iQOO 9 SE review

Funtouch OS 12 on top of Android 12

Vivo is still amidst a major software transition, for lack of a better term. Its new OriginOS is already a thing but still exclusive to just the Chinese market. Globally, the FuntouchOS skin was fairly recently bumped up to version 12, originally with an Android 11 core underneath, but more recently with Android 12. Independent or not, iQOO has been in pretty much the same boat with its devices, including the iQOO 9 SE.

You can find more than a few traces of the new Android core scattered about here and there, like Google's new privacy-focused green notification dot that indicates when the camera or microphone are being used or the increased "bounce back" animations on most UI components.

Overall, however, the UI and UX are distinctly custom, courtesy of Funtouch OS 12. The stock-ish-looking UI elements that were kind of the norm in FunTouch OS 11 have been substituted with a highly customized and customizable UI. Some of the changes are nifty, too, including the system menus being tailored towards a single-handed use. Some of the menus' content moves to the lower half of the screen when you swipe down, but not all, which is odd. The default selection of widgets has been revamped to make them more intuitive and easier to use.

Lockscreen • Homescreen • Folder view • Settings menu

The recent apps menu, for example, has one of those useful proprietary features. You can choose between the standard carousel formation and a horizontal tiles layout - sort of like MIUI, only scrollable horizontally.

The app drawer, although stock-ish looking, has an expandable recommended apps category on the top (most commonly used ones), whereas using the vertical scroller on the right would highlight the apps beginning with the selected letter.

Recent apps • Recent apps • Notification shade • Quick toggles • App drawer

The notification shade has been revamped, too, in terms of looks mostly - the quick toggles are now square-shaped, and the accent color around the menus (including the quick toggles icons) is blue, and there's no way to change either. Applying different themes would only change the icon pack and wallpaper.

The rest of the UI gets plenty of love too. In the Dynamic effects sub-menu, vivo has grouped quite a few customizable aspects of the home screen, lock screen, animation effects, etc. There are even various charging and facial recognition animations.

The Ambient light effect gets more granular control with the option to enable it only during a limited time period, or you can choose which apps to trigger it.

Dynamic effects • Ambient light effect

The always-on display settings are in a different sub-menu, however, but the phone still gives you plenty of options to tinker with - a wide selection of animations, clock styles, colors, backgrounds, the lot.

Always-on display

You can also change the animation of the fingerprint scanner, the face unlocks and even the charging animation.

Animations and settings

Speaking of the fingerprint scanner, there's no way to summon the fingerprint reader icon on a locked screen unless the motion sensor detects movement - sure, it's very sensitive, but still. Single tap doesn't work, whereas the double-tap-to-wake function is buried in the Smart motion menu. However, if you get familiar with the scanner's position, you can just rest your fingertip on top and wait for the unlock. Which, by the way, is snappy and reliable. No issues there.

Also potentially worth noting - unlike the iQOO 9 Pro, the iQOO 9 SE lacks a fancy ultrasonic fingerprint reader and has a simpler optical under-display unit instead. The reader itself is snappy and reliable but is notably smaller in size, which is likely why the convenient Quick Action feature from the iQOO 9 Pro is absent on the SE. It allows the iQOO 9 Pro to have shortcuts on long pressing the fingerprint.

The Sound menu holds a few pleasant surprises. Just like Samsung, vivo is paying attention to people with hearing problems, and you can calibrate the sound to be heard by elderly people or those with impaired hearing. Additionally, notifications and calls get separate volume sliders. The vibration intensity can be adjusted for calls and notifications independently.

Sound options

Some features are notably missing from this menu compared to the iQOO 9 Pro. Like Hi-Fi.

The Smart motion menu holds a handful of familiar screen-on and screen-off gestures along with some new additions. One of those requires you to wave in front of the screen during an incoming call to answer hands-free - useful if you're cooking, for example.

Smart motion menu

Holding the volume down key can be used to launch an app or do a certain task, although the latter list is limited to launching the camera app, turning the torch on/off, or starting recording audio. The so-called Quick action feature doesn't work when playing music for obvious reasons. Why isn't there a double-press option for Quick action, though?

Shortcuts and accessibility • Quick action • S-capture • Screen-split • Easy Touch

There is a bunch of proprietary system apps that compete with the Funtouch 12 app suite. These include Albums, Browser, iManager, Music and Video.

Albums • Browser • iManager • iManager • Music • Videos

There are plenty of themes available through the Themes app. Unfortunately, the theming engine isn't quite in-depth as on some other Android skins, and you can't change certain things like the quick toggles. Also, many of the themes are paid. There is at least a wide variety.

Themes

All in all, the new Funtouch 12 runs great, and you can even make it snappier by disabling most of the animations and speeding up the transitions. Yes, Funtouch 12 gives you the freedom to do so. However, those that want to use Android as Google intended might not be okay with the colorful iconography and the highly customized system menus and animations.

Performance and benchmarks

As the SE branding suggests, the iQOO 9 SE is a step-down in terms of specs and hardware compared to the vanilla iQOO 9, which, in turn, is a step down from the iQOO 9 Pro - a true 2022 flagship rocking Qualcomm's latest and greatest Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset. As we mentioned, though, the iQOO 9 SE doesn't take the typical approach when it comes to a hardware downgrade. Rather than going for a mid-range current chip, it uses last year's top-dog Snapdragon 888. Definitely a costlier option, despite the age of the chip, but undoubtedly a more beneficial one for the end-user. Since even after a year or so, a flagship chipset still typically has more "flagship" features under its belt and plenty of performance to go around.

This is definitely the case with the Snapdragon 888 inside the iQOO 9 SE. It is a potent 5nm part with a 1x2.84 GHz Kryo 680 & 3x2.42 GHz Kryo 680 & 4x1.80 GHz Kryo 680 CPU setup, and an Adreno 660. In fact, the vanilla iQOO 9 SE simply uses the slightly overclocked Snapdragon 888+ variant, meaning that depending on cooling and thermal-throttling behavior, the two are likely to offer very similar real-world performance. The iQOO 9 SE pairs the potent Snapdragon 888 with either 8GB or 12GB of RAM and 128GB or 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage, respectively. Our review unit is the higher-tier 12GB+256GB one in Sunset Sierra color.

Let's kick things off with some CPU runs and GFXBench. We made sure to include some Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 phones in the charts as well, mostly to showcase that thermal management and performance tuning and profiles often play a crucial role, particularly with top-end chips that bump up against limits.

GeekBench 5 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• ZTE nubia Red Magic 7
  3855
• vivo iQOO 7 Legend
  3715
• iQOO 9 Pro
  3708
• Realme GT2 Pro
  3501
• Realme GT2
  3487
• iQOO 9 SE
  3442
• Oppo Find X5
  3331
• Xiaomi 11T
  2834
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  2801
• OnePlus Nord 2
  2792
• Poco X3 Pro
  2574
• Realme 9 Pro+
  2335
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G
  2225
• Poco X4 Pro 5G
  2063
• Samsung Galaxy A53 5G
  1891
• Poco M4 Pro 5G
  1797

GeekBench 5 (single-core)

Higher is better

• ZTE nubia Red Magic 7
  1246
• Realme GT2 Pro
  1238
• iQOO 9 Pro
  1231
• vivo iQOO 7 Legend
  1142
• Realme GT2
  1131
• Oppo Find X5
  1110
• iQOO 9 SE
  1095
• Realme 9 Pro+
  814
• OnePlus Nord 2
  814
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  771
• Samsung Galaxy A53 5G
  743
• Xiaomi 11T
  742
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G
  736
• Poco X3 Pro
  735
• Poco X4 Pro 5G
  687
• Poco M4 Pro 5G
  597

Case in point, we can clearly see devices like the Realme GT2 and GT2 Pro scoring close to one another regardless of racking a Snapdragon 888 and a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, respectively. All the while, the nubia Red Magic 7, with its aggressive cooling and performance tuning, is squeezing a lot more out of the newer chip. But the same goes for the vivo iQOO Legend, which is not that far behind with a Snapdragon 888.

By the same logic, the iQOO 9 SE isn't actually squeezing every last drop of performance from the Snapdragon 888. Then again, it doesn't really need to push it to its thermal limits for anything other than superficial benchmark scores. The iQOO 9 SE actually boasts a sophisticated liquid vapor chamber setup with a graphite sheer and thermal-conductive alloys meant to keep the heat down in the long run. iQOO is clearly tuning its phone for stable, prolonged gaming instead of burst loads, which is also evident by its thermal-throttling behavior we will discuss in a bit. This is a much better approach overall.

And it's not like the iQOO 9 SE is a slouch. Not at all. AnTuTu and its much more compound loads offer very favorable results. These runs also take into account things like memory and storage and thus offer a slightly more realistic, even if still synthetic, the idea of the overall performance.

AnTuTu 8

Higher is better

• iQOO 9 Pro
  862324
• iQOO 9 SE
  727771
• Poco F3
  631850
• OnePlus Nord 2
  512164
• Realme 9 Pro+
  495096
• Poco X3 Pro
  453223
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  429675
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G
  375528
• Poco X4 Pro 5G
  335353
• Samsung Galaxy A53 5G
  329802
• Poco M4 Pro 5G
  296721

AnTuTu 9

Higher is better

• ZTE nubia Red Magic 7
  1056488
• iQOO 9 Pro
  997948
• Realme GT2 Pro
  966251
• iQOO 9 SE
  846231
• Oppo Find X5
  810715
• Realme GT2
  810512
• OnePlus Nord 2
  598022
• Xiaomi 11T
  590837
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  506432
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G
  437872
• Realme 9 Pro+
  416031
• Poco X4 Pro 5G
  384646
• Samsung Galaxy A53 5G
  379313
• Poco M4 Pro 5G
  353663

Speaking of taking another aspect of the hardware into account, the Adreno 660 is no slouch when it comes to pushing pixels. It has already proven its salt in the past. In the iQOO 9 SE, it only needs to render a FullHD+ resolution of 10800 x 2400 pixels to saturate the native resolution of the display. We are only noting this since other competitive devices like the iQOO 9 Pro, and the Realme GT2 Pro actually have 1440p native panels, which are much harder to drive, and it shows in on-screen numbers.

GFX Aztek ES 3.1 High (onscreen)

Higher is better

• ZTE nubia Red Magic 7
  58
• iQOO 9 SE
  42
• Oppo Find X5
  40
• Realme GT2
  40
• iQOO 9 Pro
  36
• Realme GT2 Pro
  36
• Xiaomi 11T
  30
• OnePlus Nord 2
  30
• Poco X3 Pro
  26
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  19
• Realme 9 Pro+
  17
• Samsung Galaxy A53 5G
  15
• Poco X4 Pro 5G
  12

GFX Aztek ES 3.1 High (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• ZTE nubia Red Magic 7
  43
• Realme GT2 Pro
  42
• iQOO 9 Pro
  40
• iQOO 9 SE
  29
• Oppo Find X5
  27
• Realme GT2
  27
• Xiaomi 11T
  21
• OnePlus Nord 2
  21
• Poco X3 Pro
  17
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  13
• Realme 9 Pro+
  11
• Samsung Galaxy A53 5G
  10
• Poco X4 Pro 5G
  7.8

GFX Aztek Vulkan High (onscreen)

Higher is better

• ZTE nubia Red Magic 7
  64
• iQOO 9 SE
  43
• Realme GT2 Pro
  39
• Oppo Find X5
  38
• Realme GT2
  38
• iQOO 9 Pro
  37
• Xiaomi 11T
  29
• Poco X3 Pro
  27
• OnePlus Nord 2
  26
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  20
• Realme 9 Pro+
  16
• Samsung Galaxy A53 5G
  15
• Poco X4 Pro 5G
  12

GFX Aztek Vulkan High (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• ZTE nubia Red Magic 7
  48
• Realme GT2 Pro
  46
• iQOO 9 Pro
  44
• iQOO 9 SE
  30
• Oppo Find X5
  30
• Realme GT2
  30
• Xiaomi 11T
  20
• OnePlus Nord 2
  20
• Poco X3 Pro
  18
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  14
• Samsung Galaxy A53 5G
  10
• Realme 9 Pro+
  10
• Poco X4 Pro 5G
  8.1

Of course, if you want to compare graphical scores between devices, you need to do so with off-screen rendering tests to take the display resolution out of the equation. Even then, these scores are purely scientific since any modern game and game engine worth its salt is able to adjust resolution and detail on the fly to offer the best possible experience instead of just rendering the same scene and the native resolution with the same detail as a benchmark does.

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (onscreen)

Higher is better

• ZTE nubia Red Magic 7
  77
• iQOO 9 SE
  64
• vivo iQOO 7 Legend
  62
• Realme GT2
  56
• Oppo Find X5
  55
• Realme GT2 Pro
  48
• iQOO 9 Pro
  46
• Xiaomi 11T
  40
• Poco X3 Pro
  38
• OnePlus Nord 2
  38
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  28
• Realme 9 Pro+
  23
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G
  22
• Samsung Galaxy A53 5G
  19
• Poco X4 Pro 5G
  17
• Poco M4 Pro 5G
  13

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (offscreen 1080p)

Higher is better

• ZTE nubia Red Magic 7
  97
• iQOO 9 Pro
  95
• Realme GT2 Pro
  95
• iQOO 9 SE
  73
• vivo iQOO 7 Legend
  70
• Oppo Find X5
  69
• Realme GT2
  68
• Xiaomi 11T
  47
• OnePlus Nord 2
  46
• Poco X3 Pro
  45
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  33
• Realme 9 Pro+
  27
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G
  25
• Samsung Galaxy A53 5G
  23
• Poco X4 Pro 5G
  20
• Poco M4 Pro 5G
  16

GFX Manhattan ES 3.1 (onscreen)

Higher is better

• ZTE nubia Red Magic 7
  146
• iQOO 9 SE
  103
• vivo iQOO 7 Legend
  101
• iQOO 9 Pro
  84
• Xiaomi 11T
  72
• Poco X3 Pro
  67
• Oppo Find X5
  60
• Realme GT2
  60
• Realme GT2 Pro
  60
• OnePlus Nord 2
  57
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  49
• Realme 9 Pro+
  41
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G
  38
• Samsung Galaxy A53 5G
  35
• Poco X4 Pro 5G
  30
• Poco M4 Pro 5G
  23

GFX Manhattan ES 3.1 (offscreen 1080p)

Higher is better

• ZTE nubia Red Magic 7
  174
• Realme GT2 Pro
  165
• iQOO 9 Pro
  160
• iQOO 9 SE
  117
• Oppo Find X5
  115
• Realme GT2
  115
• vivo iQOO 7 Legend
  114
• Xiaomi 11T
  77
• Poco X3 Pro
  75
• OnePlus Nord 2
  75
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  56
• Realme 9 Pro+
  45
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G
  43
• Samsung Galaxy A53 5G
  38
• Poco X4 Pro 5G
  34
• Poco M4 Pro 5G
  26

Once we go down in intensity to some older OpenGL ES 3.0 tests we can really see the iQOO 9 SE spread its wings and post fps numbers well into the triple digits.

GFX Manhattan ES 3.0 (onscreen)

Higher is better

• ZTE nubia Red Magic 7
  163
• iQOO 9 SE
  118
• vivo iQOO 7 Legend
  117
• iQOO 9 Pro
  115
• Xiaomi 11T
  96
• Poco X3 Pro
  93
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  69
• Oppo Find X5
  60
• Realme GT2
  60
• Realme GT2 Pro
  60
• OnePlus Nord 2
  59
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G
  57
• Realme 9 Pro+
  56
• Samsung Galaxy A53 5G
  55
• Poco X4 Pro 5G
  42
• Poco M4 Pro 5G
  37

GFX Manhattan ES 3.0 (offscreen 1080p)

Higher is better

• ZTE nubia Red Magic 7
  263
• Realme GT2 Pro
  251
• iQOO 9 Pro
  236
• Oppo Find X5
  169
• Realme GT2
  168
• iQOO 9 SE
  165
• vivo iQOO 7 Legend
  160
• OnePlus Nord 2
  123
• Xiaomi 11T
  121
• Poco X3 Pro
  102
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  77
• Realme 9 Pro+
  68
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G
  64
• Samsung Galaxy A53 5G
  60
• Poco X4 Pro 5G
  47
• Poco M4 Pro 5G
  40

3D Mark paints a similar overall picture, with the iQOO 9 SE maxing out the Slight Shot Extreme runs, as expected and posting very similar, though granted slightly lower results than other Snapdragon 888 devices.

3DMark Wild Life Vulkan 1.1 (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• ZTE nubia Red Magic 7
  10118
• iQOO 9 Pro
  9673
• Realme GT2 Pro
  9487
• Realme GT2
  5879
• vivo iQOO 7 Legend
  5873
• Oppo Find X5
  5851
• iQOO 9 SE
  5463
• OnePlus Nord 2
  4224
• Xiaomi 11T
  4172
• Poco X3 Pro
  3401
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  2491
• Realme 9 Pro+
  2296
• Samsung Galaxy A53 5G
  2292
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G
  2014
• Poco M4 Pro 5G
  1232
• Poco X4 Pro 5G
  1211

We actually have a theory as to why these particular lower scores might be happening. Unfortunately, it comes down to the poor and inconsistent handling of high refresh rate operation on the iQOO 9 SE. The phone and its Snapdragon 888 clearly have plenty of power to go around, but unfortunately, that doesn't translate to an excellent gaming experience due to poor refresh rate behavior. It is just wasted potential.

Other than that, you can expect nothing short of excellent performance in general and productivity tasks from the iQOO 9 SE.

As far as thermal management and throttling goes, the iQOO 9 SE does a good job of dissipating heat and can get a bit toasty on the surface with prolonged loads. Never actually uncomfortable to hold, though, like the "proper gaming phones" out there.

Thermal-throttling

It is also clear that it is tuned well for long-term stable performance with a nice, gentle and controlled ramp down in performance as heat builds up. No sudden and jarring drops and a respectable amount of salvaged performance by the end of an hour-long all-core CPU load session. Great showing overall.