iQOO Neo9 Professional hands-on evaluate

iQOO launched the iQOO Neo9 and Neo9 Professional final yr in China, however just one smartphone escaped the nation – the iQOO Neo9, which was launched because the Neo9 Professional in India. Probably the most notable distinction between the Chinese language Neo9 – known as Neo9 Professional globally – and the Chinese language Neo9 Professional is within the chipset and digicam departments.

The Neo9 Professional is powered by Dimensity 9300 SoC and includes a 50MP ultrawide digicam, whereas the Neo9 has the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip on the helm and sports activities an 8MP ultrawide digicam. We used the Indian iQOO Neo9 Professional – sharing {hardware} with the Chinese language Neo9 – for over a month, and here is what we discovered about it.

Design

The iQOO Neo9 Professional is constructed round a 6.78″ 8T LTPO AMOLED show having a 3,000 nits peak brightness and 144Hz display refresh fee. The display additionally has a punch-hole for the 16MP selfie digicam and a fingerprint scanner embedded for biometric authentication.

The fingerprint reader was quick and correct, and we confronted no points whereas utilizing it. Nonetheless, it may’ve been positioned barely larger for ease of attain, facilitating a extra handy smartphone unlocking expertise.

Flip the cellphone round, and also you see an LED flash and two cameras – 50MP major and 8MP ultrawide. The iQOO Neo9 Professional is available in Fiery Pink and Conqueror Black colours, and it is the purple model that we acquired for evaluate.

The Conqueror Black model’s again cowl is product of fingerprint-resistant Fluorite AG Glass, whereas the Fiery Pink mannequin’s rear panel flaunts a Twin-Tone Vegan Leather-based Design. iQOO says that it’s carbon fiber vegan leather-based and skin-friendly lychee vegan leather-based “seamlessly built-in for an ultra-thin edge,” leading to a “distinctive and premium appear and feel.”

Properly, the purple mannequin seems to be good, and the fake leather-based – which is what it’s – helps with the grip, however not as a lot as we might have appreciated. It additionally would not really feel as premium because the leather-based end we’ve got on the extra reasonably priced Realme 12 Professional sequence smartphones.

On the upside, the iQOO Neo9 Professional Fiery Pink’s vegan leather-based end ensures it would not get smudged with fingerprints, which might require fixed wiping to maintain the cellphone in its pristine kind if you happen to do not use a protecting case.

No matter which model you purchase, the iQOO Neo9 Professional comes with flat frames and a again panel, with the latter having barely curved edges just like the iQOO 12, making the cellphone snug to carry regardless of flat frames. The smartphone can be gentle sufficient for extended utilization. Nonetheless, the protruding rear cameras make it wobble on flat surfaces and transfer when it vibrates upon receiving calls and notifications. That is not preferrred because the cellphone may fall if saved close to the sting of a flat floor.

The iQOO Neo9 Professional’s right-side body has an influence button and quantity rocker with first rate suggestions, and on the backside is the USB-C port, flanked by a SIM card slot, major microphone, and a speaker grille. Up high is one other microphone, joined by an IR blaster.

Ports and controls

The Neo9 Professional is IP54-rated, and we like its total design.

Show

The iQOO Neo9 Professional packs a 6.78″ 144Hz 8T LTPO All the time-On AMOLED show of two,800×1,260-pixel decision and 452 ppi pixel density. It is protected by Schott Xensation Up and helps 1.07 billion colours. It additionally has HLG, HDR10, HDR10+, and Widevine L1 certifications.

iQOO went with an X-Axis Linear Motor for the Neo9 Professional, which supplied nice haptic suggestions that made typing on the display enjoyable. It additionally offers 4D Sport Vibration when gaming, which boosts the general gaming expertise.

The show was additionally lots brilliant, which made it straightforward to look at media and browse textual content beneath direct daylight at max brightness.

The iQOO Neo9 Professional additionally comes with an unbiased show chip known as Supercomputing Chip Q1, which, the model says, helps obtain low latency with excessive body fee video games, decrease energy consumption at excessive body charges and backbone, and decrease temperature throughout heavy gaming periods. The Sport Tremendous Decision and Sport Body Interpolation options are enabled with the Chip Q1, with the latter marketed to assist obtain a body fee of 144 FPS in video games.

That mentioned, the iQOO Neo9 Professional has Good Swap, Normal (60Hz), and Excessive (144Hz) refresh fee choices, with the display supporting 10 refresh charges in complete – 1Hz, 30Hz, 40Hz, 45Hz, 51Hz, 60Hz, 72Hz, 90Hz, 120Hz, and 144Hz. Nonetheless, iQOO says 144Hz is just for gaming – which is a bummer – so the utmost refresh fee achievable throughout non-gaming utilization is 120 FPS.

With the display refresh fee set to Excessive (144Hz), the refresh fee bumped up from 1Hz to 120Hz for the system menus and apps when interacting with the show. It remained at 10Hz when viewing a picture in Google Pictures and at 30/60Hz when watching movies on Fb, Instagram, Twitter, Google Pictures, and YouTube.

The Normal (60Hz) mode was principally the Excessive mode, besides the refresh fee went as much as 60Hz. In Good Swap mode, the apps went as much as 90 FPS when interacting with the display, with solely the homescreen, app drawer, app switcher, Settings app, and the Play Retailer having 120 FPS help. Nonetheless, just like the Normal and Excessive Mode, the Good Swap mode additionally switched to 10Hz when viewing a picture and 30/60Hz when watching movies.

We tried Name of Responsibility Cellular, Lifeless Set off 2, Actual Racing 3, and Sky Power Reloaded on the iQOO Neo9 Professional, and solely the final two video games ran at 120 FPS – that too in Excessive Mode – with others being capped at 60 FPS. COD is included within the listing of video games supporting 144 FPS gaming, however that wasn’t the case throughout our utilization, even with Sport Body Interpolation enabled.

To conclude, if you need the smoothest doable expertise, the Excessive refresh fee mode is your only option.

Software program and Efficiency

The iQOO Neo9 Professional is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC and comes with as much as 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 256GB of UFS 4.0 storage. Ours is the top-end 12GB/256GB mannequin, operating Android 14-based Funtouch OS 14 out of the field.

The iQOO Neo9 Professional comes pre-loaded with third-party apps, however most may be uninstalled. The general software program expertise is just like that of the iQOO 12, so that you may wish to learn our iQOO 12 evaluate to study extra about Funtouch OS 14.

We had no efficiency points with the iQOO Neo9 Professional because the smartphone was easy and snappy in on a regular basis utilization. It additionally dealt with heavy video games throughout lengthy gaming periods very properly whereas remaining moderately cool even in sizzling Indian summers. Nonetheless, as we already talked about, some video games that iQOO marketed with 144 FPS help remained capped at 60 FPS.

Digicam

The iQOO Neo9 Professional sports activities three cameras – one of many entrance and two on the rear. The selfie shooter on the entrance makes use of a 16MP Samsung ISOCELL S5K3P9SP04-FGX9 1/3.1″ sensor. It has an f/2.45 aperture and might report movies in 1080p decision at 30 FPS.

The twin digicam setup on the rear includes 50MP major and 8MP ultrawide models. The first digicam makes use of the Sony IMX920 1/1.49″ sensor with vivo Digicam-Bionic Spectrum (VCS). It has OIS, f/1.88 aperture, and might report 1080p and 4K movies at 30 and 60 FPS, whereas 720p and 8K video recording is proscribed to 30 FPS.

The 8MP ultrawide unit makes use of the OmniVision OV08D10-GA5A-001A with an f/2.2 aperture and an FOV of 119˚.

The iQOO Neo9 Professional’s major and ultrawide cameras have been fairly fast to seize photographs, and we hardly ever noticed any shutter lag within the default Picture mode. Within the 50MP mode, the first digicam expectedly took a bit longer to click on the photographs, whereas Evening Mode took even longer in each the default and 50MP modes.

In the course of the day, the iQOO Neo9 Professional’s 50MP major digicam took good photographs within the default Picture mode. Nonetheless, generally, the photographs clicked with the first digicam within the Picture mode and 50MP mode had inconsistencies in colours.

Furthermore, the colours within the photos taken in Picture mode with the first and ultrawide cameras regarded comparable however have been completely different within the 50MP high-res mode.

The iQOO Neo9 Professional’s 50MP major digicam clicked first rate photos at night time as properly, and within the 50MP high-res mode, it did a greater job of retaining particulars within the shadows than the Picture mode. The colours have been additionally nearer to the supply, particularly the skies.

Pictures taken with the 8MP ultrawide digicam at night time have been softer than those captured with the first digicam, particularly across the edges. The colours additionally regarded a bit washed out at instances. Additionally, no matter whether or not you used the first or ultrawide digicam, many low-light photos had lens flare.

Nonetheless, it is value mentioning that photographs clicked with the iQOO Neo9 Professional in low gentle weren’t as noisy and smooth as these taken with the iQOO Neo7 Professional, which is appreciated.

You may verify some photos we took from the iQOO Neo9 Professional beneath.

Daylight Pictures

Let us take a look at the daylight photographs first, captured with the 50MP major digicam having an output of 12.6MP in Picture mode.

Main digicam, 12.6MP (23mm).

Main digicam, 12.6MP (23mm)

Ultrawide digicam, 8MP (16mm).

Ultrawide digicam, 8MP (16mm)

Main digicam, 50MP (Excessive decision, 23mm).

Main digicam, 50MP (Excessive decision, 23mm)

Nighttime Pictures

Now, let’s check out some nighttime photographs.

Main digicam, 12.6MP (23mm).

Main digicam, 12.6MP (23mm)

Ultrawide digicam, 8MP (16mm).

Ultrawide digicam, 8MP (16mm)

Main digicam, 50MP (Excessive decision, 23mm).

Main digicam, 50MP (Excessive decision, 23mm)

Battery

The iQOO Neo9 Professional ships with a 5,160 mAh battery. We could not run our normal battery take a look at on the iQOO Neo9 Professional, however anecdotally talking, the smartphone ought to simply get most individuals by the day on a single cost. We obtained a screen-on time of over seven hours with a 120Hz refresh fee, always-on show, 5G cell knowledge, and Wi-Fi hotspot enabled the entire time. Our utilization consisted of net shopping, utilizing social media apps, and streaming YouTube movies. With about an hour of heavy gaming, our common screen-on time dropped to 4-5 hours.

As soon as the iQOO Neo9 Professional’s battery is drained, you possibly can fill it up with the bundled 120W energy adapter. It is marketed to juice up the cell from 1% to 50% in 11 minutes, however in our testing, it charged 1% to 14% in 5 minutes, 32% in 10 minutes, 34% in 11 minutes, 43% in quarter-hour, 50% in 17 minutes, 56% in 20 minutes, 79% in half-hour, and 100% in 38 minutes.

These charging checks have been run with the All the time-On Show turned on, and your mileage will probably differ relying in your utilization and ambient temperature when charging the cellphone.

Conclusion

The iQOO Neo9 Professional is likely one of the greatest mid-rangers you should buy in India proper now. It has a quick efficiency and handles video games properly. It includes a 144Hz LTPO AMOLED panel with good outside legibility. The battery life can be excellent, which, when paired with 120W quick charging, makes for an ideal mixture.

The iQOO Neo9 Professional’s 50MP major digicam clicks first rate photos. They is probably not the perfect on this vary, however then once more, the Neo9 Professional is not a camera-centric smartphone and primarily focuses on efficiency. Nonetheless, we might wish to see some software program optimizations from iQOO for a extra constant digicam efficiency from the Neo9 Professional.

The iQOO Neo9 Professional begins at INR34,999 ($420/€390) in India, and it’s value contemplating.