iQOO 7 Review – A Disruptive Allrounder

iQOO started off its journey as a Vivo sub-brand with a focus on gamers. It’s is back in India after a year with very disruptive iQOO 7 Legend and iQOO 7 that have all the bleeding-edge ingredients needed for a runaway online blockbuster.

We are talking solid performance hardware with Snapdragon 800 series SoC in the lead, OIS for the primary rear camera, AMOLED display with 120Hz HRR, 66W fast charging support, the latest Android 11-based software and so much more…

Here we will be talking about the iQOO 7 that’s more competitively positioned of the two 7 series phones. Is it all that it’s cracked up to be? We find out in our iQOO7 review!

Most of the beefed-up online exclusives that we run into tend to compromise on the design. Fortunately, that’s not the case with the new iQOO offerings. The iQOO 7 that we have with us measures 8.4mm in thickness and restricts itself to under 200 grams of heft – thus qualifying as a slim and light phone by modern standards.

The curved-edge back has real glass and it comes in two elegant color options. The side frame is good quality polycarbonate and has the power button and volume keys located in just the right places.

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The long-press action on the power button unfurls the smart home dashboard in Android 11 and this still isn’t implemented properly. For unlocking, there is an optical in-display fingerprint reader and a fast face unlock.

The display on the front has almost uniform bezels and a centrally aligned punch hole notch. We are quite habituated by the notch by now but can’t help getting distracted by the pre-applied screen protector that has an unmatched dew-drop cutout over the front camera.

Overall, the iQOO 7 looks appealing, feels solid, and is comfortable to wield.

The display is decked up with the best available hardware specifications. iQOO 7 gets a 6.62 inches full HD+ (1080 x 2400 px) AMOLED panel that supports a 120Hz refresh rate and a 300Hz touch sampling rate.

The display supports wide color gamut, is HDR10/HDR10+ compliant, and can get really bright (iQOO claims 1300Nits of peak brightness). The phone has DRM L1 certification and can stream 1080p content on apps like Netflix, Youtube and Prime videos. HDR works only with the Youtube app.

Display quality exceeds what we usually get in phones that cost under 40K. There are three color profiles to choose from and each comes with a color temperature slider. None of these feels perfectly accurate but we prefer the ‘Professional’ color mode that targets sRGB color space.

The phone also supports DC Dimming that reduces PWM flicker when using the screen at low brightness, thus reducing eye fatigue. This also adds substantial noise, but should still be a very welcome addition for gamers habituated to play in a dark ambiance.

Performance is the strongest suit of the iQOO 7. In India, it’s powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 octa-core chipset that’s almost similar to the Snapdragon 865 from last year. Further adding to its gaming credentials are up to 12GB LPDDR4X RAM and up to 256GB of the latest UFS 3.1 storage.

That’s indeed a very powerful configuration and the same is reflected in practical usage. The gaming experience was simply fabulous. Call of Duty Mobile ran exceptionally smoothly even without leveraging the game-centric features iQOO has baked in.

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The game mode has three new highlights – 4D game vibration, Game frame interpolation, and Display enhancement – the last two of which are powered by a separate display chip. We tested these in COD mobile. The 4D game vibration enhances haptic feedback and makes it immediately known that you are being shot at, but it proved to be a distraction by and large and we ended up turning it off after a couple of bouts.

Game Display enhancement uplifts and sharpens the game layout and makes colors look more vibrant. Vivo terms this as SDR to HDR conversion. This kind of works and we kept it on.

The Frame interpolation uses MEMC and can intelligently add more frames resulting in smoother motion. Every now and then we faced input latency, but overall this proved to be a gaming advantage.

The good thing is that iQOO 7 is powerful enough to handle these demanding enhancements with aplomb (the phone heats up quite a bit, though). You will need to pay a battery penalty, though.

iQOO 7 also did really well at synthetic benchmarks:

Just as recent OnePlus and Vivo phones, the iQOO 7 can also use a part of its fast storage to cache apps (extended RAM) to improve multitasking under heavy loads. We couldn’t tell how much of a difference this made since we always had a lot of free RAM to spare and the software still felt pretty aggressive with killing idle background apps.

The liquid cooling system effectively dissipates heat to the outer shell. As a result, the phone gets hot with extended gaming, but performance remains stable (as is also reflected in 98.9% stability in the 3D Mark stress test above). We didn’t face any issues with call quality or connectivity. The in-display fingerprint reader works like a charm as is expected of all phones in 2021.

Coming to the software, iQOO uses Vivo’s Funtouch OS 11 (Android 11 based). The interface has Google feed on the (-1) home screen and is among the rare few of the custom interfaces that continue to retain a custom dialer with Auto-call recording support. We appreciate that Vivo has ironed out the annoying bits over the years and the current Funtouch OS is a skin we could get used to.

It still feels bloated. There are several third-party apps, many of which can be uninstalled. But our biggest gripe is Vivo/iQOO being a little pushy with their app store. During my usage, I ended up in the Vivo store many a time without any intention of doing so.

There are three cameras on the rear – a 48MP Sony IMX598 with OIS, a 13MP wide-angle camera, and a 2MP mono sensor to help with portraits. On the front, there is a 16MP sensor for selfies.

In proper daylight, the phone can capture sufficient details. Colors pop nicely and the dynamic range is wide. The iQOO 7 does a surprisingly good job, considering its price. The performance is similar to what you’d get on the pricier Vivo X60 Pro.

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In lowlight scenes and while using the Night mode, camera algorithms bump up ISO rather liberally, but the noise and artifacts are still very acceptable. The OIS helps with lowlight photography.

The software approach remains the same as Vivo X60 Pro but we did notice a small difference in image quality.

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The portrait camera does a great job with edge detection and there are several style filters to keep things interesting.

The wide-angle shooter can be used to capture a wider canvas (108-degrees with edge-distortion correction) and this one feels more than an afterthought. It is also used for macros and the quality in proper daylight is pretty amazing.

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The iQOO 7 lets you shoot up to 4K videos@60fps. OIS helps enhance stability but works only for 1080p footage. The quality of footage and audio recording is strictly average.

Overall, the camera quality for the iQOO 7 is impressive in proper daylight and even in properly lit indoor settings. Performance in low light, tricky indoors, and in dark scenes takes a hit but is still better than what you’d get on most mid-range phones.

With the display set to 120Hz, we are consistently getting a screen-on-time of 6 + hours, which converts to more than a day’s usage for us. The good thing is that the blazing-fast 66W charger bundled with the phone can top up the lost juice within 30 minutes!

iQOO 7 has stereo speakers that get pretty loud. The audio isn’t exactly full and immersive, but the stereo output makes a difference while watching videos. We didn’t face any issues with wireless audio with analog output via USB C port.

iQOO 7 proved to be an impressive allrounder and should be particularly appealing to gamers. iQOO pulls out all stops and passes on hardware and software that Vivo usually reserves for its high end phones at a very disruptive price, thus undercutting the competition by a margin.

You get a premium design, amazing performance, fabulous battery experience, a convincing camera for photography, and a decent 120Hz AMOLED display – And that’s currently unmatched value for the starting price of INR 31,990.

On the downside, the Funtouch software could however do with some refinements. All said and done, this is surely a phone that we can recommend.

Editor’s rating: 4 / 5

Reasons to buy

• Excellent performance
• Long lasting battery with excellent fast charging
• Daylight photography
• Elegant design
• 120Hz AMOLED display

Reasons to not buy

• Software needs some refinement
• No Audio jack

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iQOO 7 FAQ

What is the SAR value of iQOO 7?

SAR Value head is 0.97 W/ kg, SAR value body is 0.76 W/ kg

Does iQOO 7 support HD and HDR streaming on Netflix and Prime?

Full HD streaming works fine on Netflix and Prime videos. HDR content is supported only on Youtube.

Does iQOO 7 support AR Core for Google objects?

No, AR core is not supported.

Does iQOO 7 support auto call recording?

Yes, it does.

Out of 128GB, how much is free on iQOO 7?

Around 106GB is free for end users.