The iQOO 12 series brings Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, capable triple camera system

07 November 2023

The premium iQOO 12 series just arrived, starting in China. The iQOO 12 Pro and iQOO 12 are very similar save for a few design queues, their displays and batteries.

Starting with the iQOO 12 Pro - it's the curvier of the two with a thin frame and tapered glass panels on both sides. It comes in three colors, each with its own finish. The BMW Motorsport collab edition comes in white with a porcelain enamel textured glass. The black model has a fluorite AG glass back with a soft texture that shimmers. Finally, the red model has a vegan leather finish with what iQOO calls a "wind imprint texture." The camera island has a Paris hobnail texture, not unlike the new Xiaomi 14's.

The iQOO 12 Pro packs a 6.78-inch E7 AMOLED display of 1440x3200px resolution and 144Hz refresh rate. The panel does 1440Hz PWM dimming and can reach up to 1,600 nits under normal conditions and 3,000 nits in peak mode.

Being a gaming-focused phone, the iQOO 12 Pro is impressively specced. It uses the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip with 16GB of LPDDR5x RAM and up to 1TB of UFS 4.0 storage. There's a self-developed Q1 chip that ensures smooth gaming up to 144Hz (at 1080P) and does tricks like low latency frame insertion, superframe, and super-resolution (DLSS-like supersampling). The iQOO 12 Pro packs a 5,705mm² vapor chamber for heat dissipation.

The iQOO 12 Pro also packs an all-around impressive camera system. The main sensor is a 50MP 1/1.3" OmniVision OV50H sensor behind a 23mm optically-stabilized lens.

The telephoto camera has a 64MP 1/2" sensor and an optically-stable 70mm f/2.57 lens. The lens is an optical 3x unit that can do 10x 'HD zoom', and up to 100x digital zoom. iQOO calls this periscope a 70-230mm camera and touts it can do telephoto macro.

Finally, there's a 50MP 15mm ultrawide with a macro mode of its own, and a 16MP f/2.45 selfie camera.

The iQOO 12 Pro has a 5,100mAh battery with 120W wired and 50W wireless charging support. iQOO boasts that the battery would retain at least 80% of its capacity after 1,600 cycles.

The iQOO 12 Pro runs on vivo's new OriginOS 4, based on Android 14.

Moving on to the iQOO 12, which comes in the same three colorways with their own finishes but the non-Pro has a wider, glossy frame and flat front and rear panels.

The iQOO 12 has the same chipset and cameras but brings a different display, battery, and charging capabilities. There's also a variant with 12GB of RAM.

Upfront, the iQOO 12 has the same-sized 6.78-inch display but of a lower 2800x1260px resolution. The panel still maxes-out at 144Hz.

There are two battery options available - a 5,000mAh unit and a 4,880mAh (it's not clear what differentiates the two) and both offer 120W wired charging and no wireless charging.

Both the iQOO 12 and 12 Pro are up for pre-order today and will go on sale on November 14. The iQOO 12 Pro starts at CNY 4,999 (€642, INR 57,150) for the 16/256GB base model, goes up to CNY 5,499 (€707, INR 62,800) for the 16/512GB model and tops out at CNY 5,999 (€770, INR 69,670) for the 16GB/1TB model. The iQOO 12 is CNY 3,999 (€515, INR 45,700) for the 12/256GB model, CNY 4,299 (€552, INR 49,150) for the 16/512GB model, and CNY 4,699 (€605, INR 53,700) for the 16GB/1TB model. Both models will hopefully come to the global market at some point.