vivo iQOO 3 5G review

A total of five cameras

A lot of times on gaming-centric phones, the camera system is lower on the list of priorities. Looking at the iQOO 3 5G's spec sheet, that doesn't appear to be the case here. While there are certainly no extreme telephotos or huge sensors, the phone does have a well-rounded three focal length setup with an extra depth sensing module.

The primary camera is the ubiquitous 48MP Quad Bayer solution - a 1/2.0" sensor with 0.8µm pixels with the RGB color filter above them grouping them into fours to make up 12MP images in the default mode. The lens has an f/1.8 aperture, and while vivo doesn't specify a focal length, we gather it's in the 25-26mm equivalent ballpark. There's no OIS.

A short telephoto module is also present, giving a 2x optical zoom capability. Delivering a 50-ish millimeter equivalent focal length, the lens has an f/2.5 aperture and isn't stabilized. The sensor on this one has a 13MP resolution.

Then there's the ultra-wide cam. Vivo says it covers a 120-degree field of view, shrinking down slightly to 117 when you enable the software distortion correction. And then, the EXIF data reports a 15mm equivalent focal length, which is neither. Anyways, it's pretty wide, and it has autofocus, which is a moderately big deal - even flagship ultrawides are often either very wide but fixed focus, or with autofocus but not all that wide. The aperture on this one is f/2.2, while the sensor has 13MP to work with.

Last, and very much least, there's also a 2MP 'bokeh' camera - one of those modules that typically only up the camera count without contributing much in real life, but everyone keeps doing it.

Over on the front, the tiny punch hole in the display houses a 16MP selfie cam with an f/2.45 aperture - it's one of the dimmer lenses we've seen on a front-facing camera in a while.

The camera app is the same one we've seen on vivos in recent months, and we're not fans. It's much too scattered and unintuitive for our liking, though we can appreciate that simply getting used to it as you own the phone for a while will help.

In any case, having a zoom selector (0.6x/1x/2x) in the viewfinder and a separate 'lens' selector (Super wide-angle/Bokeh/Super macro) is confusing. The 'Super wide angle' option is effectively the same as the '0.6x' from the zoom selector. Then the 'Super macro' mode is a digitally zoomed-in view from that very same ultra-wide camera - it makes you think you're getting a larger magnification, but it's just a crop, which is then upscaled back to 12MP. But wait, there's more - the 'Bokeh' mode locks you in the 1x main cam and is a different thing than the dedicated 'Portrait' mode, from the proper mode selector on the bottom, which also has face altering features besides the bokeh. Urgh.

Anyways, the chief modes are switched with side swipes as on most other phones, and the 'More' tab lets you access less common modes. From there, you can also customize the modes you have available in the viewfinder, which is a nice touch that only Samsungs seem to offer.

There's a Pro mode that lets you tweak photographic parameters yourself. You get to select ISO (50-3200), shutter speed (1/12000s-32s), white balance (presets and a temperature slider), focus distance (no focus peaking), and exposure compensation (-2/+2EV in 1/3EV increments), with easily accessible auto buttons on all and a global 'restore' button to revert everything to auto. An electronic level is also available, but there's no metering mode options or a live histogram.

While the Pro mode is available on all three cams, which is a great thing, the logic for operating them is utterly devoid of... logic. There's a 1x/2x selector, and a lens selector and switching cameras is done with the lens selector (so far fairly logical), but then the 1x/2x toggle switches between the native field of view and a digitally zoomed in one. Why? The 1x/2x toggle isn't available on the ultra-wide cam, so at least there's that.

The settings menu offers some of the usual controls like disabling the simulated shutter sound, geotagging, and the option to mirror your selfies, and it's here that you'll find the self-timer (as opposed to the viewfinder). The iQOO 3 5G offers eye autofocus which we haven't seen on any other phone except the Sony Xperia 1.

Camera UI

Image quality

Daylight photos out of the iQOO 3 5G's main cam have pleasing punchy colors without going into extreme oversaturation. Dynamic range is reasonably wide too, though we'd have appreciated some better shadow development - as it is, the shadows are too dark for our liking. However, this does make for an overall contrastier look which some may appreciate.

Daylight samples, main camera

What's harder to accept is the overall lack of pin sharpness and definition of fine detail when examining the photos at 1:1 magnification. Foliage is rendered in a particularly soft and mushy way. Overall - great daylight photos from afar, meh from up close.

Daylight samples, main camera

Shooting in the nominal 48MP resolution comes with a major noise penalty. On a somewhat positive note, you will be able to extract more detail out of these shots as our studio scene shows, but the real-life advantages aren't significant.

Daylight samples, main camera, 48MP

The ultra-wide cam has its own issues with image quality like the high noise levels and rather strong purple fringing in high-contrast areas. Nevertheless, it's one of the better ultra-wide cams we've seen, flagships included. For all the noise we're seeing, there's also a lot of detail. Dynamic range is also nicely wide, especially so for an ultra-wide cam, which are typically trailing in this respect. Colors are well matched between the two, save for a slight cyan tendency in the ultra wide's blues. Great showing here.

Daylight samples, ultra wide angle camera

There's the option to turn on or off the software distortion correction. Having it on helps immensely, particularly when you have straight lines along the edges of the frame. You'd be losing a little coverage, and some amount of corner softness can be seen but we wouldn't get too fixated on that and keep the correction on.

Ultra wide angle camera correction: On • Off • On • Off

Moving on to the telephoto, we're seeing a bump in color saturation alongside some general warming up of the hues, but colors remain appealing still. Noise remains present in the 2x images as well, but it's hardly an issue. Detail is okay, these are not the sharpest 2x shots we've seen, but they're easily good enough. Dynamic range is on the wider side of average too.

Daylight samples, telephoto camera (2x)

Low-light images out of the iQOO 3 5G aren't spectacular. The main camera produces rather soft shots, which may not be noisy, but aren't very detailed either. Darker scenes end up underexposed, and the phone also struggles with white balance in our predominantly warmly lit scenes.

Low-light samples, main camera

Night mode is only available on the main camera and does offer a noticeable boost in the shadows, but comes with a bit of extra softness on top. It does work quite quickly, which is some sort of a positive.

Low-light samples, main camera, Night mode

At the 2x setting the iQOO 3 5G will occasionally use the telephoto camera, but more often than not it'll give you a digitally zoomed-in shot from the main cam. The very noisy but reasonably sharp first sample below was captured by the telephoto. The other 4 come out of the main cam and are very soft as you'd expect.

Low-light samples, telephoto camera (2x)

The ultra wide-angle cam does a fair job in low light, as ultra wides go. The phone tends to underexpose and its images are noisy, but these apply to most cameras of this caliber. There's decent detail and colors have a reasonable level of saturation retained, so that's good.

Low-light samples, ultra wide angle camera

Once you're done with the real world samples, head over to our Photo compare tool to see how the vivo iQOO 3 5G stacks up against the competition.

vivo iQOO 3 5G against the Realme X50 Pro 5G and the nubia Red Magic 5G in our Photo compare tool

Portraits

The iQOO 3 5G can take portraits with both the main camera and the telephoto. If you haven't been around here the past few years, we'll reiterate for you.

Shooting portraits with the wide cam means better performance in challenging light as it's typically the higher quality module, but comes at the expense of a short subject distance and less than ideal perspective.

Shooting with the telephoto, conversely, puts a more comfortable distance between you and your subject and makes for a more flattering perspective when it comes to facial proportions, but generally means inferior image quality in dimmer conditions.

Being able to choose is the best approach, and that's the case on the iQOO 3 5G. The default magnification when you hit portrait mode from the mode selector is 2x - effectively, the phone suggests the superior perspective, but you can opt for the wider cam in case it suits the conditions better.

2x portraits out of the iQOO 3 5G have more 'human' colors while the main cam makes for a more yellowish look. In all other respects, the results are nearly identical. Subject detection is good, but not infallible (behind the right ear in the first sample, or the left shoulder gone missing in the fourth shot). The bokeh has a natural look in the 2x shots, but is a bit over the top in the 1x images - that much blur just doesn't go with that wide a field of view. HDR keeps working in portrait mode, which is good.

Portrait samples, 2x

Portrait samples, 1x

Close-ups

The ultra wide-angle has autofocus, and it can focus down to about 2cm. That allows for some quite striking close-up shots and the 13MP of resolution capture tons more detail that what the bulk of 2MP and even 5MP dedicated 'macro' cams on midrangers can.

Close-up samples

Selfies

Selfies out of the iQOO 3 5G are just about okay. Dynamic range is on the narrow side, and we'd appreciate some more sharpness and detail than what we're getting, but colors are on point.

Selfie samples

Portrait mode on the selfie camera comes with some amount of beatification applied that has no easy one-step solution to remove. That means an extra level of added softness is also present, not just in the background, but also on your subject. On the other hand, the artificial bokeh effect isn't turned on by default, you have to specifically enable it. Practically, the iQOO 3 5G's portrait mode is a beautification mode, where you can also add background blur.

Subject detection is decent, though the subject did make things easier with a timely haircut. Around the ears, there are still some issues as we observed in rear cam portraits.

Selfie samples, Portrait mode, Bokeh on

Video recording

The vivo iQOO 3 5G records video at up to 2160p at 60fps with both its main and telephoto cameras. The ultra wide-angle cam tops out at 1080p/30fps. You get to pick between the h.264 and h.265 codecs too.

The main camera's clips in both frame rates in 4K have nearly identical levels of detail, and the phone is quite good in this respect. The two have more or less the same bit rate - at around 50Mbps, it's a lot of bits for 4K30, and a decent number for 4K60 on a phone. The footage is somewhat noisy, however, and dynamic range is quite limited. There's also a peculiar purplish color shift which we didn't observe in stills by the main cam.

1080p videos exhibit the exact same properties, with a twist - since 1080p/30fps is the only mode to have stabilization, it comes with the mandatory crop.

The ultra wide-angle cam's footage comes with even narrower dynamic range - pitch-black shadows and pure white highlights can be expected. On a positive note, we're seeing truer colors out of this one, and detail is quite good for an ultra-wide camera.

The telephoto camera's videos are again identical in quality between 30fps and 60fps in 4K and are again encoded at 50Mbps. Some other phones record zoomed-in 60fps videos with their main cams, but that's not the case on the iQOO 3 5G - it's using its proper tele cam.

Detail is okay, not great, and there's heavy sharpening applied. The overall color rendition matches the main cam's, complete with the purplish skies and asphalt. Dynamic range is also on the narrow end of the spectrum.

Weirdly enough, 1080p/30fps clips have more accurate colors, and here we're witnessing a difference between 30fps and 60fps footage - high frame rate 1080p videos have the same processing as the 4K ones. The 1080p/30fps mode also comes with the always-on stabilization we got on the main cam and a due crop to go with it.

Since we're on the subject of stabilization, it's only available in 1080p/30fps, on all three cams. There's no setting to turn it off - it's just on all the time when you're shooting 1080p/30fps. Stabilization works quite excellent on all three if you're keeping the phone pointed in one direction. Walking and shooting is no problem with the main cam, and it's almost as stable with the ultra-wide, only the latter tends to hunt for focus more, ruining the perceived stability.

Here's a glimpse of how the vivo iQOO 3 5G compares to rivals in our Video compare tool. Head over there for the complete picture.

vivo iQOO 3 5G against the Realme X50 Pro 5G and the nubia Red Magic 5G in our Video compare tool