iQOO Neo 7


The iQOO Neo 7 family has three members already, now comes a fourth. Well, sort of, the new models is virtually identical to the iQOO Neo7 SE, which was unveiled in early December last year. The iQOO Neo 7 combines a Dimensity 8200, a large 6.78” 120Hz display and a fast-charging 5,000mAh battery. Its design goes retro and draws inspiration from the 8-bit gaming era and Polaroid cameras, though it is more of a gaming phone than a camera phone.

To that end the Dimensity 8200, a 4nm chipset, brings a Mali-G610 MC6 GPU and support for high refresh rate displays. The CPU has four Cortex-A78 cores, one of which runs at up to 3.1GHz, the other three peak at 3.0GHz, plus four A55 cores at 2.0GHz. The Neo7 phones come with 8GB or 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM and the FuntouchOS 13 system (based on Android 13) can add 8 virtual gigabytes using the Extended RAM 3.0 feature. As always, cooling is vital for sustained performance, so iQOO has equipped the phone with a large vapor chamber plus multiple layers of graphite sheets. Interesting note: just like the iQOO 11 was India’s first Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 phone, the Neo7 is India’s first Dimensity 8200 phone.

Moving on to the display, it is a 6.78” AMOLED panel (up from 6.62” on the Neo6) with 1,080 x 2,400px resolution (20:9). It runs at up to 120Hz refresh rate (with 60 and 90Hz options for content, plus 30Hz for the Always On Display). The maximum brightness users can set manually is 500 nits, the high brightness mode brings that up to 1,000 nits. The display is HDR10+ certified. Turning our attention back to gaming, the display normally at 300Hz for touch sampling, but there is a 1,200Hz instant mode as well. Also, there are motion controls in Ultra Game Mode, which leverage the gyroscope and accelerometer. You can assign custom actions to six different motions: left hand lifting, right hand lifting, left leaning, right leaning, horizontal forward pressing and horizontal backward pressing.

The motion control feature is supported by the New State game out of the box with more to come (including Call of Duty Mobile). Additionally, the game can run at 90fps on the Neo7, Battlegrounds Mobile India will gain support for 90fps soon (should be done by the end of March). Call of Duty Mobile supports the Ultra graphics setting. The Neo7 upgrades the FlashCharge system and now supports 120W. This means a 1-50% charge is done in 10 minutes, a full 1-100% charge can be completed in 25 minutes. For comparison, the Neo6’s 80W system needed 12 minutes and 32 minutes, respectively.

And this was with a smaller battery too – the new model has 5,000mAh capacity, the phone from last year has 300mAh less. Note that there are two charging modes: Fast, which keeps temperatures lower, and Super Fast, which goes full tilt. The battery is rated to withstand 1,000 charge/discharge cycles before its capacity drops to 80%. We should mention the camera before we wrap up. The Neo7 features an ISOCELL GW3 – a 64MP 1/1.97” sensor based on ISOCELL 2.0 tech (the Neo6 used a 64MP GW1P sensor). For this generation iQOO removed the ultra wide camera, leaving only the main module, plus a macro and a depth module to keep it company. Like we said, this is more of a gaming phone than a camera phone.

The iQOO Neo7 is launching in two colors: Frost Blue and Interstellar Black The iQOO Neo7 is launching in two colors: Frost Blue and Interstellar Black The iQOO Neo7 is launching in two colors: Frost Blue and Interstellar Black Actually, there is one more thing before we get to the price - iQOO says that the Neo7 will be updated to Android 15 and that it will be receiving security patches every couple of months for three years. The base 8GB/128GB edition of the Neo7 is priced at INR 29,999 (US$ 360), while the 12GB/256GB model is INR 33,999 (US$ 410). Certain bank cards get an instant discount worth INR 1,500.