01 February,2025 09:32 AM IST | Mumbai | Jaison Lewis
Representation Pic/istock
The recently launched iQOO 13 seemingly ticks all the boxes for a flagship on paper but at a much lower price. Does it truly deliver on what it says it will? Read on to find out. To me, the iQOO brand has always been interesting; it is from the same stable as Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus and Realme. All these brands are sister concerns, but they compete in the Indian market for a slice of the pie. The First iQOO phone was a perfect blend of pocket-friendly pricing and quality parts and I have great hopes for the iQOO 13.
The iQOO 13 has a 6.82-inch (3168 x 1440) AMOLED screen, Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite under the hood and a 6000 mAh battery with silicon-based anodes that supposedly improve battery life. There are two options to choose from. Both options are storage-based: 12GB + 256GB and 16GB + 512 GB. I tested the 16GB version. There are only two colours: the Legend edition, which is their BMW white phone with some BMW branding, and a Grey version, there are more colour options abroad, but for India, we get only these two. The rear camera setup is a 50MP main with OIS, 50MP telephoto and 50MP ultrawide paired with a Dual LED flash.
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On the front is a 32MP camera. The phone is a little over 200 grams in weight, and it is made of aluminium and glass, which gives it a nice premium feel. Not to mention, the IP68 and IP69 Dust and Water resistance are also pretty sweet. The phone is 5G and capable of supporting multiple bands. It has Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, NFC, an ultrasonic in-screen fingerprint scanner, and a USB Type-C port. You can have a maximum of two nano SIM cards installed. The phone comes packaged with a 120W fast charger and a cable. As per the norm, the headphone jack is missing, but the wireless charging is also missing. The phone starts at Rs 54,999, which is a pretty good price for the on-paper configuration.
The phone has a great collection of 50MP cameras and it should click great pictures. However, this is possibly one of the problems with this phone. While the camera numbers match up with a flagship, the quality of images is inconsistent. When the light is sufficient, iQOO's camera performs as well as the best of them; however, in low-light or even slightly darker environments, it feels like the phone just processes the pictures wrong. If you want to have more control, you need to go into the Pro mode, which is not easily accessible and takes a bit of tinkering to get great photos. For me, that kind of beats the point of shooting with your phone, which takes pictures quickly. The zoomed-in pictures are also terrible. A lot of the features are lost, and even at 5X zoom, the pictures blend in the colours, making them look patchy. I feel the previous iQOO flagship did a better job with the zoomed-in pictures. Fun fact: the phone is still available for a nice hefty discount.
The screen of the iQOO is very good, and this translates into a great gaming and video-watching experience. The power of the Snapdragon 8 Elite is undeniable while playing games like Genshin Impact, and the large vapour chamber cooling unit does a good job of keeping the temperatures within comfortable ranges. iQOO also says they have a Supercomputing Chip called Q2 in addition to the Snapdragon. This chip helps the phone perform its peak 2K resolution at 144FPS which is impressive but hard to notice while playing. The large battery is also advantageous here letting you play without being plugged in for a very long time. If your battery does drain out, you can charge your phone with the provided charger, and in 15 minutes, you should be ok for another few hours of gaming. iQOO also has a sneaky RGB ring around the camera that can give you more of that gamer aesthetic, setting the mood for the games you play in case you are into that.
Funtouch OS is not great but it isn't bad either. iQOO has removed Hot Apps from its flagship, but there are plenty of permanent apps that bloat up the phone. You can't easily remove these and it takes a bit of tinkering around and access to a PC to fix this issue. The OS is user-friendly; there are nice quality-of-life features and quick-access menus. The good customizability options and I appreciate the ability to load a video as a background. The company is committed to 4 years of Android upgrades and five years of security updates. This means you can use your phone without being worried about updates.
The AI integrations, considering what brands like Samsung can deliver, are just about ok in comparison. The AI photo enhancements are very okay, I rarely use them. The smart erase function works sometimes, it does a good job of isolating the thing I want to delete but messes up the filling of the area. It works well only in specific situations. The on-call translations feature is something that I like, but only a few languages are supported. Hopefully, this will be expanded in the future.
The iQOO 13 for the price is an excellent deal, and you can find this phone for a lot less with exchanges and deals, which makes it an even better deal. However, it is a brand that, for some reason, people are a bit snooty about; I guess it isn't an iPhone or a Samsung S25 Ultra, but the fact is this does the job at a fraction of the cost. The negatives in this case for me are not that jarring, and I can deal with the camera not being up to par; these things can improve and mostly improve over time and updates. So if you are looking for an upgrade, or need a fancy flagship but are short on cash, the iQOO 13 does present itself as the best option, one could even call it the middle-class flagship.
Price: Rs 54,999
Pros
>> Value for money
>> Great Screen
>> Snapdragon 8 Elite
>> Charger and cable included
Cons
>> No wireless charging
>> Sub-par camera performance
>> Only two colour options
>> Slightly bloated OS
