOO 11, all while providing stellar battery life. I wish the software would be equally great.
If there is anything to take away from the iQOO 11, it’s that Qualcomm finally offers a product that strikes a balance between performance and endurance, and that’s something to look forward to throughout future phone launches in 2023.
