iQOO 9T brings the best of everything like a proper flagship!!
iQOO has been a star performer since the launch of the iQOO 3 in 2020. The brand’s motive is set to provide the best specifications for a particular smartphone in its respective price segment as we see each year. The main area where iQOO truly nails is the performance department as we see with the launch of the iQOO Neo 6 (Review) in the premium mid-range segment and the iQOO 9 series launched in the first half of this year.
Now, iQOO is yet providing another smartphone in the 9 series, iQOO 9T which packs in the most powerful Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chipset, and other than this you get a good build and design, a 120Hz AMOLED display, a 4700mAh battery with faster charging and a great set of triple cameras. So can the iQOO 9T rule the budget flagship segment and is this the best budget flagship out there?
Let’s find out in the full review.
iQOO 9T Design:
Like all iQOO smartphones, the iQOO 9T sports a unique design where you get two different color variants – Legend and Alpha where the Legend variant consists of the BMW pattern as found on almost all iQOO smartphones. At the back, the top half has a black color that houses the rectangular camera setup that consists of three cameras and a LED flashlight.
Besides, the cameras, there is the V1 logo, and below it is written “Powered By” which seems like the iQOO 9T is also using the V1+ chip for image processing as seen on Vivo flagship smartphones. The second half has the BMW design which consists of three different strips – Red, Blue, and Black with the iQOO logo present on the three strips on the back.
The Alpha variant, on the other hand, has a black-colored carbon fiber finish on the top half with a glossy finish whereas the second half has a sandstone or matte finish in black color. The sandstone finish provides a very good grip as it does not catch any fingerprints or smudges. The back of the smartphone also has an IP52 rating which means it is splash and dust resistant.
In terms of weight distribution, the iQOO 9T weighs around 206grams which makes it slightly heavier and is also thicker at 8mm around the sides. Around the sides, there is an aluminum frame that houses the power button and the volume buttons on the right side whereas the left side remains completely cleaner. The top of the iQOO 9T has a secondary noise-canceling microphone and an IR Blaster to control various devices.
At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a dual SIM card slot, a primary microphone, and a speaker grille. There is no slot for a microSD card for storage expansion and no 3.5mm headphone jack also. On the front, there is a single punch hole display with very minimum bezels around the sides. The back of the smartphone is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 5 whereas the front is protected by Schott Xensation glass.
Overall, the build and design feel excellent and make it a premium smartphone to hold.
iQOO 9T Display:
The iQOO 9T sports a larger 6.78-inches Full HD+(1080×2400 pixels) AMOLED display and this is an E5 AMOLED panel so you get good brightness levels and colors look punchier on the display. There is also the 120Hz refresh rate which makes everything smoother on the display whether it is multi-tasking between applications like streaming social media, webpages, playing games, etc.
The refresh rate is not a dynamic one but you do get three different options to choose from – 60Hz, 120Hz, and the Auto-Switch option which when turned on either switches between 60Hz or 120Hz depending on the content on the display. Most of the applications run on 120Hz by default and some applications like YouTube, and Netflix runs at 60Hz.
Combined with the 120Hz refresh rate, you get a massive 360Hz touch sampling rate for faster touch responses during gaming. In terms of display brightness, since you are getting an E5 AMOLED panel, the display can achieve a peak brightness of 1500nits and the visibility of the display is very good under direct sunlight. The display also has three different settings – Standard, Professional and Bright.
Here switching to Professional, covers the sRGB scale whereas Bright and Standard cover the DCI-P3 gamut scale and you can the display tone to warmer or cooler. Since this is an AMOLED display, you get an optical in-display fingerprint scanner that is fast and accurate. There is also support for HDR on YouTube and Widevine L1 is present so you can run HD content on all OTT platforms.
Netflix by default supports HDR content which is great. Overall, this is a very good display for media consumption.
iQOO 9T Performance:
The iQOO 9T sports a powerful Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chipset also found on the OnePlus 10T (Review). In terms of daily tasks like scrolling through webpages, social media, etc., rendering videos, and playing games felt smoother. The biggest talking point is the thermal throttling on this chipset which is much more improved compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset.
In terms of CPU throttling tests, the smartphone could achieve a sustained performance of around 75-80 percent which is excellent and also the benchmark scores are very good. In terms of gaming, BGMI runs at Ultra HDR graphics with Extreme frame rates and the gameplay is very smooth without any stutters or lag. The back of the smartphone does not heat up much and remains cooler which is very good.
IQOO also provides a dedicated Game Mode which further increases the touch sampling rate to 1200Hz using frame interpolation for smooth gaming. There is also a 4D vibration motor that provides good haptics and also there is a Pressure Sensitive option where you can set your figures on the display for faster controls in games.
The iQOO 9T has good carrier aggregation and supports 9 bands of 5G. It is available in two different variants – 8/12GB LPDDR5 RAM with 128/256GB storage with UFS 3.1 speeds. Overall, the gaming and daily performance remain excellent on the smartphone.
iQOO 9T Software:
The iQOO 9T runs on FunTouchOS 12.1 based on Android 12 out of the box. FunTouchOS with each of its iterations brings some improvements and it is feature packed as it provides a lot of customizations to change icon shape and size, under the Dynamic effects sub-menu, you can customize the home screen, lock screen and you also get different animations for charging in fingerprint scanner.
There is also the Always-On display in different sub-menu where you can customize different styles for clocks, backgrounds, animations, etc. There is also a Smart Motion menu where you get multiple screen-on and off gestures and also there is a Smart Remote application used for the IR Blaster to control devices. There are also Vivo-specific applications like iManager, Music, Albums, and Video.
Other than that you get Android 12 features like Privacy Dashboard where you can see which applications use the camera, location, and microphone but still widgets support is not so good. However, there is some bloatware present but iQOO has reduced it significantly and these can be uninstalled. In terms of software updates, you are assured of another three years of Android OS updates and four years of security updates which is really good.
iQOO 9T Cameras:
The iQOO 9T sports a triple camera setup that includes a 50MP f/1.9 Samsung GN5 sensor for the main camera, a 12MP f/2.0 telephoto camera with 2x optical zoom, and another 13MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera with a 120-degree field of view. On the front, there is a 16MP f/2.5 camera for selfies.
The images from the main camera come out with good details that look sharper and the color saturation also looks natural without any oversharpening. However, the colors do look slightly oversaturated in the background especially if you are shooting human subjects. The HDR performance is very good as the colors look good and very less noise is present in the background. The dynamic range is excellent.
At night, the images come out with an excellent level of detail and dynamic range and colors look natural without any oversharpening. The exposure is well under control and since the V1+ chip is present, all darker areas have good light in the background. Using the dedicated Night Mode also results in excellent dynamic range and colors look good but it does oversharpen the background slightly which needs to be fixed.
The 13MP ultrawide camera does a very good job in terms of dynamic range and details look sharper as it has a larger 120-degree field of view. There is very less distortion present around the edges and also the noise is very less in the background. Similarly during the night, the images from the ultrawide camera come out with good details and dynamic range with sharper details, and also there is a dedicated Night Mode.
The ultrawide camera on the iQOO 9T also doubles up as a macro camera when you focus the ultrawide camera when going closer to an object. The macro images have an excellent level of detail and dynamic range with saturated colors and no noise in the background. In terms of portraits, the edge detection is good but skin tones look oversaturated, and also the background blur is not so well implemented.
The telephoto camera does a very good job in terms of details and dynamic range but still, there is a lot of oversharpening in the background. At 2x zoom, the images have good detail and beyond this, the images produce slightly washed-out colors, and a lot of noise is present in the background. At night, the telephoto camera does a good job in terms of details as they look sharper at 2x zoom and the dynamic range is also very good.
The noise is still present in the background but this camera is far better than the other 2MP macro cameras on other smartphones. On the front, the selfies come out with good dynamic range and the details look sharper but still, it does apply some oversharpening, and skin tones look slightly washed out. The field of view could have been slightly larger.
The noise is very less present in the background and also in low light, the selfies come out good and you also get a dedicated Night Mode for selfies that reduces noise in terms of portrait selfies, the skin tones look slightly washed out but you get good edge detection. However, the background blur is not so good and iQOO needs to fix the background blur issue with a future software update.
In terms of video recording, the main camera can record 4K videos at 60fps and these videos come out with excellent dynamic range and details look sharper with very less noise in the background. However, there is still no support for 8K video recording which the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 supports. But at 4K recording at 60fps, there is slight shakiness in the videos as the OIS only works for 4K videos at 30fps or 1080p videos at 60fps.
At 1080p videos at 60fps, the videos come out with oversaturated colors with almost no noise present in the background. The ultrawide and telephoto cameras can only record 1080p videos at 30fps which is a slight drawback but videos from both of these cameras have sharper details and good dynamic range but some amount of noise is present.
However, the ultrawide camera gets an Ultra Stable Mode which does reduce noise. On the front camera, there is only support for 1080p at 30fps but still, these videos have good dynamic range but skin tones look slightly oversharpened. As there is no EIS, the videos have slightly more noise in the background. Overall, the cameras are good but iQOO needs to fix some issues.
iQOO 9T Battery Life:
The iQOO 9T sports a 4700mAh battery which can easily last for two days with normal usage with the display set to 120Hz and with heavy usage which includes video rendering, playing games continuously for 4-5 hours, streaming social media, taking calls for 7-8 hours all of with the display set to 120Hz, the smartphone easily lasted for one and half days which is quite good.
The standard screen-on time was around 6-7 hours which was very good compared to some of the flagship smartphones having the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset which was not well optimized for battery life and had thermal throttling issues. FunTouchOS is not so optimized for battery life which iQOO needs to fix in a future software update.
In terms of charging, the iQOO 9T ships with a massive 120W fast charger which charges the smartphone from 0 to 100 percent within 20-22 minutes which is very fast. Charging the smartphone from 0 to 50 percent takes around 5 minutes which is really good for a fast top-up. However, there is no support for wireless charging which is slightly disappointing but still, the fast charging is perfect here.
iQOO 9T Audio Quality:
The iQOO 9T sports a stereo speaker setup that sounds adequately loud and clear but at the highest volume settings, the sound does feel slightly muffled. However, iQOO has provided Di-Rac audio output where you can get great sound quality using earphones. There is also Dolby Atmos present for enhanced sound output.
There is no 3.5mm headphone jack present but you do get a USB Type-C to 3.5mm headphone jack converter inside the box which most of the brands do not provide.
Verdict:
Overall, the iQOO 9T is a great all-rounder smartphone that provides very good specifications for the price as it packs a premium build and design, a great E5 AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate, and combined with it are stereo speakers which make it a great source of media consumption. The Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 is the main talking point which makes it great for all the daily tasks and gaming.
It also addresses the issues of overheating and poor battery life of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 found on many flagships. The camera setup looks great as you are getting a telephoto camera and all cameras are well tuned for images and videos. The battery life is good and the 120W fast charging is a really handy feature present. The software experience is good enough as you get a couple of features for users.
However, there are some areas where the iQOO 9T could have been better. The cameras though good struggles when it comes to human subjects as they do not look so good in low light, the ultrawide and telephoto cameras need some improvement, and also a limitation to 1080p video recording on both of them is slightly disappointing.
FunTouchOS is filled with bloatware and is not as polished or refined as OneUI or OxygenOS. So if you want a smartphone that provides the best performance and gaming is your topmost priority, then the iQOO 9T is your first option but other than that considering all the specifications, the iQOO 9T is the best budget flagship available in the market as of now.