iQOO 13 Review: Cost-effective premium phone

iQOO earlier this month launched the all-new iQOO 13 series premium phone in India.

It comes with Snapdragon 8 Elite, Qualcomm 's latest and most advanced mobile chipset to date. Here are my thoughts on iQOO's most powerful Android phone.

Design, build quality and display

The new iQOO 13 retains some of the key design elements of the predecessor. It boasts the familiar curved squared camera module. Instead of a standalone LED flash unit, which was featured in the iQOO 12 (review) , the company has moved it to the main module. But, it comes in a circular form. Also, the designed to flash the right amount of light to help get a good photo in low-light conditions.

. Also, the entire camera module is lined with LED. It supports and the owner can program it to flash custom colours for calls, message notifications and even while playing music or games.

Here's how to turn on the Dynamic LED light feature on iQOO 13

Go to Settings >> Shortcuts and accessibility >> Dynamic light >> Turn on for Incoming calls, Notifications, Music and Battery Level

This handy feature will come in handy when the phone is put into silent mode or vibration mode. This will help owners instantly know about calls and messages in the inbox, and respond.

. Our review unit is the BMW Legend series. It sports a cool snow-white colour scheme with a trademark red-black-blue colourway strip with iQOO brand engraving. It has a visually appealing smooth AG Glass finish and does a fine job repelling stains such as fingerprint smudges.

The company also offers the device another colour option-- Nardo Grey, which comes with an enamel glass finish.

.Best of 2024: Top smartphones launched in India this year. The device features a super sturdy aluminium alloy frame around the edges of the display and also comes with an IP68+69 rating.

It is built to survive an accidental drop in the water body up to 1.5 metres (approx. five feet) for close to 30 minutes. And, also can withstand high-pressure water jets up to 1,450 PSI and even hot steam, but only for a few seconds.

Further, the device's screen is protected by a Schott Xensation Alpha shield against scratches.

. On the front, it flaunts a gorgeous 6.82-inch Quad HD+ (3168×1440p) curved BOE Q10 LTPO AMOLED display. It comes with a 20:9 aspect ratio screen, supports HDR10+, 144Hz variable refresh rate and offers up to 4,500 nits peak brightness. It has a pixel density of 510 ppi (pixels per inch) and a screen-to-body ratio of 90.2 per cent.

The display is of superior quality, great for watching movies and TV series for long hours. It has a dual-speaker which manages to produce stable audio output even when the volume is put to the maximum.

It should be noted that the iQOO 13 boasts of TÜV Rheinland Circular Polarization Certification, which promises to significantly control the blue light emission. Users can read long-form news articles and e-books for several hours at night with less strain on the eyes.

. It also features a type-c port, and dual-SIM slots and the device comes with an IP68+69 water-and-dust resistant rating.

The new iQOO premium phone also supports an infrared sensor, which comes in handy to control Internet-of-Things (IoT) gadgets such as smart TVs, smart ACs and more at home.

The in-display ultrasonic fingerprint sensor on iQOO 13 is amazing. It is amazingly fast in terms of recognising fingerprint impressions and unlocking the device.

Performance

It is powered by a 3nm class Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite octa-core processor with Adreno 830 GPU, 12GB / 16GB LPDDR5X RAM with 256GB / 512GB / 1TB (UFS 4.0) storage.

It can clock whopping CPU speed up to 4.32GHz, which is more than sufficient to run any app and also supports most power-guzzling graphics-rich gaming titles available on the Google Play Store.

Thanks to the super powerful Qualcomm chipset, the iQOO phone performed buttery smooth. Even if it is pushed to the extreme such as playing Asplat Legends Unite for hours, the device remains stable.

. Also, the device comes with Supercomputing Chip Q2. It is touted to be the first-ever smartphone to support Q10 2K super-resolution display and 144 FPS Super Frame Rate, and yet consumes power less compared to current industry standards.

During the entire review period, it never showed the slightest hint of lag-ness. Though it gets a bit warm, but never overheated.

The device runs Android 15-based Funtouch OS 15. It is easy to get the hang of the user interface. And, the company has promised to offer four years of Android OS updates (up to Android 19) and an additional year of security software support for protection against emerging cyber threats.

It houses a massive 6,000mAh cell capacity. It consistently delivered one and half days of battery life under normal usage, provided you connect to Wi-Fi internet at home and the office. If you are fully dependent on 5G cellular data all day, the phone will be able to last a whole day.

. Even if you binge-watch a TV series via an OTT app using cellular data, you don't have to feel anxiety as the company offers a super fast 120W SuperFlash charger with the retail box.

It can power up the device from zero to 50 per cent in just 15 minutes and can hit the 100 per cent mark in around half an hour.

. Photography

It also boasts of triple-camera module--main 50MP camera (with 1/ 1.49-inch Sony IMX921 sensor, f/1.88 aperture, OIS: Optical Image Stabilisation) with 150-degree 50MP ultra-wide-angle camera (with f/2.0) and a 119.4-degree 50MP telephoto camera (with f/1.85, 1/2.93-inch IMX816 sensor, OIS, up to 4x lossless zoom) with LED flash.

. The new iQOO 13 takes pretty good photos in the natural light conditions. Like most premium phones, the native camera adds a punchy colour boost to subjects such as human faces and flowers. The latter particularly look warmer and way more prettier than what they look in our eyes.

. It takes amazing photos in close-up shots and ultrawide angle modes.

. It can support 4X optical zoom and can digitally zoom up to 30X.

. At night, the device does a commendable job of capturing a balanced photo. It takes in the right amount of light from the surrounding sources such as street lamps. It doesn't blow up and make it look like the photo was taken in the evening. It preserves the dark skies in the background and makes it an authentic nighttime photo.

. It also supports AI Eraser. Users can just manually remove the object or a person in the background by just touching it with their fingers. It needs the internet to function faster.

. With the Live Cut feature, users can easily pick an object such as your pet or an object or any person off the picture to create a custom sticker out of it.

. In the Gallery app, there is AI Photo Enhance feature to make the subjects in the frame more sharper and clearer.

. The device also comes with a Super Documents feature, which helps in getting documents scanned with crisp details.

. On the front, it houses a 32MP front-facing camera with f/2.45 aperture. It takes pretty amazing selfies.

It supports multi-focal portrait photos. This allows the user to adjust the depth of field and blur the background to geta dramatic bokeh effect. Both the front and the back cameras support.

. The rear-side primary camera can record up to 8K videos at 30 frames per second (fps) and the front camera can record 4K at 30/60 fps.

The video comes off stable even with shaky hands and the quality is on par with premium phones in the sub-Rs 60,000 price segment.

. Final thoughts

iQOO 13 is one of the best feature-rich reliable premium phones launched this year in India. Thanks to super powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, the device delivered good smooth performance.

. The build quality and the display panel are absolutely top-class. The device's camera is amazingly good and takes great photos in low-light conditions. And, iQOO 13 consistently offered more than day of battery life under normal usage.

Besides the powerful Qualcomm processor, impressive display and build quality, the cost-effective price tag makes it a compelling reason to buy the iQOO 13.

.Google Pixel 9 Pro XL review: Impressive gen AI premium phone with amazing camera. Get the latest news on new launches, gadget reviews, apps, cybersecurity, and more on personal technology only on DH Tech .

iQOO 13 Review: Cost-effective premium phone

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