If your little friend likes to play games, what phone would you recommend him to buy? I believe many people will give this option like me – gaming phone. You must know that since the concept of gaming phone came out, many mobile phone brands have successively launched their own gaming phones, such as Red Devils, Black Shark, ROG, Lenovo Savior, etc., which only make gaming phones. But I found that there are still some consumers who can’t accept this type of mobile phone except for those die-hard fans. The main reason is that the appearance of such products is too exaggerated and the body size is too large.
However, there are also some “ordinary” e-sports mobile phones on the market, such as the iQOO 9, our protagonist today. As an old user of iQOO mobile phones, I can clearly feel the changes in the product concept of iQOO mobile phones: it used to focus on gaming experience; now, iQOO mobile phones not only have an excellent gaming experience, but also in other aspects, such as appearance design, Imaging capabilities, fast charging battery life, etc. are not inferior to many flagship models. Let’s experience it together.
Let’s talk about appearance first. The iQOO 9 I got this time is the most lively color scheme – sharp, of course, it also has a track version and a legendary version. It’s just that in terms of color matching, the orange edge version is obviously more eye-catching. Especially with the unique camera module design and the iQOO logo, it is highly recognizable.
As for the material of the back cover, I felt that the whole back cover is not very glass-like for the first time, because it has a skin-friendly feel and texture. In fact, the back cover of the iQOO 9 is also made of glass, but the process is special: 3D gradient texture processing on the glass surface and polishing with the new AG process make the texture and feel very in place. It’s just that iQOO 9 feels thicker than some thin and light mobile phones on the market, with a weight of 206g and a thickness of 8.37mm.
As for the iQOO 9 camera module, it is also a major innovation. You must know that the previous generation iQOO mobile phone adopts a beautiful cloud-level design, and now on iQOO 9, this design has been sublimated into a “panoramic porthole”. The most obvious difference is that the area is about 2/3 larger than before. The main reason for making the camera module so large is heat dissipation. Because the place where the mobile phone generates the most heat during operation is often the area next to the camera, which is often the SoC and various chips equipped with the mobile phone, the temperature will rise sharply during heavy load tasks such as games. The iQOO 9 uses a “panoramic porthole” to cover it with a piece of aerospace-grade aluminum alloy material, and cooperates with the multi-link heat dissipation measures inside the mobile phone to further improve the heat dissipation capacity of the mobile phone.
Screen: flexible screen for direct use, directly facing the “ceiling” of the screen mobile phone
I believe everyone knows that for the game party, the straight screen is more friendly than the curved screen in the game control. Therefore, the vast majority of gaming phones on the market today are face-to-face screens. The iQOO 9 is equipped with a 6.78-inch Samsung AMOLED flexible straight screen, and it is the latest Samsung E5 material, so not only the color is more transparent, the local peak brightness is as high as 1500nit, and the power consumption is reduced by 25% compared to the E4.
In addition, the screen also supports a 120Hz screen refresh rate and a 360Hz touch sampling rate, which further enhances the smoothness of daily use and gaming experience.
Performance: Snapdragon 8 Gen1 blessing, easy to get millions of running points
Performance has always been the strength of iQOO phones. This time, iQOO 9 is equipped with Qualcomm’s new-generation Snapdragon 8 Gen1 flagship processor, the latest 4nm process, and the underlying architecture has also been upgraded to the new ARM v9. Compared with the previous generation flagship Snapdragon 888, the peak performance of the Snapdragon 8 Gen1 is increased by 20%, while the power consumption ratio is reduced by 30%. Of course, the most obvious improvement is the GPU. With the Adreno 730 graphics processor, the GPU performance is improved by up to 60% and the power consumption is reduced by 25%. The overall performance has naturally been greatly improved.
It can be seen that in the performance test of AnTuTu V9.3.0, the running score of iQOO 9 reached 1.038 million points, which is currently No.1 in the rankings, even surpassing iQOO 9 Pro.
Coincidentally, in the evaluation of Master Lu, the running score of iQOO 9 also exceeded one million, reaching 11,100 points, which is also No.1 in the ranking. This result is also far ahead of the flagship phones equipped with Snapdragon 8 Gen1.
Of course, in addition to the processor, this ultra-high running score is also inseparable from two other pieces of hardware—an enhanced version of LPDDR5 running memory with a theoretical rate of 6400Mbps and a Samsung overclocked version of UFS 3.1 high-speed memory chip using the new Solvit intelligent control. After testing, the continuous read and write performance of iQOO 9 is even comparable to some high-speed SSDs with PCIe protocol.
Game experience: first-class screen + top performance, excellent experience
The best way to show your phone’s performance aside from running points is the gaming experience. I also tested “Yuan Shen”, “Peace Elite”, “Call of Duty Mobile Games”, and “Honor of Kings”.
Take “Genshin Impact”, which has the highest requirements on mobile phones, the average frame rate of iQOO 9 is above 50FPS, and the occasional battle screen will drop below 50 frames, but the overall performance is not bad, there is no forced frequency reduction limit frequency. The situation, the fever performance is also ok.
Also, in “Call of Duty Mobile Games”, which has very high game control, the performance of iQOO 9 can be described as stable and explosive. After playing a few rounds, the hand feel is very good, especially the control after opening the mirror, which is very easy to follow.
Of course, behind this smooth control, in addition to facing the screen directly and the high control refresh rate, there is also a sense of dual control pressure under the screen. Although iQOO 9 does not have a shoulder button, this function can also bring a very good “four-finger linkage” experience. In terms of motors, iQOO 9 is also equipped with a dual X-axis linear motor, and the force feedback is not bad, which can increase the gaming experience in some shooting games.
In addition, iQOO 9 is also equipped with the independent display chip Pro, which can obtain smoother game frames through the independent display frame insertion technology.
Image: wide-angle + portrait + 50 million outsole main camera blessing
In terms of imaging, iQOO 9 is not as extreme as iQOO 9. The three rear cameras are a 50-megapixel ultra-high-definition main camera equipped with Samsung ISOCELL GN5, a 13-megapixel 120° ultra-wide-angle lens, and a 12-megapixel telephoto portrait lens. The daily photo performance is also remarkable, and the actual shooting situation can be answered by looking at the proofs.
Daytime proofs:
Backlight environment:
Night scene mode (green-orange filter):
Night Scene Mode (Cyberpunk):
Portrait Mode:
Overall, the imaging style adjustment of iQOO 9 is similar to that of the previous products. The color saturation and details are kept very well under good lighting conditions. The noise control and highlight suppression of night scenes are also good. Of course, there is also a portrait mode that is surprising. Turning on not only has accurate focusing, but also improves the brightness of the person’s skin tone, and the blurring effect is also very natural.
System: OriginOS Ocean blessing, presenting the “zero-level operation” interaction concept
iQOO 9 is equipped with the latest OriginOS Ocean system. For this system, I specially watched the press conference before, and some details of its implementation of the “zero-level operation” interaction concept are really interesting. Especially in response to the needs and pain points of some users, OriginOS has made compromises.
For example, the parallel world has been perfectly integrated, and the icons can be enlarged, reduced, disassembled, etc. on the desktop without traveling through the parallel world. At the same time, the color matching, UI design, and fonts of Origin Ocean are also very beautiful. Friends who are using OriginOS Ocean for the first time can feel what is pleasing to the eyes.
Battery life: 4700mAh+120W ultra-fast flash charging, charging is still fast, and the use is longer
As mentioned above, the thickness and weight of the iQOO 9 are not thin and light, and the main reason for me is this – battery life. iQOO 9 is equipped with a large 4700mAh battery, and it is still equipped with the fastest 120W super flash charge in the industry. It’s just that the iQOO 9 is not equipped with a smaller gallium nitride GaN charging head because of the iQOO 9 Pro.
After actual measurement, the charging time of iQOO 9 is about 18 minutes. The specific charging time is 5 minutes to charge 36% of the power, 10 minutes to charge 65% of the power, and 15 minutes to charge 91% of the power.
Summarize:
After a period of detailed experience, I have basically understood the performance of iQOO 9. In general, it is very friendly to some gamers, because its screen, performance, and control are very powerful, especially with 3D screen pressure sensitivity and dual X-axis linear motors, the gaming experience is naturally the icing on the cake. In terms of daily use, the unique and eye-catching body, good imaging capabilities, plus the excellent battery life brought by the large 4700mAh battery and 120W ultra-fast flash charge, are believed to be enough to satisfy the vast majority of consumers.
As for the shortcomings, I think there is only one: that is, some thick feel. For those who have used thin and light mobile phones before, they still need to get used to it.