iQOO Neo 10R first impressions

iQOO introduced the Neo10 and Neo10 Pro last November, and today, the brand unveiled the Neo 10R after a month-long promo campaign. However, while the Neo10 and Neo10 Pro remain China-exclusive, the iQOO Neo 10R will be sold in India - at least initially. We spent some time with the iQOO Neo 10R, and here are our first impressions of the smartphone.

The iQOO Neo 10R - aimed at students, especially those playing games - comes in a black-colored retail box, including a protective case, a SIM ejector tool, some documentation, a USB cable, and an 80W power adapter.

The iQOO Neo 10R is built around a 10-bit 6.78" AMOLED display of 2,800x1,260-pixel resolution and a 144Hz refresh rate, which is limited to select games since the rest of the UI goes only up to 120Hz. The display has 4,500 nits peak brightness and is protected by Schott Xensation Up glass. It also supports HDR10, HDR10+, and HLG codecs and comes with Widevine L1 certification, enabling 1080p video streaming in supported apps.

The screen has a centered punch-hole for the 32MP selfie camera using a GC32E1-WA1XA sensor. It has an f/2.45 aperture and can record videos up in 4K resolution at up to 30 fps.

The display also has a fingerprint scanner underneath for biometric authentication. It's fast and accurate, but we'd have liked it to be placed higher for a better phone-unlocking experience.

Flip the phone around, and you see a camera island reminiscent of iQOO 13's. It houses two cameras - 50MP primary and 8MP ultrawide. The primary camera has f/1.79 aperture and uses the Sony IMX882 sensor, while the ultrawide camera has f/2.2 aperture and uses the GC08A3-WA1XA sensor. The 50MP unit has OIS and can record videos in 4K resolution at up to 60 fps.

We've received the iQOO Neo 10R's Raging Blue model, which is "crafted exclusively for India." The other version is called MoonKnight Titanium. Both are 7.98mm thin, weigh 196g, and have plastic builds.

The rear panel of the iQOO Neo 10R doesn't feel as premium as the Indian Neo9 Pro's back cover - especially the Fiery Red model that featured a faux leather back - and that's expected given the price difference. Besides, in the short time we spent with the phone, the rear cover got smudged easily.

The iQOO Neo 10R's Raging Blue model has a two-tone white-blue design with pixel texture. It's inspired by the racing track and looks cool. There's also an iQOO logo at the intersection of the two colors, and below the camera island is a text that reads "Neo Power To Win." However, it's only visible at certain angles, so you won't even notice it's there most of the time.

The iQOO Neo 10R's right-side frame has the volume rocker and power button with decent feedback. At the bottom is the USB-C port, flanked by a SIM card slot, primary mic, and a speaker grille. Up top is the IR blaster, joined by another microphone.

Ports and controls

Under the hood, we have the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 SoC with up to 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. Ours is the top-end model with 12GB LPDDR5X RAM and 256GB UFS 4.1 storage, and regardless of which memory configuration you pick, you'll get the iQOO Neo 10R with Android 15-based Funtouch OS 15 out of the box. iQOO has promised three years of Android upgrades and four years of security updates for the Neo 10R, and the latter will be rolled out every month.

The iQOO Neo 10R was smooth during our usage, and while we couldn't play our usual set of games on the Neo 10R before writing this post, we had multiple one-hour Call of Duty: Mobile sessions and the phone remained pretty cool during and after that without any significant drop in performance. Our graphics settings were set to "Very High" graphic quality and "Max" frame rate for the gameplay.

It's also worth mentioning that the iQOO Neo 10R doesn't come with an independent display chip like the Neo9 Pro's Supercomputing Chip Q1. iQOO said there are two reasons for that: 1) The Neo 10R costs less; 2) The needs of the consumers in this segment are different in terms of gaming. They prefer stable FPS instead of higher FPS, which is what the Chip Q1 on the Neo9 Pro was for. The Neo 10R isn't a successor to the Neo9 Pro, after all.

You can check the charts below for the iQOO Neo 10R's performance in synthetic benchmark tests.

The iQOO Neo 10R packs a 6,400 mAh battery, and it's impressive how slim the Neo 10R is considering the battery capacity since the Neo9 Pro with identical thickness ships with a 5,160 mAh battery. That's courtesy of the Silicon-Carbon tech.

The Neo 10R has 80W charging support, and iQOO says it can charge up to 50% in 26 minutes and 100% in 55 minutes. In our testing, it charged from 1% to 11% in 5 minutes, 21% in 10 minutes, 30% in 15 minutes, 39% in 20 minutes, 50% in 27 minutes, 56% in 30 minutes, and 100% in 58 minutes. Note that this test was run with mobile data and Wi-Fi hotspot turned off but Always-On Display turned on. Your mileage will likely vary depending on your usage and ambient temperature when charging the phone.

Other highlights of the iQOO Neo 10R include stereo speakers, Hi-Res Audio, 4D Game Vibration, and an IP65 rating. The smartphone also supports bypass charging, which is appreciated.

The iQOO Neo 10R is up for pre-booking in India through Amazon.in and iQOO's official India website, with sales commencing from March 19. The smartphone has three memory options - 8GB/128GB, 8GB/256GB, and 12GB/256GB, priced at INR26,999, INR28,999, and INR30,999, respectively.

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