We got early access to this phone about 3 weeks ago – and this is an actually great phone. Introducing, the iQOO Neo 10. This phone might look very similar to the iQOO 13 – and I agree, but it is equipped with the new Snapdragon 8s Gen 4. Treat it like a budget version of the iQOO 13 – because it actually is, at only RM1,999.
But is this phone any good?
Performance
I want to highlight a few things in particular, starting off with the performance. This iQOO Neo 10 is using the new Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset – the successor to the weirdly-positioned 8s Gen 3 from last year. Following the name, it should be in between the 8 Elite and the 8 Gen 3 – but the performance is actually quite good.
We were getting great frame rates in Genshin Impact at max graphics, as it was 60fps throughout, but only for the beginning part. After a while, the temperature does rise to around 48-49°C – which is really high, and that is when thermal throttling kicks in and the performance dips. It drops to around 40-ish FPS and I still consider this to be a great gaming experience as the frame rate consistency is good.
Zenless Zone Zero is a very demanding game and this iQOO Neo 10 managed to maintain it around 30fps at the maximum graphics. While the number is not high, the frame rate consistency is once again maintained very well. What I mean by frame rate consistency is that if it’s at 30fps, then it maintains 30fps with no major fluctuations. Just imagine if it ran at 60fps but suddenly dropped to like 20fps or something. That’s going to be very distracting.
Wuthering Waves had lower frame rates, hovering at around 30fps but the render resolution was higher than Genshin Impact, so no surprises there.
What’s surprising though, is the analysis part. As you can see from all games that we’ve tested, it says the chip only used around 3W for each game. That doesn’t make sense. For this kind of performance, it’s never going to be just 3W of power. And the temperature is just too high for it to be consuming 3W of power. If it really is just 3W of power for this kind of performance but it heats up too much, that would only mean the cooling system is bad – and that is also not true. So, the only logical conclusion is that the Vtool Scene just can’t log the power consumption correctly.
And I don’t blame Vtools Scene since this chip is so new that the Device Info HW can’t even display the chip name correctly. So all in all, the performance of the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 in the iQOO Neo 10 is decent, but nothing out of the ordinary.
This iQOO Neo 10 also has the Supercomputing Q1 chip just like the flagship iQOO 13, which we will test a bit further to find out what this chip really does.
Battery life
As for the battery life though, this is where things get special. When I looked at the thermal camera picture of this iQOO Neo 10, I realized that there is a little buttcrack at the back. Ah, I see, it’s a dual-cell battery and the heat signature from the battery is so clear that we can see the line separating between the two cells.
And yet that’s not all – this iQOO Neo 10 has an equivalent of 7,000mAh battery capacity. That is just outstanding as this phone just looks like any other phones that we have.
Using our standardized battery life test, it can last the absolute longest in our battery life test – more than 25 hours. Yes, I waited more than a day for this battery life test to finish. It’s just great! No wonder I can’t finish up the battery after using it as a hotspot for the whole day during COMPUTEX.
Charging speed
And yet, the charging speed is also amazing. You see, within the box, this iQOO Neo 10 comes with a vivo FlashCharge 120W charger. As usual, we did one charging test with the default out-of-the-box settings, it can charge from 15% to completion in around 47 minutes. That is really fast and yet the temperature is still below 42.5°C. That’s good, and that also means that the it can pump in even higher wattage.
So, when we head into the settings menu, we can turn up the charging speed to the fastest. That will make it charge from 15% to completion on only around 30 minutes, but the temperature will spike up really high and going to maintain around 42.5°C most of the time.
But that’s not all – let’s now talk about USB-PD PPS charging. In short, this phone supports all USB-PD PPS because it has bypass charging, and it can even charge up to 100W via this method too – at least on paper.
With the fast charging option disabled, it only takes in around 45W, and it charges from 15% to completion in less than an hour, and that is nothing out of the ordinary.
When we did enable the fastest charging speed, the iQOO Neo 10 can take in up to 85W only. Yes, we checked. And it takes around 40 minutes to charge from 15% to completion – which is amazing.
Personally, I am super happy with what iQOO did with this phone. It supports both their own proprietary charging standard for even faster charging, while also supporting very high wattage via USB-PD so we can use whatever charger we want and still get fast charging. This is brilliant. Other phone brands need to learn this.
Screen
With good performance, great battery life, and an amazing charging speed – we need a beautiful screen to match. This phone has a 6.78 inch OLED screen with a higher than usual resolution of 2800×1260 pixels.
Now, there are a lot of claims made about the display, and I have to say that they’re actually all very close to the truth. The iQOO Neo 10 claims it has 2000 nits global brightness – and from our test, it can reach around 1975 nits on auto brightness. It’s blindingly bright!
As for the color accuracy, it’s fairly good while covering only 98.17% of DCI-P# color gamut. The ΔE number is indeed low and I do think the maximum ΔE is a fluke.
Design
As for the design, this iQOO Neo 10 is really simple. It looks basically like the flagship iQOO 13 but with a much bigger battery capacity. This gold color make it look clean, and the camera bump is quite tiny.
Camera
Since we’re here, let’s talk about the cameras. There are only two cameras on this phone – and I also brought this phone with me to Computex at Taipei to take pictures with it.
To have a look at all the pictures taken with the iQOO Neo 10, watch our video at the top of this review.
Software
As for the software, it’s basically the same FuntouchOS as the iQOO 13. It still has ads – but only through the included browser, and it still has the V-Appstore alongside some preinstalled apps and games.
Still, it’s a very fluid experience and I don’t have any strong likes or dislikes about FuntouchOS.
A few more things to mention
Alright, a few more things to mention. The iQOO Neo 10 has a dual SIM card slot, a USB 2 port at the bottom with no display output capability, and also an IR blaster at the top.
Should you buy the iQOO Neo 10?
So, at the end of the day, is the iQOO Neo 10 a good phone? I’d say yes. Especially for us here in Malaysia, this phone retails for RM1,999. For this kind of performance, battery life, and amazing charging speed alongside great compatibility with USB-PD PPS, I’d say it’s amazing. But, don’t expect the cameras to do wonders. They’re usable… just not up to my standard.
Other than that, this phone is an amazing budget gaming phone, and I can wholeheartedly recommend it for mobile gamers.
If you want to get it for yourself, then I’ll leave links down in the description below – and remember to like and subscribe so you don’t miss out on the analysis of the Supercomputing Q1 chip that brings extra features to supported games. If you have any other questions regarding this iQOO Neo 10, then leave them down in the comments section – and I’ll see you guys in the next video.
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