iQOO 7 Legend review: Game for anything
Verdict
The iQOO vii Fable is a highly capable phone with a welcome gaming edge. It'south far classier and easier to live with than your average pure gaming telephone, with a squeamish blueprint and a capable camera. If only we could pin downwards its global launch potential, pricing and position in the market place, we might be raving about it more than.
Pros
- Fresh blueprint
- Competent cameras compared to dedicated gaming phones
- Constructive force per unit area-sensitive gaming controls
Cons
- Minor battery for a nominal gaming phone
- Unclear availability
- FunTouch UI is a little busy
Availability
- UK unavailable
- Usa unavailable
- Europe unavailable
- Canada unavailable
- Australia unavailable
Primal Features
- Powerful internals The phone is powered by the Snapdragon 888
- Cameras The device features 48MP, 13MP and a 13MP cameras on the back
Introduction
We're used to smartphone brand spin-offs such as Honor and Redmi providing high-value alternatives to their parent company's mainline offerings (Huawei and Xiaomi respectively), but iQOO is a little unlike.
This Vivo spin-off provides phones that are every bit also-specced equally the flagship efforts of its parent. Maybe fifty-fifty more than so, in fact, in that the iQOO make tends to focus on raw performance, while Vivo is more near the camera.
The iQOO 7 Legend is a perfect instance of this. Here is a telephone offer 2021 flagship performance, a great 120Hz AMOLED display, speedy 66W charging, and a racy design.
We don't have whatsoever news on a Western launch equally yet, but information technology'south been available in China and India for some fourth dimension, at a price of ₹48,990 (around £500). We'll update this review if and when nosotros hear more about a wider rollout.
Design and Screen
- Clean design with quirky go-faster stripes
- Surprisingly heavy
- Rapid pressure-sensitive display
I've seen the iQOO 7 Legend referred to as a gaming phone in some quarters, but it isn't really. Its design makes far more concessions to everyday usability than the likes of the Lenovo Legion Duel two or the Asus ROG Phone 5, and there isn't and so much as a hint of RGB lighting or cringey leet-speak to be found on the phone's torso or box.
The manufacturer is trying to convey a far more generalised sense of elite functioning here. To that cease, the iQOO 7 Legend is styled after a BMW G-series car, with the marque's distinctive triple-stripe running down the dorsum of the telephone. You tin can thank a lucrative sponsorship deal with the German language automotive visitor for that.
Opinion will likely vary on how this looks, just for my money, iQOO but about keeps things on the correct side of tacky, cheers to a sense of classy understatement found elsewhere in the telephone. Those stripes overlay a glass dorsum with a silky white cease, while the rectangular camera module is footed by a flat metal plate.
Go-faster stripes bated, it's a blueprint language that will be familiar to anyone who's used a Vivo X60 Pro or Vivo X50 Pro. The two companies might technically be split entities at present, but they're clearly still having regular lunches together.
The blue-coloured, slightly textured power button is a dainty affect besides.
This isn't the slimmest phone design around at eight.7mm thick, and it weighs a heavier-than-average 210g. This is a petty mystifying when yous consider that it packs simply a 4000mAh battery, but the majority gives the telephone an expensive feeling at least.
What doesn't feel expensive is the phone's pigsty-punch selfie photographic camera, which has the kind of distracting shiny surround that smacks of a cheaper device. Incidentally, the mere presence of a notch is one of those elements that doesn't scream 'gaming phone'.
A genuine gaming phone will exit larger top and bottom bezels in the interest of an unimpeded display and proper front-firing speakers. You do get a decent ready of stereo speakers here, merely ane sits along the bottom edge and the other is in the earpiece.
It's tough to find fault with the brandish. It's a nicely sized 6.62-inch AMOLED with a rapid 120Hz maximum refresh charge per unit.
Information technology gets plenty vivid, too. iQOO claims a maximum of 800 nits in auto-brightness mode under strong lighting, and 1300 nits in certain HDR scenarios. In my own measurements, with machine-effulgence turned off, the phone got to 460 nits, which is nonetheless strong.
This is a punchy AMOLED console, and a pretty colour-accurate i at that. I measured color gamut coverage of 99.eight% sRGB, 82.6% Adobe RGB, and 98.seven% DCI-P3 using a colorimeter, which is decent.
While a default 300Hz affect sampling charge per unit is practiced rather than amazing – especially compared to a genuine gaming phone such as the 720Hz Redmagic 6S Pro – iQOO makes the intriguing claim that its latest telephone tin exist cranked up to 1000Hz.
More noteworthy, however, is the inclusion of a pressure-sensitive display akin to Apple's sadly lamented (by me at to the lowest degree) 3D Touch. Using this you can map game controls to a firmer printing of either side of the screen.
So, for example, in CoD Mobile I mapped ADS to the left side of the screen and burn down to the right side of the screen, meaning I could aim and shoot without taking my thumbs off the screen.
This isn't as good equally the dedicated trigger buttons on the aforementioned pure gaming phones, but it isn't all that far off in do. If this is what it takes to make a more subtle, everyday gaming phone, then I'thou all up for it.
Photographic camera
- 48-megapixel wide camera capable, if a fiddling as well punchy
- xiii-megapixel ultra-wide and telephoto friction match the tone quite well
- Dark mode shots a little unnatural
The iQOO 7 Fable'south photographic camera system leads with a 48-megapixel Sony IMX598 paradigm sensor. This is the same sensor that you'll find in the Vivo X60 Pro and Vivo X50 Pro, although it'south paired with a smaller f/i.79 discontinuity, and there are no fancy Zeiss optics involved.
Y'all don't go the outlandish gimbal stabilisation system of those two phones, just you practise at least get OIS to keep things reasonably steady. That'south not a given in the 'non-quite-flagship' tier that the phone seems to inhabit.
Also like to the Vivo X60 Pro is the provision of two thirteen-megapixel sensors: one a 2x telephoto and one an ultra-wide with a combined macro ability. There's a 16-megapixel selfie camera around front.
Equally a packet information technology isn't as accomplished as Vivo'south finest, but given the functioning and gaming focus here, information technology's pretty stiff however. In full general shooting, these cameras are capable of capturing bright, crisp, well-balanced shots. The secondary cameras lack the detail and contrast of the main sensor, but what'due south impressive is how the three cameras capture a like tone.
The tone itself wouldn't be my first selection, however. Like the Vivo X60 Pro, the iQOO vii Legend has a habit of punching up colours a little too much, making some of the landscape shots I took look a little likewise vibrant on these chilly autumnal days.
Too similar to the Vivo X60 Pro, the iQOO 7 Fable has a habit of over-brightening dark scenes so that they look slightly imitation. It's nice to have clear and crisp night-time shots, but it gets to the point where the murky, noisy non-Night mode shots oftentimes conveyed the essence of the scenes better.
The sixteen-megapixel selfie camera takes reasonably sharp, balanced shots in good lighting.
Performance
- Snapdragon 888 plenty fast
- Advanced cooling system
- Busy Funtouch UI
Qualcomm's Snapdragon 888 chip powers the iQOO vii Legend, like a good 2021 Android flagship. Backed past 8 or 12GB of RAM (my test model has 12GB), also as 3GB of virtual RAM on pinnacle of that, it will eat mutual apps and multi-tasking for breakfast, while games run at almost total pelt.
This isn't the fastest chip on the Android cake, even before the class of 2022 start to accept over. Committed gamers will desire the Asus ROG Phone 5S Pro or the Nubia Redmagic 6S Pro with their Snapdragon 888+ chips – although it's only a small clock bump in reality.
Nosotros'd claiming you lot to make up one's mind the difference. The CPU-focused Geekbench 5 scores are nigh-on identical, with a strong multi-core score of 3723 and a single-cadre score of 1137.
That's reflected in a generally smooth, hitch-free experience when navigating through the iQOO seven Legend's custom accept on Android eleven, Funtouch Os. This is the same UI that we saw on the Vivo X60 Pro and other Vivo phones, and many of the aforementioned observations and criticisms utilize.
The UI itself is clean and fluid, Google Feed is where information technology should exist to the left of the homescreen, and I even like the default wallpaper. Nonetheless, it'due south packed full of bloatware, including a Themes store, a custom Music app, and tertiary-party installations from the likes of Facebook and Snapchat.
There'south also a bunch of what appear to be region-specific apps such every bit Flipkart and PhonePe and Moj. These clearly wouldn't brand their way into a Great britain model, so I'll exit my comments on their inclusion there.
I also didn't observe Vivo's ain V-Store being quite as pushy every bit in previous Vivo phones, which is a bonus.
The iQOO seven Legend isn't a gaming phone as such, but iQOO however makes claims for the "Ultra gaming experience" its handset can provide. Nosotros've discussed the pressure level-sensitive display already, merely the manufacturer also boasts near "4D Game Vibration with Dual Linear Motor". In other words, the iQOO 7 Legend has decent haptics.
Another gaming-friendly feature is the provision of a big 4096mm² vapour chamber liquid-cooling system, which is always a handy thing to have to hand when yous're stretching that processor and GPU for an 60 minutes or more at a fourth dimension. Sure plenty, the phone never became uncomfortably hot during gaming sessions.
Nonetheless, it did become uncomfortably hot during my 3rd sequent 3DMark Wildlife Stress Test, which we like to employ to test bombardment life under more than intense scenarios (more on which in a moment). Indeed, the phone close the app down before completing this third test, so toasty had things become.
This is the but time I noticed such a thing happening, so I'm willing to requite iQOO the benefit of the doubt on this one. Information technology's worth noting, though.
Battery Life
- 4000mAh bombardment seems pocket-size
- Decent stamina in general utilise regardless
- 66W charger bundled in
The iQOO 7 Legend runs on a 4000mAh bombardment, which is worryingly small by 2021 flagship standards, and positively minuscule if you're treating this every bit a gaming telephone.
I was worried nigh the phone'south stamina from the off, but I found myself pleasantly surprised. It's far from outstanding, only a 12-hr day with three hours of screen-on time – what I'd telephone call a light-to-moderate mean solar day of use – left me with a comfortable 50% in the tank.
Equally mentioned in the previous section, I was unable to consummate the intensive use battery examination to which we like to subject phones. This involves running 3DMark'southward Wildlife Stress Exam 3 times in a row and seeing how much of the total charge this consumes, but the iQOO 7 Legend overheated one-half way through the last run.
I was able to complete the more traditional PCMark Work 3.0 battery examination, notwithstanding, which models mixed real-earth usage through a loop of tasks such as web browsing, photo editing, and document tweaking. A score of 8hrs 32mins is reasonable, falling somewhere between the OnePlus 9 (with its 4500mAh battery) and the Samsung Galaxy S21 (with its 4000mAh bombardment).
Nonetheless, neither of those phones has been positioned every bit a gaming phone, which the iQOO 7 Legend at least partially has. If nosotros're comparing the iQOO 7 Fable to the Asus ROG Phone 5S Pro and the Lenovo Legion Duel 2, with their 6000mAh(ish) batteries and fan-based cooling systems, the stamina comes up well short for those protracted gaming sessions.
At least the charging is nice and rapid. The iQOO 7 Legend comes with a 66W fast charger, which will become y'all from 0 to 50% in xx minutes, and from 0 to 100% in 42 minutes. That really isn't quite as fast as I was expecting given the size of the battery, but it's still appreciably nippy.
There'south no wireless charging, which further indicates that nosotros're not quite dealing with a flat-out flagship telephone.
Should you buy it?
You're after a gaming phone without the tack Gaming phones tend to be rather unwieldy to apply, if not downright embarrassing. The iQOO 7 Legend offers several gamer-friendly features and top-notch performance, but it never forgets it'southward a phone first and foremost.
Y'all're afterward a phone with strong legacy support At the fourth dimension of writing, nosotros don't know virtually iQOO'south plans for a global launch, just that it seems to be testing the waters. Every bit such, Western users simply tin't hang their lid on the iQOO 7 Legend like other more established brands when it comes to ongoing support.
Last Thoughts
The iQOO vii Legend is a phone with genuine gaming capabilities, but without the tiresome 'gamer' artful and glaring compromises such a device usually entails. Performance is first-class, its display is bright and responsive, and gamers will capeesh piffling touches such as a pressure-sensitive screen and advanced cooling.
Information technology isn't a pure gaming phone, though. How else to explain the slightly weedy 4000mAh bombardment? We tin't think of many gaming phones that take such a competent all-round camera arrangement, either.
Nosotros accept to urge a certain amount of caution attributable to the lack of solid details surrounding a Western release. But if y'all see an iQOO 7 Legend for a skillful price in your local market, you tin buy with the confidence that you're getting a potent phone with a playful edge.
How nosotros examination
We exam every mobile phone we review thoroughly. We use manufacture standard tests to compare features properly and we use the phone equally our main device over the review menses. Nosotros'll e'er tell you what we find and we never, ever, accept money to review a product.
Used the telephone for one week
Tested a variety of camera modes
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FAQs
How proficient is the battery life?
Despite existence pocket-sized, the 4000mAh battery will become yous through a total day.
Is this phone 5G?
Yeah, the phone supports 5G.
What software does it run?
Android eleven with Vivo'south Funtouch 11.1 UI.
Trusted Reviews test data
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Geekbench 5 single core
Geekbench 5 multi core
sRGB
Adobe RGB
DCI-P3
Max brightness
1 60 minutes video playback (Netflix, HDR)
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Total specs
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UK RRP
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Rear Photographic camera
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Video Recording
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Fast Charging
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Source: https://www.trustedreviews.com/reviews/iqoo-7-legend
Posted by: merkelhigend.blogspot.com
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