iQoo has finally brought its Neo series to India with the launch of the Neo 6. Interestingly, this smartphone has already been launched in China as the iQoo Neo 6 SE. The iQoo Neo 6 features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 SoC with liquid cooling, a 120Hz AMOLED display, a 4,700mAh battery, and 80W fast charging. It seems that iQoo has aimed this smartphone at gamers, but the specs should also appeal to those looking for good all-round performance.
The iQoo Neo 6 is positioned in the sub-Rs. 30,000 price range that puts it against the Xiaomi MI 11X, OnePlus Nord 2, and the Motorola Edge 30. Here are my first impressions of it.
The iQoo Neo 6 is priced from Rs. 29,999 in India for the base variant with 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage. The other variant has 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage and costs Rs. 33,999. iQoo offers the Neo 6 in two colors, Cyber Rage, and Dark Nova.
This is the first smartphone in the Neo series to be launched in India, allowing the company to set the tone for what buyers can expect from future models. As I mentioned at the outset, the iQoo Neo 6 is a rebranded iQoo Neo 6 SE, and this may have been a conscious decision by the company to keep the Neo series starting price relatively low in India to accommodate a wider audience.
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The iQoo Neo 6’s Dark Nova color option has a gradient finish
iQoo relies heavily on performance with the Neo 6 and includes some premium hardware. The iQoo Neo 6 is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 SoC, which is clocked at 3.2GHz. This SoC is quite capable and is also seen in the similarly priced Xiaomi Mi 11X. Interestingly, the Neo 6 variant sold in China has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC.
The housing of the iQoo Neo 6 is mainly made of plastic and weighs 190 grams. It’s not too bulky, and the curved sides make it relatively easy to hold. This phone has a 6.62-inch full-HD+ AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate and a top opening for the 16-megapixel selfie camera. The screen has quite thin bezels but a slightly thicker chin. It supports an HDR10+ display and has a peak brightness of 1,300 nits. You also get an in-display fingerprint scanner. The panel used for the iQoo Neo 6 has a sampling rate of 360 Hz but can go up to 1,200 Hz in certain games such as Call of Duty: Mobile.
iQoo has added an infrared emitter to the Neo 6
iQoo has placed an infrared (IR) transmitter on top of the Neo 6, next to the secondary microphone. There’s a SIM tray on the bottom, along with the primary microphone, speaker, and USB Type-C port. The sides of the frame are slim; the power and volume buttons are on the right side. The iQoo Neo 6 has a triple camera setup on the back consisting of a 64-megapixel primary camera with optical stabilization (OIS), an 8-megapixel ultra wide-angle camera, and a 2-megapixel macro camera. The module has a two-step design and features a Neo logo. My Dark Nova unit had a gradient pattern on the back that changed color depending on the angle I saw.
The iQoo Neo 6 has a battery of 4,700 mAh and supports fast charging of 80 W. iQoo bundles the necessary charger in the box. This phone supports Bluetooth 5.2, dual-band Wi-Fi, four 5G bands, and 4G VoLTE. You get two nano-SIM slots, but the storage is not expandable. If you tend to store much of your data locally, I recommend looking at the higher storage variant.
The triple camera module has a Neo logo on it.
Regarding software, the iQoo Neo 6 Funtouch OS 12 runs on top of Android 12. iQoo has committed to providing two years of Android OS updates and three years of security updates, which is a welcome move. My device was running the April 2022 Android security patch. The UI has a lot of bloatware pre-installed, but you should be able to uninstall most of it to reclaim storage space. The user interface is identical to what you see on other recent Vivo smartphones and is easy to use.
The iQoo Neo 6 sets the tone for future smartphones in the Neo range. It faces some pretty stiff competition but has the potential to hold its own. This smartphone should appeal to gamers and power users, but we’ll know once I’ve put it through our tests, so stay tuned for the full review.
