In recent years, iQOO has established an amazing reputation in terms of reliability with minimal compromise on quality.
iQOO was once a performance-centric brand that offered amazing gaming features in its phones now has a substantial rise in every aspect of its latest smartphones and the same applies to its new offering, iQOO Z9. iQOO has offered an all-rounder phone under 20k to its successor of the Z series with a better display, performance, and camera.
So, is this the best all-rounder phone under 20k? Let’s find out in the detailed iQOO Z9 review.
Build Quality of iQOO Z9
iQOO Z9 is a plastic back, non-fancy simple smartphone just like every Z series phone launched by the brand. Although the brand tried to make it look better with a green color, the phone does not have an eye-catching design, and iQOO has kept it simple in this case.
The camera sensor on the back is huge, so the phone stays flat when kept on the table. It has a flat display and is available in two colors: Blue and Green. The phone is lightweight, does not feel slippery, and has iQOO branding at the bottom.
Camera: Worthy Upgrade to its Successor
iQOO Z9 comes with a 50MP camera equipped with Sony IMX 882, the first phone to be equipped with this sensor. iQOO had an amazing camera but this time the upgrade was better. The 50MP camera offers beautiful clicks but is dull in color. iQOO does not over-sharpen the image to make them look better which might not help many in certain low-light conditions. The skin tone is mostly kept original by the camera but certain colors don’t show up as they should. Considering it to be a sub-20k product, the camera that iQOO offers is one of the best in the segment.
PORTRAIT? iQOO Z9 offers really good edge detection arguably better than most 30k phones so you don’t have to worry about your Instagram and Whatsapp DP.
One of the best features of the iQOO Z9 camera is the SUPER-MOON which lets you click photos of the moon with 5x, 10x, and 20x which are optimized by AI and it works very well.
Some photos for reference and no doubt that iQOO Z9 has the best camera amongst the 20k segment currently in the market.
The Monstrous Performance
iQOO Z9 comes with Dimensity 7200 SoC a 4nm chip enough capable of running most apps without any issues including, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, etc. Coming to gaming performance for which iQOO is popularly known some games that were tested were CODM, BGMI, Genshin Impact, and Pokémon Unite, and the device shows no sign of lag in every game. Heating is under limits and the impact of heating is visible on the performance during the game although no FPS drop was observed.
The chip inside this device is capable enough to run any game but the software limits the performance of many games considering the most popular title Battleground Mobile India popularly known as BGMI the phone only supports up to 60 FPS which works flawlessly but the support for 90 FPS is not provided even though iQOO call themselves as a gaming smartphone manufacturer popular titles are not optimized by the brand.
The monster mode has no impact on performance or any of the above games so it may overclock the CPU a bit but that substantial rise in performance isn’t visible. AnTuTu score of iQOO Z9 is around 6 lakh and geek bench is 1100 for single and 2500 for multi-core.
Display and Battery
iQOO Z9 offers a 6.67-inch AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate and the display is just like any other phone, crisp and clear although if the screen size had been 6.7-inch instead of 6.67 just like IQOO Z9x then the phone would have been better for gaming.
iQOO Z9 has a good battery of 5000mAh and gives around 8 hours of SoT under normal conditions and comes with a 44W fast charger but the charging is not very fast when compared to alternatives maybe they should fix this in the next versions.
Should You Consider This? Honest Opinion and Flaws
After using the phone for almost 3 months now I took it as an upgrade to my Mi11i which I used for almost two years this phone stands up to the price at which it comes, but if you are someone who is coming from Samsung or any other clean software or someone who likes a lot of customization in OS you may not like the pre-installed apps and limited customization. Funtouch OS is exceptionally stable OS but it has its drawbacks one of the most frustrating ones is poor UI design and limited customization,
The UI looks way too old and I have been using the iQOO Z series since 2021 and nothing has changed to date and note that the Funtouch OS 15 also doesn’t offer any big change in its old-looking UI. But should you be concerned? “SIMPLY NO”.Every iQOO phone has this same UI and this is not related to a lowered-priced variant or mid-range series for instance the newest iQOO 13 will come with almost the same UI priced at around 50k. If compared to other brands iQOO is behind other brands like Samsung and Oneplus, read my Oneplus 13 review here.
The level of performance IQOO Z9 offers at a price below 20k is perfect.
So even if you have less experience with iQOO or have trust issues regarding the software you can simply uninstall almost every app installed and have your clean phone which has great power. If you are a less heavy gamer or a hardcore Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter user this phone will work flawlessly for you.
The End of iQOO Z9 Review
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