iQOO 8 Pro: From all-rounder to flagship, it spans both gaming and Vlog, making it the best smartphone for everyone

In 2019, vivo launched its sub-brand iQOO. From the very beginning, iQOO's brand positioning was very clear: youthful and high-performance. Such a positioning also makes it easy for people to regard iQOO as a "gaming phone", but in fact, as early as when the brand was first launched, Feng Yufei, vice president of iQOO brand, said that gaming is just a manifestation of iQOO's function, and iQOO's goal is to cover all people.

Two years after its launch, iQOO has continued to make great progress, launching more than 30 models in succession. The rapid replacement of generations has brought about a very fast growth rate, allowing the label of iQOO mobile phones to gradually evolve from "gaming" to "all-round". This month, iQOO brought the latest product in the series: iQOO 8 Pro, co-branded with BMW. Since it is a collaboration with a top global brand, iQOO 8 Pro naturally has to show top quality.

In fact, the performance of iQOO 8 Pro has lived up to expectations, evolving from "all-rounder" to "flagship".

Appearance: personality and stability coexist

iQOO and BMW started their collaboration with last year's iQOO 5 Pro, which had two versions: the "Track Edition" and the "Legend Edition". This design concept has been carried over to the iQOO 8 Pro this time. For top brands, the color matching is not about quantity, but about highlighting temperament.

The one I have in my hand is the "track version". The overall color is black, which makes it more stable and is a good choice for business people.

In addition to the phone itself, the iQOO 8 Pro box also comes with a protective case and a 120W fast charging head. The protective case is made of skin-like material, which feels comfortable and is not easy to leave fingerprints. The 120W fast charging head is still "not environmentally friendly", but for users, practicality is the bottom line.

The back of the body is made of plain leather with a carbon fiber texture. The biggest advantage of this process is that it ensures a good feel without slipping or getting fingerprints. At the same time, since the iQOO 8 Pro uses the Snapdragon 888 Plus processor, its power consumption will naturally be higher, and the plain leather material with low heat conduction is more conducive to long-term holding. Overall, the iQOO 8 Pro is a very suitable mobile phone for "naked running".

The camera module of iQOO 8 Pro adopts the iQOO series' iconic cloud-step design, with a total of three lenses, namely the micro-gimbal main camera, ultra-wide-angle, and portrait telephoto. The base colors of the two lenses on the left are silver-gray, the base color of the lens on the right is black, and the overall base color of the camera module is silver-gray, with clear layers. Today, when the camera modules of flagship mobile phones are becoming more and more exaggerated, iQOO 8 Pro not only ensures powerful imaging capabilities, but also retains a rare simple design.

The front of the phone has a slightly curved screen and a punch hole camera. Personally, I always feel that a screen with a large curvature is a bit flashy. However, the curvature of the iQOO 8 Pro is enough to hide the black borders and ensure a relatively complete look on the front of the screen, while not affecting the grip and operation on both sides. It can be said that it has achieved a perfect balance.

In addition, among the current front camera solutions, the hole-punch screen is one of the most balanced in terms of performance and visual experience, and can ensure the immersive feeling during use to the greatest extent.

From the appearance, the iQOO 8 Pro Track Edition looks calm and restrained, exuding a strong business atmosphere, and the thick grip makes it more stable in the hand. It also has a white "Legend Edition" with higher recognition, which has a strong appeal to Generation Z consumers. From the appearance design, it can also be seen that iQOO 8 Pro is also making changes in its positioning, rushing towards the concept of "making a mobile phone suitable for everyone".

High refresh rate and high resolution without compromise, leaving no regrets

The appearance design of the iQOO 8 Pro screen is indeed excellent, but the quality of the screen is not only determined by external conditions such as curvature and camera shape, but also by multiple factors such as screen material, refresh rate, resolution, color, etc. to see the comprehensive capabilities of the screen.

Let’s take a look at the screen of iQOO 8 Pro: E5 material, 2K resolution, 120Hz high refresh, LTPO technology, 10-bit color depth, P3 wide color gamut, HDR 10+... Putting these terms here is enough to show that iQOO 8 Pro has piled up enough materials on the screen this time.

iQOO 8 Pro is the world's first to launch Samsung's latest E5 material AMOLED display. Compared with the previous generation E4 screen, E5 has made great progress in peak brightness, power consumption, etc. The maximum brightness of iQOO 8 Pro can reach 500nit, and the local peak brightness can reach 1500nit. Even in strong outdoor light, the screen display effect is still clear.

The screen resolution of iQOO 8 Pro can reach up to 3200×1440, and the PPI can reach 517, which is an increase of 30.1% compared with the previous generation iQOO 7.

Each iQOO 8 Pro will also undergo independent color calibration, allowing it to obtain 14 DisplayMate A+ certifications, setting a new record.

DisplayMate is an industry standard for optimizing, calibrating, testing, evaluating and comparing all display devices. Today, the world's top laboratories and manufacturers use its test data as an important reference, and even NASA is using it. A+ is the highest level of DisplayMate testing, and the conditions are the most demanding. The ability to pass this level of testing also shows the quality of the iQOO 8 Pro screen.

The improvement in parameters naturally makes the screen look more delicate and transparent, the display effect more vivid, and the color transition more natural.

When watching videos, the iQOO 8 Pro's screen can also bring a very good viewing experience, and the light and shadow details and object textures of the video are also perfectly restored.

For mobile phone screens, refresh rate is also an important indicator. High refresh rate is a huge improvement in daily use, especially for the user experience of information flow software. As a flagship product, iQOO 8 Pro naturally has this function. At the same time, it supports the latest LTPO technology and can freely switch the refresh rate between 1-120Hz according to the usage scenario, thereby further optimizing power consumption.

In the Android camp, 90Hz and even 120Hz have become standard, and even many thousand-yuan phones can achieve this. However, many mobile phones are caught in an awkward situation where they can't have their cake and eat it too. 2K resolution and 120Hz refresh rate often cannot be enabled at the same time, leaving users with a difficult choice between "pleasing to the eye" and "smooth".

This time, QOO 8 Pro supports 2K resolution and 120Hz refresh rate at the same time, and is one of the few products in the industry that can achieve "I want it all".

The iQOO 8 Pro screen doesn’t have a radical design in appearance, but it has done a lot of work on the display effect, making the screen quality reach an extremely high level. For people like me who value practicality more, this trade-off is undoubtedly worth it.

From the perspective of materials, the iQOO 8 Pro's screen configuration is basically the strongest, with almost no room for improvement. From the actual performance, this screen is also at the top level in terms of both appearance and control. As the window of the mobile phone, the iQOO 8 Pro's screen is undoubtedly eye-catching.

Redefining fingerprint unlocking

Nowadays, the two most mainstream ways to unlock mobile phones are face unlocking and fingerprint unlocking. In the current situation where masks are often with us, fingerprint is undoubtedly a more convenient choice.

Fingerprint unlocking of mobile phones has evolved from the initial physical buttons on the front to the back and sides, and finally to the most common front-mounted under-screen fingerprint. The first mobile phone with an under-screen fingerprint was from vivo, and the iQOO 8 Pro also inherited vivo's innovative genes in the fingerprint field and brought the fingerprint unlocking experience to a new level.

iQOO 8 Pro is the world's first mobile phone to use ultrasonic 3D wide-area fingerprint technology. Traditional fingerprint technology requires multiple entries, but iQOO 8 Pro only needs one entry to succeed, which is very convenient.

When unlocking, iQOO 8 Pro is not afraid of special scenarios such as strong light and wet hands, and the recognition range is also wider. The finger does not need to fully enter the recognition area, and even the entire finger does not need to be attached to quickly unlock.

Unlocking is definitely the most frequent operation in daily use of mobile phones. Although it may seem insignificant at first glance, countless small details can eventually bring about a qualitative change. After getting used to the fast fingerprint unlocking of iQOO 8 Pro, the unlocking of other models always feels a bit sluggish. The innovation in these details also shows iQOO 8 Pro's understanding of user experience, which is why we specially take out space to introduce this feature.

Innovative black technology of gaming phones

The earliest main selling point of the iQOO series was games. During the development of the series, the shortcomings have been made up, but the improvement of its strengths has never stopped.

For gaming, battery life and configuration are the basis of all experiences. Long battery life and the ability to quickly "recharge" are the prerequisites for enjoying the game for a long time, while the configuration determines the upper limit of the gaming experience.

In terms of battery, iQOO 8 Pro is equipped with a large 4500 mAh battery. After turning on the Monster mode with the highest power consumption and playing "Honor of Kings" for one hour, "Genshin Impact" for one hour, and "Peace Elite" for one hour, and then playing a movie of about two hours, the battery power dropped from 99% to 20% after the test. After such deliberate high-intensity "torture", it can still maintain this power, so there is no need to worry about the daily use of iQOO 8 Pro.

Charging is naturally the traditional strength of the iQOO series. iQOO 8 Pro supports 120W fast charging, which can charge more than 20% in 3 minutes, 55% in 10 minutes, and fully charged in as fast as 18 minutes. Wireless charging can be fully charged in as fast as 42 minutes, which basically eliminates battery anxiety.

iQOO 8 Pro also uses the current flagship configuration of Snapdragon 888Plus+USF 3.1+LPDDR5. The CPU performance has been improved by 7%, and the read, write and cache speeds have also been greatly accelerated. In terms of hardware, it is the ceiling of the Qualcomm camp. Judging from the AnTuTu running score data, a score of over 840,000 is enough to stand out from the crowd.

This configuration allows iQOO 8 Pro to handle all mainstream mobile games today. After testing the performance of "Genshin Impact", "Honor of Kings" and "Peace Elite" for half an hour, they can all run stably at 60 frames.

Stable output is the basis for success, but this is not the most amazing thing about iQOO 8 Pro in gaming. iQOO 8 Pro also adds a big black technology to the game, by building in an independent display chip to realize the "game interpolation" function.

In games like "Honor of Kings", players can choose the "increase frame rate" mode. The phone will calculate and add frames for the game, instantly doubling the frame rate to 120 frames, reducing screen ghosting and greatly improving the smoothness of the game.

In fact, similar functions can already be achieved on iQOO Neo5, but iQOO 8 Pro also brings a creative "reduced power consumption mode".

In this mode, the game screen can be increased from 60 frames to 90 frames, and the power consumption will be reduced. This may sound counterintuitive, but the principle is not complicated.

When the optimized power consumption mode is not turned on, the phone can run the game at 60 frames per second, all relying on GPU rendering. However, the iQOO 8 Pro has an independent display chip. Therefore, after turning on the optimized power consumption mode, the GPU only needs to render 45 frames, and the rest of the rendering pressure will be shared by the independent display chip. Combined with the MEMC technology to insert frames for the game, the magical effect of increasing frame rate and reducing power consumption is achieved.

In terms of heat dissipation, iQOO 8 Pro uses VC power pump liquid cooling. The large-area heat spreader structure allows for faster heat conduction and better heat dissipation. In high-load e-sports scenarios, it can quickly reduce the surface temperature of the phone and the CPU to ensure long-lasting performance release. During the test, except for "Genshin Impact" which was a bit hot after running for a long time, the phone did not get noticeably hot after playing other games for a long time.

Finally, I would like to add two details about the gaming performance of iQOO 8 Pro.

The first is the built-in "Game Magic Box", which, in addition to game interpolation, can also provide practical functions such as 4D vibration, notification shielding, voice changer, and visual effect enhancement.

In addition, in order to reduce the probability of accidental touches, iQOO 8 Pro requires swiping up from the bottom twice in horizontal screen applications (games, video software, etc.) to return to the desktop.

In general, in terms of games, iQOO 8 Pro does more than just stacking materials. The addition of various black technologies and practical functions shows iQOO's understanding of "gaming experience". It can be said that among all the products on the market today, the gaming experience of iQOO 8 Pro is definitely in the first echelon.

Micro gimbal creates a Vlog artifact

Starting with the iQOO5 series, iQOO began to make efforts in the field of mobile photography. This year's iQOO Neo5 uses the same IMX598 main camera and algorithm as vivo's flagship X60 series, and also adds OIS anti-shake function.

iQOO 8 Pro also enjoys the treatment of technology decentralization, with a 50-megapixel large-bottom gimbal main camera (IMX766V), a 48-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens (IMX598), and a 16-megapixel 2.5x telephoto lens. It can be seen that iQOO 8 Pro did not make a big fuss about the number of lenses, but each lens is of extraordinary quality.

The picture below is a photo taken by the iQOO 8 Pro main camera. You can see that under sufficient light conditions, the color, saturation, white balance and resolution of the iQOO 8 Pro are very good.

The ultra-wide-angle lens has equally excellent resolution, and the sky it captures is bluer than the main camera.

The telephoto lens is more suitable for close-up photography, especially portrait photography. The addition of optical image stabilization also makes the photography threshold further lower.

In indoor dim light conditions, iQOO 8 Pro can also take good photos. The large-bottom gimbal main camera of iQOO 8 Pro can bring in more light when shooting at night, and the photos taken will be more detailed. When shooting the picture below, there was only a desk lamp on the left side of the picture as a light source, but the final image looks like it has been illuminated.

When shooting outdoor dark scenes, the iQOO 8 Pro has an obvious advantage in light intake. This is the actual situation during the shooting. It can be seen that it is pitch black to the naked eye, and only a tree can be vaguely seen.

But the effect captured by iQOO 8 Pro is as shown in the picture below. The colors of the leaves and the clothes hanging on the clothesline are perfectly displayed, and even the black car appears in the night sky. It can be called a night vision device.

For comparison, we used the iPhone 12 to take another photo at the same angle. We can see that although the black vehicle can be seen clearly, the overall tone is dim, the original color is not restored, and there are more noise.

In addition to photography, the iQOO 8 Pro's video recording has also been significantly upgraded, with the addition of vivo's iconic micro-gimbal function. The biggest feature of this function is: stability.

After turning on the super anti-shake mode, we recorded it like this:

The recorded effect is like this:

But this is not the most exaggerated. When you jump the anti-shake mode to "horizon", you will find that the effect of the photo is like this:

Is the shaking of the picture still quite obvious? But in fact, we shot it like this:

Even if the phone is flipped 90 degrees or even 180 degrees, the picture can still be kept at the same angle. The reason why this magical function can be realized is due to the gyroscope. Officials said that the horizon function will perform anti-shake and stabilization based on the jitter data of the gyroscope, and determine the direction of the horizon based on the direction data of the gravity sensor, and then use the wide viewing angle and high pixel of the IMX598 ultra-wide-angle lens to provide more cropping space and image quality assurance.

The three lenses of iQOO 8 Pro each have their own functions, and none of them are redundant or just for show, making its imaging capabilities reach the pinnacle of the iQOO series. The addition of the micro gimbal and gyroscope allows iQOO 8 Pro to maintain the stability of the picture to the maximum extent when running or walking. It can be said that iQOO 8 Pro is a new generation of video artifact, especially in this era of universal video creation, it is likely to become the most suitable device for shooting Vlogs.

iQOO's Attack

As a brand that has only been launched for two years, iQOO has undoubtedly made rapid progress. In 2019, when the first generation of iQOO was launched, it was priced at 2,998 yuan, and its configuration was among the best in the same price range. Features such as 44W fast charging, 12GB RAM, and NFC were not even popular on vivo phones at the time.

On the other hand, as a product focusing on "gaming", the first generation of iQOO did not leave a deep impression on people in terms of the recognition speed of fingerprints under the screen, imaging and other fields. At that time, iQOO looked like a brand built for a niche market, as long as the long board was long enough, the other parts would be sufficient.

In the past two years, with the gradual expansion of product coverage, iQOO has become an all-round flagship brand with prices ranging from thousand-yuan phones to high-end phones over 5,000 yuan, and the iQOO 8 Pro is undoubtedly a phased summary of the entire brand's growth history: it carries forward the advantages of its predecessors in the gaming field, while at the same time completing a thorough evolution in the fields of screen, fingerprint, and imaging, becoming a well-deserved all-round flagship and the national "king of phones".

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.