If you read our site regularly, you certainly haven't missed the information that we recently ordered an exotic I live iQOO 9 Pro in the exclusive BMW edition. This is the flagship of the iQOO brand, which is not very well known in our region, as it has no official representation here and it is a real exclusivity.
In the review, you can read how satisfied we were with the smartphone during normal, everyday use, how it takes photos and what changes it brings compared to the well-known smartphones from Xiaomi and Redmi, which we mostly test, and especially how the compatibility of Chinese ROM.
Where to buy Vivo iQOO 9 Pro?
You can order a smartphone just like us, from the international seller TradingShenzhen, which is definitely one of the best e-shops we work with. Global Priority Postage will ensure you quality and trouble-free delivery without any customs fees.
I live iQOO 9 Pro
Technical specifications
processor | Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen1 |
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RAM | 8 GB LPDDR5 |
repository | 256 GB UFS 3.1 |
Drums | 4700 mAh |
charging | 120 W wired + 50 W wireless |
Operating system | Chinese Origin OS 12 based on Android 12 |
Display | 6.78 "2K LTPO AMOLED |
3200 x 1440 px resolution | |
maximum brightness 1500 rivets | |
dynamirefresh rate – max 120 Hz | |
contrast ratio 8: 000 | |
sampling frequency 300 Hz | |
Dual SIM | yes - 2 x nano SIM in mode dual standby |
Cameras | main 50 MPx with aperture f / 1.75 |
ultra wide (fisheye) 50 MPx with aperture f / 2.27 and a viewing angle of 150 ° | |
telephoto / portrait 16 MPx with aperture f / 2.23 | |
selfie 16 MPx with aperture f / 2.45 | |
Sensors | accelerometer; light sensor; proximity sensor; e-compass; gyroscope |
Localization systems | GPS; GLONASS; GALILEO; BeiDou |
WiFi | 2.4 GHz / 5.1 GHz / 5.8 GHz |
Bluetooth | 5.2 |
NFC | Yes |
Interesting packaging
As this is a special BMW edition, the packaging of the smartphone is adapted to this. The whole box is black with logos iQOO and BMW and is cut in half with an interesting shape of the individual parts. As BMW is a premium partner of the iQOO brand, we will find a card with the theme BMW Motorsport right at the top.
Right below it is a smartphone wrapped in transparent foil, a protective cover, a needle for opening the slot for SIM cards and charging cable with adapter. The whole package has an exclusive touch and at first glance you can see that it is not an ordinary smartphone.
As for the overall quality of the packaging, our partner TradingShenzhen has traditionally cared about packaging. You will find out more about our order and delivery in a separate article.
Quality of workmanship and design
Since the iQOO 9 Pro is the brand's flagship, we expected a quality smartphone similar to other flagships. The expectations have been met and we must acknowledge that iQOO 9 Pro excels in processing quality. The construction is metal, but the back cover is made of plastic. However, it is pleasant to the touch and it is definitely not a cheap piece of plastic.
In our case, the frame is aluminum, while the rear cover is white with strips in BMW Motorsport colors. The large rear camera module is in the style of the Xiaomi 11 Ultra, but the secondary display is not here. Thanks to this element, the smartphone also holds well on the table and does not tilt when using the display in this position.
In terms of design, we have absolutely nothing to complain about this smartphone. It looks modern and has rounded edges on the front and back, which holds it very well in the hand. However, for some, its size can be a problem, as the dimensions of the smartphone are 164.8 x 75.2 x 8.8 mm and the weight is 210 g.
Standard element layout
Don't expect anything special about the layout of the controls. Smartphones designed primarily for the Chinese and Indian markets also look just like ours. The left edge is completely empty, while on the right side there is a double volume control button and an unlock button, which is in blue.
The bottom side traditionally contains a USB-C port for charging, a speaker, a slot for 2 SIM cards and microphone. On the upper side there is a light sensor and a microphone. You would look for a second speaker grill here in vain. It is not located here. There are only three cameras and an LED flash on the back cover.
2K AMOLED display with LTPO technology
The display of the Vivo iQOO 9 Pro smartphone is one of the best on the market. This is an E5 AMOLED panel with a diagonal of 6.75 ″ and a resolution of 3200 x 1440 px. The maximum brightness that the display can reach is 1500 rivets, which is a very decent value. The fineness of the display is 517 ppi and there is a high contrast ratio of 8: 000.
The sampling rate is 300 Hz and the refresh rate is dynamick. It can independently adapt to current conditions thanks to the LTPO 2.0 technology. The maximum refresh rate is 120 Hz. In the settings, it is possible to choose 60 or 120 Hz, or use dynamisetting that is the default.
The display is rounded on both sides and a protective foil is glued to it from the factory. In the middle of the upper part we find a shot at a selfie camera, which is one of the smaller and more decent ones.
Top performance
In the upper part of the box of the new Vivo iQOO 9 Pro, there is a small inscription "Monster inside", and rightfully so. This smartphone is a real monster when it comes to performance. We have here the flagship processor from Qualcomm, Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, which we already had the opportunity to test in Xiaomi 12 smartphones. It is the best that is currently available on the market from the American company.
Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is an 8-core processor and is manufactured using 4 nm technology. It consists of 1 x Cortex-X2 3.0 GHz cores, 3x Cortex-A710 2.5 GHz and 4x Cortex-A510 1.8 GHz. This is followed by LPDDR5 RAM with UFS 3.1 fast storage. We have a version with 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. There is also a higher version with 12 GB of RAM.
Traditionally, we also tested this smartphone in the well-known AnTuT benchmark, where we achieved the highest score among all the smartphones we had the opportunity to test so far, namely 1 points. Vivo iQOO 015 Pro ranks sovereign in the rankings and Xiaomi 714 Pro and Motorola Edge 9 Pro breathe tightly around his neck.
The smartphone handles even the most demanding games without any significant overheating. There is also an Ultra Game Mode that can adjust the performance of the currently running game. While playing, its menu is hidden on the left, where you can drag to display a menu with various information and settings. Information about the current frequency of the processor and the graphics chip is displayed here, as well as several settings and performance adjustments. The maximum power is represented by the so-called Monster Mode.
Among the settings, we have the option to automatically block notifications or calls, lock the screen orientation or even record the screen or create a screenshot. You must enable this Ultra Game Mode for each game you want to use in your smartphone settings.
Chinese superstructure OriginOS
The Chinese version of the Vivo iQOO 9 Pro offers a superstructure called Origin OS based on the latest Android in version 12. As it is Chinese version we have to deal with several problems. The first is language. Because the smartphone is designed primarily for the Chinese market, the native language is Chinese. There are also several European languages available, such as German, Spanish or French, but Slovak and Czech are missing. We therefore chose English.
The second problem is a larger amount of bloatware, ie unnecessary applications that you will never use. Several of them are pre-installed and not all of them can be uninstalled. These include applications such as Origin Reader, vivo.com, Music, Game Center and many others, almost all of which are in Chinese. We've noticed that it sometimes comes across Chinese in settings, such as font change options.
In order not to write only about negatives, we must acknowledge that the system is reworked to the last detail. At first glance, it has a different design and layout compared to smartphones from Xiaomi or other brands operating in our market. The menu consists of several screens that are fully customizable. You can change not only their order and content, but also the size of icons, their color, style or rounding of elements.
Here, the adaptations are just beginning. iQOO offers settings for various effects, charging animations, fingerprint scanning, screen switching on or off, as well as display settings. There is eye protection mode, dark mode and font style and size settings, along with screen resolution and color adjustment. If you like to play with system settings and superstructure customizations, you can fully realize yourself here.
Although we tested the Chinese version of the smartphone, we had absolutely no problems with the installation or launch of various applications. They even worked properly banking applications and Google Pay. However, we recommend installing a different calendar than the pre-installed calendar, as it contains a number of Chinese descriptions. We used Google Calendar, where all events from our Google account were automatically imported.
Always-on display and notifications
Of course, there is always-on display, which is also fully customizable, but we are still missing something. There are several different designs to choose from, as well as scheduling when the always-on display should be active. However, what we are missing here are notifications from applications displayed on the always-on display.
It can only display notifications related to calls, SMS messages and so-called Nano alerts for upcoming appointments, weather or train tickets or airline tickets. However, there is no possibility to choose which specific applications can display notifications on the always-on display, at least in the form of a small application icon, as we know it from the MIUI extension. Such notifications are displayed only on the so-called lock screen.
If you receive a message on Messenger, the display will of course light up, but if you are not close to your smartphone at that time, the always-on display will not be able to inform us about the missed message. Regarding notifications in general, the first time you launch each new application, the system will ask if you want to allow notifications for that application.
We received notifications relatively reliably, with a few exceptions when they were displayed late. We had particular problems with the Mi Home application. If you want to receive notifications more reliably, we recommend enabling high battery consumption for a specific application and also locking it on the multitasking screen.
The fastest fingerprint scanner in the world
But the Vivo iQOO 9 Pro has a perfect 3D ultrasonic large screen reader that works really well and quickly. The display unlocks almost immediately with the insertion of a finger with absolutely minimal delay and ranks among the fastest in the world. When compared to the fingerprint reader from OnePlus 9 Pro, we saw that the difference is really significant.
They will also enjoy the various options for customizing the design and size of the finger area, with a choice between several animations that appear while using the reader. Face unlocking, which is also perfectly optimized, works just as quickly.
Photographic equipment
The cameras also look very promising, as the Vivo iQOO 9 Pro has a Samsung GN5 sensor, which can also be found in the flagship Samsung Galaxy S22 and S22 + models. Details and specifications of all cameras can be found in the table below:
The main 50 MPx | SamsungGN5 | sensor size 1 / 1.57; aperture f / 1.75; gimbal stabilization |
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Ultra-wide 50 MPx | Samsung S5KJN1 | sensor size 1 / 2.76; aperture f / 2.27; fisheye with a viewing angle of 150 ° |
Portrait (telephoto) 16 MPx | Samsung S5K3P9 | sensor size 1 / 3.1; aperture f / 2.23; OIS |
Selfie 16 MPx | aperture f / 2.45 |
Main and wide angle camera
The main camera is usually the best of all the cameras. However, here we also have an ultra-wide-angle camera with the same 50 MPx resolution. Let's look at the main one first. A good dy will pleasenamirange, natural color rendering and high sharpness. In good lighting conditions, you will get excellent photos from it.
In poorly lit places, and especially indoors, the quality deteriorates slightly. The photos are no longer perfectly sharp, there are also under-exposed places in places, and overall the photos are sometimes a bit darker than we would expect. Overall, they are still very good.
The ultra-wide camera with the same resolution of 50 MPx has a very similar output as the main camera. However, the color rendering has a subtle touch of yellow and green in places, but in some cases it is better than the main camera, especially indoors.
There is also an interesting fisheye effect and several other effects such as Crystal ball, Asteroid and Rabbit sticks. We really like this feature and we give iQOO a big thumbs up, it definitely gives great opportunities to creative people.
Tele-macro lens and selfie
The telescopic 16 MPx camera allows 2.5x optical zoom and a maximum of 30x digital zoom. Output quality is good in most cases, especially in good light. In color, the tones go more in warm tones, but they are still close to reality.
We also tried portrait mode, which can blur the background behind the subject. The degree of blurring can be adjusted, but it often happens that it is not very natural, especially at the edges of the subject, which remains sharp. In addition, color rendering is also quite unnatural.
The selfie camera has good quality, but it's a pity that the flagship model has the option of shooting video through a selfie camera only with a maximum resolution of 1080p at 30 fps.
Night mode
Shooting in night mode slightly brightens the photo, in which the individual details stand out more. iQOO 9 Pro takes very good photos even without night mode, so the differences between photos taken without and with night mode aren't as significant as usual with other smartphones.
See more of the night mode when shooting unlit subjects. The building from the photos below is almost completely unlit and is actually located in a dark place that looks significantly different than the photo, with or without night mode. The night regime, however, pushes the unreality even further, but the overall output looks good, despite the fact that it is far from reality.
Video quality
Vivo iQOO 9 Pro supports shooting in up to 8K resolution, but only at 30 fps and without stabilization. Therefore, we used a 4K resolution with 60 frames per second, which has gimbal image stabilization, which works at a very decent level. The overall quality of the video is good.
As for other resolutions, we also have 4k at 30 fps, 1080p at 60/30/24 fps and 720p with the same options. They will enjoy various video effects, so-called Micro Movie, with which you can directly shoot an interestingly cut video with transition effects and music or text in the video. Slow-motion video can be recorded at a maximum of 1080p and 240 fps.
Endurance and charging
The novelty from the iQOO brand receives a 4700 mAh battery with support for fast, up to 120 W charging, so-called FlashCharge. Wireless charging with a power of 50 W is also supported. Endurance, of course, depends on the style of use. We took full advantage of the smartphone with the automatic display refresh rate turned on, the always-on display activated, and at the highest resolution.
During testing, we often had to slightly charge the smartphone in the evening so that it would not discharge until the morning. Even with standard use, we recommend counting on a maximum of one day, but not always. If we charged our smartphone in the morning, we usually only had about 10% left until the next morning.
battery capacity | time |
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20 - 50% | 6 minutes |
75% | 11 minutes |
90% | 14 minutes |
100% | 18 minutes |
However, you will enjoy the extremely fast 120 W charging that will actually charge your smartphone in a few minutes. If you are going out and you notice that the battery capacity is already low, you just need to connect the smartphone to the charger for literally a while and it will easily last you another few hours.
Connectivity and speakers
Many people are concerned about buying the Chinese version of the smartphone, as not all of them support our frequency bands. However, the Vivo iQOO 9 Pro has full support for all 4G bandsused by our operators, including the most widely used B20 band. It is similar with 5G support, which unfortunately we cannot test due to poor coverage.
It will be pleased to support the latest WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.2 and NFC standards. As mentioned above, Google Pay works without any problems, so you can pay in stores with smartphones. You would be looking for a 3.5 mm headphone port in vain, and you won't find a USB-C adapter in the package.
You will find the classic speaker grille only on the bottom of the smartphone, as the second speaker uses the one you are using to make calls, so it is hidden in the grille just above the display. The speakers play cleanly and are very well balanced. In addition, we appreciate the really low minimum volume, which can be adjusted in very small steps upwards.
Vivo iQOO 9 Pro: Final evaluation
Vivo iQOO 9 Pro is a powerful brutal smartphone with a beautiful and modern design. It is definitely one of the best smartphones we have had the opportunity to test so far. It not only excels in great performance, thanks to which it dominates the ranking in the popular AnTuT benchmark, but it also delights with perfect cameras.
The pride of the smartphone is also the large AMOLED display with dynamick refresh rate that adapts to current needs. The speakers play excellently and you will also be pleased with good connectivity, including support for WiFi 6, 5G networks and NFC.
The biggest negative is perhaps the superstructure itself, which is perfectly customizable, but contains a relatively large number of pre-installed applications. For the notifications to work properly, it is necessary to play with the settings, but we have still not been able to achieve their completely reliable operation.
I live iQOO 9 Pro
Since you will not find Vivo iQOO 9 Pro anywhere in our country, you must contact foreign dealers. The most reliable is clearly Trading Shenzen, which has duty-free transport Global Priority and packages from China also go very fast, from about 15 days.