Thanks to Qualcomm’s update of its Snapdragon chipset, we saw brands queuing up to launch their flagship phones in the new year. Ever since 8 Gen 1 chipset debuted on Motorola Edge X30 in December, we’ve experienced and reviewed 4 models powered by this latest chip. But none of them really surprised us with their performance.
And today we have one more model for you, the iQOO 9 Pro. So let’s check whether the phone is able to stand out from the 8Gen 1 flagship crowd.
Obviously, iQOO has shifted its product strategy from gaming preference to a more common-flagship design. Especially on the latest 9 Pro, the specs seem to be more balanced with the phone coming with more features that we only see on the premium smartphone models. The iQOO 9 Pro adopts a completely new rear design with a triple camera setup housed inside a wide camera island almost covering the upper half of the rear panel.
iQOO 9 Pro Review: Design & Display
This time the 9 Pro comes in just two variants, an Orange leather-like version and the BMW Motosport edition in my hand.
The new design makes it probably the most recognizable model among all the latest flagships.
In addition to the triple camera setup at the left, the wide camera island is made up of a large piece of aluminum plate underneath the slightly-smaller glass cover.
This design is not only for better looks, but also works as a key part of the cooling system. The aluminum plate could effectively transfer heat inside, while the glass cover could block the perceivable heat when holding the phone.
Later I will show you how effective the cooling solution performs in our gaming test.
The Motosport edition still includes the iconic BMW three-color stripes running from the upper part down to the bottom of the rear panel. 
The phone weighs about 204g and is 8.8mm thick, which is a bit bulky like the OnePlus 10 Pro. The front face is covering a 6.78-inch 1440p Samsung E5 display, featuring up to 120Hz refresh rate with adaptive support of LTPO. The iQoo 9 Pro features an Ultrasonic ID sensor, which offers fingertips a much larger recognizable area. It’s the best reader that I’ve ever experienced on a phone. Compared to those optical readers, adding a fingerprint becomes so quick that you only need to press the display once for a few seconds, and it allows you to have a larger unlocking area.
The display is definitely one of the best panels for a phone in 2022. The new level-less adaptive refresh rate feels good as I barely feel the change in smoothness when activating this feature. And the 1440P E5 panel doesn’t let you down over color presentation and fineness.
iQoo claims that the new technology would bring a longer battery life. However, by far the phone didn’t really offer good battery performance. And it seems that the updated software drains the power a bit too quickly.
iQOO 9 Pro Review: OceanOS is unique
However, I still wanna talk more about the Origin OS Ocean, which is probably the most special mobile OS based on the Android platform. The Origin OS Ocean looks so different from the others with the brand-new UI design. It has a bold and avant-garde graphic style applying bright colors and fine interactive details. Users can customize their lock and home screen in detail, including adjusting dynamic effects, icon style, and wide options of built-in kits for the home screen. But to be honest, it’s hard to say whether these fancy features improve efficiency in use since it can get complicated for fresh users, and especially, this customized OS is mainly optimized for Chinese users right now. There are still some minor issues with the system language that are not perfectly adapted.
But the good news is that the OS for China version has wide support for system languages beyond Chinese and English.
Another strange point of the new system is that I cannot find updated options for most built-in apps in the official app store. I have to enter each app’s setting to check whether there’s an updated version available.
Anyway, apart from the features shared by Android 12, the overall design of the new OS is fresh and innovative, which makes me still excited to see how it will perform when coming on a global model.
iQOO 9 Pro Review: Performance & Gaming
Now let’s check its performance with the new 8Gen 1 chip. Well, its results in benchmarks look great. It achieved over 1200 for single-core, 3800 for multi-core in Geekbench 5’s CPU test. In the Antutu Benchmark, the overall result ran up to 1020000, which is also the best score that we got from an Android phone.
In 3DMark, it achieved in the 9700s range in the wildlife graphic test, which is also close to the best result we tested at 20℃. Then to access its performance under heavy load, we ran the stress test in 3DMark, it also achieved the best stability that we’ve tested with 8Gen1. Considering that some 888 and 8Gen1 models couldn’t even finish the test due to heating issue, the 55℃ for front face and 49 for rear cover is still reasonable for a 8Gen1 model. And it’s also likely to be the highest temperature that we can access on the phone. Even in our gaming test, we never recorded such a high temperature on the phone. This likely means that the benchmark should be in the phone’s performance whitelist.
In PUBG Mobile, the iQoo 9 Pro’s framerate could stay extremely stable at 60fps. While for 30-min gaming in Genshin Impact, the average framerate of 54.4 is also the best result that we got on all 8Gen1 models, though the phone got throttled down a bit after the first 5 minutes. Good news is that the phone shows pretty good cooling effect and suppresses the max temperature to below 46 and 42℃ at the front and back ,respectively.
Then we ran another game, Nimian Legends, under its highest graphics at 2K resolution, which probably is the heaviest game that we can play on mobile phone. After the first 5 minutes, the performance got throttled down more and the framerate remained at 40.3 fps, which is not so impressive compared to what we tested in Genshin Impact. But the result is almost the same as what we tested on OnePlus 10 Pro and Xiaomi 12 Pro.
And the thermal performance is still good with a max temperature at below 46℃.
By far iQoo is the only brand that uses an independent display chip to bring a smoother game experience with high framerate and low power consumption. In supported games, it can access up to 120fps or 90fps framerate through frame interpolation, ignoring in-game framerate limits.
It sounds great, right?
Well, unfortunately, I’m sorry to tell you that it doesn’t work outside of China at this point. Because by far it only supports 16 games, and all of them are China versions. Although we saw the Genshin Impact in the supported list, there’s still no trigger to activate the frame rate interpolation in the international version of Genshin Impact that we downloaded from the Google Play store. It’s disappointing though, we still want to show you how it works in supported games. For example, In the Chinese version of Genshin Impact, before entering the game, you have to switch the display resolution to the 1080P option since it doesn’t support 1440P display resolution.
There’re two modes in frame interpolation. Either access the 120fps gaming experience with the Framerate-Boost option on, or play the game at 90fps with the Optimize-power-consumption mode. With support of the display chip, it only requires GPU to render 60fps to have the 120fps gaming, and render 45fps to have the 90fps gaming. At the same time, the interpolation modes would slightly increase operational delay. Anyway, I really enjoy playing Genshin Impact at such high framerate, but all we can do is wait for the brand open the feature to more games and especially the global market.
Hey iQoo, you have to do something, alright?
iQOO 9 Pro Review: Cameras
Like most flagships coming this year, the iQoo 9 Pro also features a triple camera setup including a 50MP primary lens with Vivo’s Gimbal stabilization, a 2.5x 16MP telephoto lens and another 50MP 150° ultra-wide-angle lens supporting fisheye mode. We’ve seen the same wide-angle lens on the Realme GT 2 Pro and the OnePlus 10 Pro. However, it’s not so impressive.
Okay let’s look at some camera samples. Under good lighting conditions, the samples shot on the three cams look good with bright colors and natural aperture. But when meeting high-contrast scenes, the imaging is not so stable and sometimes the fringing issue shared by all the three lenses could be annoying when you check the pictures on a bigger display. The wide-angle lens supports fisheye mode though we couldn’t get good distortion correction at 0.6x shooting. And there’s a bug on the 2.5x telephoto camera. We couldn’t get a true portrait-mode photo with it.
When it comes to night scene, the samples shot on the three cameras look a bit dull and lack detail. Especially for the wide-angle lens, the night samples even couldn’t capture red colors correctly. And when it comes to extremely low-light condition, the 2.5x telephoto camera wasn’t even activated. Instead, all the zoom pictures were shot on the main lens.
The most impressive feature of the phone’s cameras is the Gimbal stabilization technology. It still offers the best stability for mobile phones similar to what we saw on the Vivo X60 and X70 series.
Anyway, I think iQoo still need to do a lot more work on fixing their camera software. I believe the phone can do much better than what we have here.
iQOO 9 Pro Review: Battery Life & Charging
The phone could be fully charged within 20mins with the included 120W charger, and it also supports 50W wireless charging with 10W reverse wireless charging. While its battery life is not as impressive as the charging solution, the latest software probably is the reason behind this.
iQOO 9 Pro Review: Verdict
So that’s all we want to share about the iQoo 9 Pro. Actually at the beginning we’re pretty excited to review the phone. The phone’s gaming performance really stood out from the 8Gen1 crowd. However, by far the software doesn’t really offer delightful experience for daily use and photography.
So among the five 8Gen1 flagships, which one has convinced you? Or are you not impressed by anyone?
