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iQOO today announced the iQOO Neo 12 in China with a higher refresh rate, bigger battery, and a newer Snapdragon chip than last year’s Neo 11. It also adds an active cooling fan, but these upgrades come with a considerably higher starting price than last year’s Neo 11.
Performance
The Neo 12 runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and uses iQOO’s new Q3 chip for handling gaming more efficiently. iQOO claims the new processor delivers a 20% CPU performance improvement, while the Q3 chip brings 60% more performance and 40% better energy efficiency than its predecessor.
On the gaming side, iQOO says more than 50 games run natively at 185fps, as we reported when the launch date was announced. The phone also supports 2K 185fps output with super resolution and frame interpolation running together, plus full-scene ray tracing.
The phone also uses the same touch chip as the iQOO 16, with instant sampling rates of up to 5,000Hz and multi-finger sampling of up to 500Hz. These rates are available only in supported games, though. Memory options include 12GB or 16GB of LPDDR5X Ultra RAM, paired with UFS 4.1 storage.
The higher performance comes with a new cooling system. The Neo 12 has a 17 × 17mm active cooling fan that can move up to 9,770 cm³ of air per minute, with three speed settings. It works alongside an 8.2K 3D vapor chamber, which iQOO says improves heat dissipation by 15% compared with the Neo 11. The phone carries IP68 and IP69 ratings, while iQOO also rates the fan-cooled design at IPX8 and IPX9.
iQOO Neo 12 has bigger battery and faster display
The Neo 12 has a 9,000mAh battery, up from 7,500mAh in its predecessor. The battery uses fifth-generation silicon anode technology, which iQOO claims has 33% more silicon than the previous model. The phone retains 100W charging and supports bypass charging.
The camera setup hasn’t changed much in terms of resolution. The Neo 12 has a 50MP Sony IMX921 main camera with a 1/1.56-inch sensor, an f/1.88 aperture, and optical image stabilization, alongside an 8MP ultrawide camera. The Neo 11 also had a 50MP main camera with the same sensor size and aperture, although it used the Sony LYT-700V. You get a 16MP camera for selfies, while rear video recording goes up to 8K. There is no telephoto camera.
The display is another major upgrade. The Neo 12 has a 6.83-inch AMOLED panel with a 3200 × 1440 resolution and a refresh rate of up to 185Hz, compared with 144Hz on the Neo 11. It has a listed pixel density of 514ppi and full-screen peak brightness of 2,200 nits, with a manual maximum of 1,000 nits in professional mode.
iQOO says the new panel delivers 22% higher full-screen peak brightness, 27% lower power consumption, and 18% better luminous efficiency than the Neo 11.
There’s a separate display driver chip that handles 2K output at 185Hz. iQOO claims it consumes 30% less power than the chip on the Neo 11.
The Neo 12 comes in Swift Shadow Black, Frostblade Blue, and a silver-white Contender finish developed with the China Academy of Art. The black and blue versions measure 8.5mm thick and weigh 225g and 226g, respectively, while the Contender version is 8.67mm thick and weighs 229g. All three measure 163.42 × 75.89mm.
On the software side, the phone runs OriginOS 7 based on Android 17. Other features include Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, NFC, an infrared blaster, and an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor. There is no microSD card slot, and the USB-C port supports digital headphones only.
Price and Availability
The iQOO Neo 12 is available in five configurations in China, starting at CNY 4,399 (~$659.72) for the 12GB + 256GB model. The 16GB + 256GB version costs CNY 4,799 (~$719.74), while the 12GB + 512GB and 16GB + 512GB models are priced at CNY 5,099 (~$764.74) and CNY 5,499 (~$824.76), respectively. The top-end 16GB + 1TB version costs CNY 6,499 (~$974.79).
By comparison, the Neo 12’s starting price is CNY 1,800 (~$269.93) higher than the Neo 11’s CNY 2,599 (~$389.75), an increase of roughly 69%. The top configuration also costs more than the CNY 5,999 (~$899.68) starting price of the iQOO 16 in China. iQOO hasn’t announced plans to bring the Neo 12 to other markets yet, and the Neo 11 never launched in India, so its international availability remains uncertain.
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