iQOO 9 Pro Review Great Performance - 2022
The IQ nine Pro is finally here in India, a phone that has genuinely caught my attention in 2022. It is an out and out flagship with top of the line specs and a price to match.
so starting off with the design the IQ nine Pro has an industrial design language that was initiated by vivo when it launched the x 50 series. This metal plate camera module on the rear continues to look extremely classy. And the Legend Edition which was first introduced in the IQ seven legend with BMW signature colors looks extremely unique. Now this phone weighs 210 grams and has a big 6.78 inch display and it's got this glass sandwich design where the glass actually blends into the thin metal frame and the metal frame is so thin that actually holding it and using it with one hand becomes really difficult. This is definitely a 200 phone. Now I do like the placement of the power button and the volume rocker. It's at the optimum position according to me and you also get a Type C port at the bottom along with the speaker grille, which works in tandem with the earpiece to walk into a speaker setup. Now while the 3.5 mm headphone jack is missing, as usual, I do like the fact that Aiko has attention to detail here. And the reports at the bottom are symmetrical measure considering the IQ nine Pro, let it be known that it doesn't come with IP rating. Now coming to the studio speaker setup since this phone is very wide, the spatial separation is also very good. Now what I do also like about the FICO nine Pro is the fact that it comes with a dedicated DAC as an audio file that makes me really happy.
Because high res music sounds really good on the IQ nine Pro also so the glass material of the rear and the front it is protected by short sensation class, and it doesn't have any gorilla glass protection for what it is worth. Now, like I mentioned, you get a 6.78 display on the front with a 2k resolution, you also do get LTP or 2.0 technology, which actually can modulate the refresh rate from one hertz to 120 hertz, which is very good. And you know, the SmartSwitch refreshed it works really, really well. Also, I could tune the display really well with great color accuracy, especially in the professional mode. And the brightness can touch a peak of 1500 nits especially when you're playing HDR content. Talking about HDR content though it's available on YouTube, but it's not available on Netflix, which is definitely a letdown for a phone that costs this much. Also, the display starts up straight can do 300 hertz of that sampling rate and can go up to 1000 hertz when you're playing games. Now they're a single x axis motor with great haptic feedback on the iPhone nine Pro. But you know what you actually get to an x axis motors are the iKOU nine which is a cheaper medium. Now what could be construed as one of the most important functional upgrades in a smartphone in a long time is the fact that you get one of the most advanced ultrasonic 3d in display fingerprint scanners. On the Alko nine pro, you get a larger touch surface area and you can also change the size of that touch surface area. And more importantly, it takes only one touch for you to register the fingerprint. And it goes without saying that the fingerprint scanner works really, really fast to unlock your phone. And you can also unlock your world of technology by hitting that red subscribe button and the bell icon right next to it to get notified whenever we put out an awesome new tech video.
Now coming to the camera setup on the echo nine pro you get a 15 megapixel Samson G and five sensor, which is the very first phone that I've tested with the GL five sensor and you get a 50 megapixel ultra wide with a 150 degree fisheye lens. As for the third camera, it's a 16 megapixel 2.5x portrait camera. And on the front you get a 16 megapixel selfie camera as well. Now when I was testing the cameras on the IQ nine Pro, I realized that the camera app has now been really well refined. I like the hand holding features like the grid, and of course the leveling features as well, which comes with haptic feedback. Now to test the cameras I generally like to do a comparison so I use the iPhone 13 Pro max to compare against the IQ nine pro but let it be known that the IQ nine Pro is much, much cheaper probably half the price of the iPhone 13 Pro max. So this is just for context and not necessarily a camera comparison. To find out if the IQ nine Pro does better, but if it does, then that's a good thing. Now what I noticed first is that the IQ nine pro tends to expose one stop higher than I'd ideally like and therefore killing the dynamics in the shadows. Now the final textures also looks slightly sharper on the iPhone 13 Pro Max. For example, take a look at the 100% crop of the trees in the front of the freaky Clarina you will see a difference where the 13 Promax looks better than the ICO nine Pro. Interestingly in HDR the ICO nine Pro does a good job of controlling the harsh sun and cutting out the bloom. Also the shadows are darker on the iPhone 13 Promax. I've always liked vivos algorithms for HDR and you can see how that translates on the IQ nine Pro. Now when it comes to color reproduction IQ shoots brighter, more colorful images. In comparison iPhone looks more natural and also struggles with reproducing the right shape. A friend. The action figure doll here has turned pink as you can tell. Now the ultra wide angle camera with the 150 degree lens is fantastic on the IQ nine Pro I had a lot of fun shooting with it you can shoot regular ultra wide shots which is slightly wider on the iPhone 13 Pro Max images look sharper in regular ultra wide board plus you get a fisheye mode with different options such as crystal ball, rabbit hole etc. Also there is decent color science consistency between the main and the ultra wide angle camera on the IQ nine Pro. Now the 2.5x portrait camera can also be used as a telephoto camera and it is alright but the iPhone can go closer at 3x and it is sharper too. If you see closely I do like the macro shots you can capture using the IQ nine Pro. Yes you can go even closer with the iPhone but the IQ nine pro looks very good too. It's no slouch. Now human subjects shots on the other hand are contrast heavy on the IQ nine pro but they're definitely sharper compared to the iPhone 13 Pro Max. Having said that facial tones are more accurate on the iPhone and against the light the iPhone over exposes the rear. The IQ nine pro definitely does a better job here. Portraits are sharper on the iPhone 13 Pro max it punches in 3x as opposed to 2.5x on the IQ nine Pro and the soft details of the IQ nine Pro are a bit of a letdown. Also the edge detection is average portraits I feel could have been better on the icon pro considering vivo does it really well on the X 70 Pro Plus. Selfies also look better on the iPhone, they are wider, they are sharper, they're more dynamic and of course offered more accurate facial tones too. Now my observation for selfie portraits is similar to selfies where everything else remains true. And the edge detection is better on the iPhone 13 Pro Max. low light performance on the other hand is fantastic on the IQ nine pro you get sharper details and no light bearing. As you can see with the iPhone 13 Pro Max with the VJ sales logo actually getting mirrored. I could offer super dynamic range performance to with better control over the light blue as you can see on the headlights of the car out here. Don't let anyone tell you that the iPhone 13 Pro Max has a better camera than the iKOU nine pro in low light. Even the ultra wide angle camera performs better in low light on the echo nine pro compared to the iPhone 13 Pro Max, but I did notice one thing where the Colorscience consistency on both these phones is not great when you're shooting low light pictures. And while the telephoto camera was better on the iPhone in daylight, it is better and sharper on the IQ nine pro in low light especially with night moron having said that there's no night mode for selfies on the icon and pro and therefore the iPhone 30 Pro Max beats it now the primary camera on the icon and Pro can shoot 4k 60 FPS videos and they look really good even if it's slightly overexposed. Like the pictures now the sound recording is also really good but the iPhone 30 Pro Max does it slightly better. Also stabilization on both the phones are equally good. It's not like the gimbal stabilization is helping a lot here or especially because if you look at panning it is less jerky on the iPhone 13 Pro Max as opposed to the IQ nine Pro. Also the iPhone 13 Pro Max does better when it comes to dynamic range capture in videos. Now 4k ultra wide angle videos look pretty decent or the IQ nine pro but the iPhone is slightly sharper and offers slightly better dynamic range too. And when it comes to front camera video recording the IQ nine Pro can only do tend to be 30 FPS with no stabilization either the iPhone just beat cetera now I'm shooting the front camera at 4k 60 FPS on the
iPhone 30 Pro Max now shooting through the front camera at 4k 60 FPS on the iPhone 13 Pro max. And when it comes to low light video recording, that's where you see the iPhone that is pro Max does way better than the icon Pro. All in all though I do like the camera setups on the IQ nine Pro, especially considering the price. It's extremely feature rich and captures pictures that are immediately social media share worthy. And in this price range. This could very well be the most versatile camera setup out there. Now the iPhone nine Pro does come with funtouch iOS 12 based on Android 12. And it doesn't have all of androids feature. For example at unique Android wallpaper picking theme which I really, really like is not present here. Also, I did face a lot of bugs. But let it be known that this is a production unit. Maybe they will be fixed in software updates and the bugs I faced our epic browser kept crashing and once the Play Store also crashed on me. And once while I was actually shooting pictures with the ICO nine Pro, the entire system froze and had to restart it. Also funtouch comes with extra pre installed bloatware apps. And for some odd reason you cannot delete folders either. Now also the design of the icons in the notification shade have been changed. And once in a while I got really confused with all that said though it's very similar looking to stock Android, that's definitely a good thing. And IKU has provided the latest Android version as well as opposed to OnePlus which only provided Android 11 Now coming to the reason why a lot of you guys must be watching this video and that is for the performance because the performance is I must say legendary.
You get the latest lab Dragon Age and mass system on chip and you get two variants which is a GB 256 GB or you know 12 GB 256 GB and it is LPDDR five and u fs 3.1 storage. Plus there's four GB of RAM extension if you're into it and you also get Wi Fi six. Now I did run a few benchmarks Geekbench score was very similar to what I've achieved on other Snapdragon eight gen one phones.
But on Add to two I managed a score of over 1 million points or the IQ nine Pro and for a Snapdragon eight jenman for the CPU stability at 68% is pretty good. Even some Snapdragon triple eight and triple eight plus foals couldn't achieve such CPU stability. Now my 3d Mark wireless stress test it achieved 76% stability, but it did reach a whopping 53 degrees despite the presence of a liquid cooling chamber. But daily performance of this phone is absolutely fantastic throw whatever you want to throw at it, and it just crushes through all of them. Now gave me performance also very good on the IQ nine pro you do get the best graphics setting on cod, mobile and DGI. But there is no option to have 90 FPS gameplay on both these games, which is definitely a bit of a letdown. Honestly, though, I would say that the iPhone nine could be a slightly better phone than the echo nine Pro for gaming primarily because of those dual x axis motors. And more importantly, because of the flat display. Flat displays, in my opinion are better for gaming than curved displays. But the feature that I'd absolutely loved in the ICO seven and that has been transported to all the ICO nine series folds. Here is the game interpolation mode. And it genuinely feels great while playing games which require heavy Twitch responses like cod mobile. Now as to the call quality is fantastic 4g performance is great, and you get support for 14 5g bands as well. The echo nine Pro has a 4700 image battery inside it. And it supports 120 Watt flash charging as well. And if you put the phone to charge and don't touch the screen, then you can easily charge the phone from zero to 100. In under 22 minutes, I could claim 20 minutes to charge from zero to 100. But in my testing I had Wi Fi on and that's why it took two minutes extra I like the fact that IQ is quoting numbers that are actually genuinely true in its marketing material. And it is replicating in real life performance testing as well. Having said that the agent one is a battery guzzler and could get only four hours of screen on time with the 2k resolution and 120 hertz always on. But when I dropped to FHD plus with 120 hertz refresh rate, I could get a screen on time of about four and a half to five hours, which is pretty decent. I think that has something to do with the fact that the software is not very well tuned yet. And maybe when the retail units come out, it could be better.
For its price the IQ nine pro straight up offers the best performance on the phone that you can find right now. Also, like I said, possibly one of the most versatile cameras out there and great picture taking capabilities to in fact, I really liked capturing pictures using the IQ nine pro because whenever I took a shot, it gave me a show that I actually liked and felt like I could share it on social media. Furthermore, that display is also of really good quality. But what do you need improvements are of course the software experience at the battery life too. And like I mentioned maybe the brand will do it by the time the retail units go out to users. If we have Ico seven and Ico seven legend users in the audience do let me know what your experience has been with software updates because it could be useful for other people trying to buy an iPhone also you don't have to worry about service centers because IKU is now legit a sub brand of vivo and it uses the service center network of the 600 service centers that are available across India now the alternatives to the Eco nine Pro are currently the ssrg phone five s but again it won't have the best performance like you get on the Eco nine pro but upcoming phones are definitely looking good. For example you have the Moto X 30 Pro which is expected to launch really soon. And of course the OnePlus 10 pro se what do you guys think of our review of the IQ nine Pro.