iQOO 13 review

Funtouch 15 on top of Android 15

The iQOO 13 comes with Funtouch 15 out of the box, based on Android 15. It's important to note that we are reviewing a pre-release version of the software, so some features may be missing. For instance, There's no way to control and customize that.

The company promises 4 major Android OS updates and 5 years of security patches. That's a fairly lengthy commitment that would ensure the device stays relevant for years to come.

Appearance-wise, there aren't many changes in Funtouch 15 over version 14. If you used Funtouch so far, you will feel right at home.

Funtouch 15

We couldn't find many new features either. Aside from some under-the-hood performance improvements by leveraging AI algorithms and improved search in the settings menu, there's not much to talk about.

Funtouch 15

iQOO did add a Live Transcribe feature that transcribes speech in real time. You can even be notified when someone says your name during a meeting. It's pretty neat. The default Gallery app also supports AI Erase and AI Enhancements of photos. The former allows you to remove objects from the scene, while the latter boosts certain properties of the image to achieve a more likable post-processing. None of these are unique to the iQOO 13, though.

Of course, the handset offers the Circle to Search feature that recently became available to non-Samsung and Google phones.

We suspect that more features are on their way, some of which are AI-powered, but for now, Funtouch 15 doesn't seem to be much different from Funtouch 14, specifically on iQOO devices. Hence why, we recommend reading the software section of our iQOO 12 review to get a good idea of what Funtouch is as a whole.

Benchmark performance

The iQOO 13 is one of the first smartphones we encounter with a Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset inside - Qualcomm's latest isn't simply another in the long line of incremental improvements, but rather an all-new custom design (as opposed to being ARM-based like the previous generations). The 3nm chip with in-house cores and super-high CPU frequencies takes on Mediatek with their latest Dimensity's all-big-core approach in what is looking like the most exciting generation of Android silicon in a while.

The Elite uses Oryon cores, two versions of them - two Prime cores and six Performance cores. These aren't Cortex cores like in MediaTek and Samsung chipsets, but a Qualcomm design. The two Prime Oryon V2 Phoenix L cores run at up to 4.32GHz, which is an insane speed for a pocketable device and are joined by by 6x Oryon V2 Phoenix M, ticking at 3.53 GHz.

On the GPU front, there's the Adreno 830, built on a new architecture using a sliced design with dedicated memory for each slice. The 830 has three of these slices clocked at up to 1.1GHz.

In addition to the Snapdragon 8 Elite, iQOO is including a Supercomputing Q2 chip - an upgrade over the Supercomputing Q1 chip found in the iQOO 12. The chip's sole purpose is to enhance gaming capabilities and reduce power consumption. It handles upscaling in games to achieve super-resolution with PUBG and Genshin supporting up to QHD resolution and boosts the frame rate, and keeps it stable, during gaming. If the game is supported, it can match the game's frame rate with the display's refresh rate to reduce stuttering.

The international variant comes in just two memory configurations - 12GB/256GB and 16GB/512GB. The company says the device is equipped with UFS 4.1 chips, but the UFS 4.1 capabilities on the 12GB/256GB configuration will be made available via a future OTA update. It's perhaps worth noting that the difference between UFS 4.0 and 4.1 isn't read/write speeds, it's about other optimizations such as efficiency, thermal performance and latency..

Now off to the benchmarks.

As you can see, the iQOO 13 is among the top performers with its Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC. The device performs as expected and shows slightly lower CPU performance compared to the Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro, which is to be expected.

Interestingly enough, the vivo X200 Pro with its Dimensity 9400 chip edges out the iQOO 13 and the Realme GT 7 Pro in combined scenarios such as AnTuTu 10. Meanwhile, a handful of devices overtake the iQOO 13 in GPU-intensive tasks like 3DMark's benchmarks, likely due to the higher resolution on iQOO's phone.

Sustained performance

To be honest, we were surprised by the thermal throttling results of the IQOO 13. The Snapdragon 8 Elite is an extremely powerful chipset; however, the iQOO 13 handles the thermals like a champ.

We are impressed by the sustained performance in the CPU throttling test as the device gradually toned down to around 80% of the CPU's theoretical performance and maintained it for the full 1-hour long stress test. The phone, on the other hand, got pretty hot on the outside.

CPU and GPU stress tests

The GPU stress test didn't turn out so great, though. The 3DMark Wild Life Extreme Stress Test shows roughly 50% GPU stability, which isn't ideal.