iQOO 11 review

Android 13 and Funtouch 13 on our international unit

The iQOO 11 runs Android 13 with a proprietary layer on top, which varies depending on where you are in the world. The China-bound version is called Origin OS, while we get the 'international' Funtouch OS - v13, to be specific.

Our latest run-ins with Funtouch were with the 12 version on the vivo V25/X80 Lite and the iQOO 9T, and this new iteration isn't at all different in look and feel. And it's a pretty customized and customizable experience.

Lockscreen • Homescreen • Folder view • Settings menu

One of the useful proprietary features can be found in the recent apps menu. You can choose between the standard carousel formation and a horizontal tiles layout - sort of like MIUI, only scrollable horizontally. The setting is available right then and there - you don't need to look for it in the menus.

The notification shade is pretty familiar, and Funtouch is staying away from Google's large bubble-style quick toggles - it's simple circular buttons here. The default accent color here is blue and can be controlled via the Android 12 AOSP color palette interface. A powerful theming engine is still present.

The app drawer has an expandable recommended apps category on the top (most commonly used ones), whereas using the vertical scroller on the right would highlight the apps beginning with the selected letter.

Recent apps • Recent apps • Notification shade • Quick toggles • App drawer

The rest of the UI has plenty of non-stock bits. In the Dynamic effects sub-menu, vivo has grouped a bunch of customization options for the home screen, lock screen and animation effects. There are even various charging and facial recognition animations.

Dynamic effects

The always-on display settings are in a different sub-menu, but the phone still gives you plenty of options to tinker with - a wide selection of animations, clock styles, colors, backgrounds.

Always-on display

The Sound menu holds a few pleasant surprises. Just like Samsung and its OneUI, Funtouch takes care of people with hearing problems, and you can calibrate the sound to be heard by elderly people or those with impaired hearing. Additionally, notifications and calls get separate volume sliders. The vibration intensity can be adjusted for calls and notifications independently. No system-wide equalizer is available for the loudspeaker, though, which could be either a negative or a positive, depending on how you look at it. An Audio Super Resolution toggle is thrown into the mix.

Sound options

The Smart motion menu holds a handful of familiar screen-on and screen-off gestures along with some new additions. One of those requires you to wave in front of the screen during an incoming call to answer hands-free - useful if you're cooking, for example.

Smart motion menu

Holding the volume down key can be used to launch an app or do a certain task, although the list is limited to the camera app, turning on/off the torch or starting recording audio and opening Facebook for some odd reason. The so-called Quick action feature doesn't work when playing music for obvious reasons. Why isn't there a double-press option for Quick action, though?

Shortcuts and accessibility • Quick action • S-capture • Screen-split • Easy Touch

A dedicated Ultra Game Mode is available, and it has it all. Most of the features are about mitigating disturbance during gameplay or preventing certain apps from displaying notifications. One of the most intriguing features that have been around on vivo phones for a while is the ability to turn off the screen and keep the game running in the background. Especially useful for turn-based games or those requiring some sort of "farming" and "grinding".

Ultra Game mode

Having all of these customizable gestures, actions and additional features around is cool, but we can't help but wish that Funtouch would have done a better job of organizing them - and that's been a recurring complaint. As things currently stand, it is hard to find certain options, even when you know for a fact that they exist and consequently, discovering new things is even harder.

Performance and benchmarks

The iQOO 11 is the first handset to come into our office with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 - what's going to be the definitive chipset for high-end Android smartphones for at least the next six months. We went into more detail on the generational improvements on the announcement date, but the key takeaways are 35% higher performance and 40% improved efficiency of the CPU thanks in no small part to a reworked core configuration (1+2+2+3 in place of the 1+3+4 of before), 25% and 45% performance and efficiency bumps on the GPU side, and support for new, faster memory technologies (LPDDR5X and UFS 4.0).

There's also the in-house V2 chip, developed by iQOO's parent company vivo, which kicks in for night-time photos and video, but is also at play in gaming applications.

We decided to start things off in the benchmark section with some storage speed testing to check out how that UFS 4.0 standard compares to the UFS 3.1 of yesteryear's flagships. So, the numbers show that if you do a lot of sequential read or write tasks on your phone (everyone is a content creator in 2022), you'll see massive benefits from the new type of storage indeed. Random write speeds also get a noticeable bump, and that should be felt across more types of use cases than just moving large video files.

Androbench, Sequential Read, MB/s

Higher is better

• iQOO 11
  3469
• vivo X80 Pro
  1779
• Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra
  1753
• Google Pixel 7 Pro
  1358

Androbench, Sequential Write, MB/s

Higher is better

• iQOO 11
  2680
• vivo X80 Pro
  1405
• Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra
  1323
• Google Pixel 7 Pro
  754

Androbench, Random Read, MB/s

Higher is better

• iQOO 11
  330
• Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra
  320
• vivo X80 Pro
  312
• Google Pixel 7 Pro
  182

Androbench, Random Write, MB/s

Higher is better

• iQOO 11
  466
• vivo X80 Pro
  370
• Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra
  270
• Google Pixel 7 Pro
  222

And now, back to our regular scheduled programming. Or, rather, the standard set of benchmarks. The SD 8 Gen 2's advantage over the previous gen is already evident in the CPU-only Geekbench, where even the overachieving Zenfone 9 (SD 8+ Gen 1) is a good 10% behind, while other SD 8+ Gen devices are typically scoring 15-20% below the iQOO.

GeekBench 5 (single-core)

Higher is better

• iQOO 11
  1479
• Realme GT2 Explorer Master
  1336
• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  1324
• Asus Zenfone 9
  1313
• Huawei Mate 50 Pro
  1277
• iQOO 9T
  1276
• Motorola Edge 30 Ultra
  1276
• Tecno Pahntom X2 Pro
  1248
• Xiaomi 12T Pro
  1238
• Realme GT2 Pro
  1238
• vivo X80 Pro
  1184
• Galaxy S22+
  1165
• OnePlus 10T
  1043
• ROG Phone 6D
  1015
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  975
• Xiaomi 12T
  925

GeekBench 5 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• iQOO 11
  4803
• Asus Zenfone 9
  4338
• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  4300
• Motorola Edge 30 Ultra
  4265
• Xiaomi 12T Pro
  4081
• iQOO 9T
  4059
• Realme GT2 Explorer Master
  4021
• Tecno Pahntom X2 Pro
  3984
• Huawei Mate 50 Pro
  3839
• Xiaomi 12T
  3756
• ROG Phone 6D
  3531
• Galaxy S22+
  3528
• vivo X80 Pro
  3505
• Realme GT2 Pro
  3501
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  3447
• OnePlus 10T
  3401

The margins in Antutu, in turn, are 18-25% in favor of the newer chip.

AnTuTu 9

Higher is better

• iQOO 11
  1281665
• Asus Zenfone 9
  1083092
• Motorola Edge 30 Ultra
  1074722
• iQOO 9T
  1045901
• Realme GT2 Explorer Master
  1045876
• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  1039412
• Xiaomi 12T Pro
  1032185
• vivo X80 Pro
  1002570
• Huawei Mate 50 Pro
  979921
• Realme GT2 Pro
  966251
• Tecno Pahntom X2 Pro
  961576
• ROG Phone 6D
  948594
• Galaxy S22+
  886916
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  886248
• OnePlus 10T
  786238
• Xiaomi 12T
  780204

In onscreen graphics benchmarks, the iQOO 11's fps numbers are hampered by its 1440p resolution if you compare it against 1080p-screened rivals with the old silicon. Comparisons against 1440p models with the previous-gen chip, on the other hand, do reveal a significant improvement - to the tune of a 40% higher fps count. Should you choose to run the iQOO 11 at the 1080p display setting, you'll be getting substantial gains in performance.

GFX Aztek ES 3.1 High (onscreen)

Higher is better

• iQOO 11 (1080p)
  89
• Asus Zenfone 9
  67
• iQOO 9T
  65
• Motorola Edge 30 Ultra
  65
• ROG Phone 6D
  61
• OnePlus 10T
  60
• Realme GT2 Explorer Master
  59
• Tecno Pahntom X2 Pro
  59
• iQOO 11
  54
• Huawei Mate 50 Pro
  52
• Xiaomi 12T Pro
  50
• Galaxy S22+
  50
• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  38
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  37
• Realme GT2 Pro
  36
• vivo X80 Pro
  34

GFX Aztek Vulkan High (onscreen)

Higher is better

• iQOO 11 (1080p)
  91
• Asus Zenfone 9
  69
• iQOO 9T
  67
• ROG Phone 6D
  64
• Motorola Edge 30 Ultra
  62
• Tecno Pahntom X2 Pro
  62
• OnePlus 10T
  60
• Realme GT2 Explorer Master
  59
• Xiaomi 12T Pro
  58
• iQOO 11
  55
• Huawei Mate 50 Pro
  55
• Galaxy S22+
  51
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  41
• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  39
• Realme GT2 Pro
  39
• vivo X80 Pro
  34

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (onscreen)

Higher is better

• iQOO 11 (1080p)
  110
• Asus Zenfone 9
  89
• iQOO 9T
  87
• Motorola Edge 30 Ultra
  73
• Tecno Pahntom X2 Pro
  71
• ROG Phone 6D
  71
• Huawei Mate 50 Pro
  68
• Galaxy S22+
  68
• iQOO 11
  67
• Xiaomi 12T Pro
  65
• OnePlus 10T
  60
• Realme GT2 Explorer Master
  60
• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  51
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  48
• Realme GT2 Pro
  48
• vivo X80 Pro
  44

Turning to the offscreen tests for the raw performance comparisons, we're seeing the iQOO 11 back to its position in a league of its own. Well, at least until the rest of the SD 8 Gen 2s start pouring in.

GFX Aztek ES 3.1 High (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• iQOO 11
  62
• iQOO 9T
  46
• OnePlus 10T
  46
• Realme GT2 Explorer Master
  46
• Asus Zenfone 9
  46
• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  46
• Huawei Mate 50 Pro
  45
• Xiaomi 12T Pro
  45
• Motorola Edge 30 Ultra
  43
• ROG Phone 6D
  43
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  43
• Tecno Pahntom X2 Pro
  42
• Realme GT2 Pro
  42
• vivo X80 Pro
  41
• Galaxy S22+
  31

GFX Aztek Vulkan High (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• iQOO 11
  69
• iQOO 9T
  52
• Asus Zenfone 9
  52
• Huawei Mate 50 Pro
  51
• OnePlus 10T
  51
• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  51
• Xiaomi 12T Pro
  50
• Realme GT2 Explorer Master
  50
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  48
• ROG Phone 6D
  46
• Realme GT2 Pro
  46
• Tecno Pahntom X2 Pro
  44
• Motorola Edge 30 Ultra
  43
• vivo X80 Pro
  37
• Galaxy S22+
  34

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (offscreen 1080p)

Higher is better

• iQOO 11
  128
• Asus Zenfone 9
  104
• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  104
• iQOO 9T
  103
• OnePlus 10T
  103
• Realme GT2 Explorer Master
  103
• Huawei Mate 50 Pro
  101
• Xiaomi 12T Pro
  100
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  97
• Realme GT2 Pro
  95
• Motorola Edge 30 Ultra
  93
• vivo X80 Pro
  90
• ROG Phone 6D
  84
• Tecno Pahntom X2 Pro
  82
• Galaxy S22+
  76

3DMark Wild Life Vulkan 1.1 (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• iQOO 11
  12738
• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  10533
• Asus Zenfone 9
  10469
• Huawei Mate 50 Pro
  10468
• Motorola Edge 30 Ultra
  10248
• vivo X80 Pro
  9778
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  9610
• Realme GT2 Pro
  9487
• ROG Phone 6D
  8666
• Tecno Pahntom X2 Pro
  7499
• Galaxy S22+
  7405

3DMark Wild Life Extreme (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• iQOO 11
  3514
• Huawei Mate 50 Pro
  2753
• Xiaomi 12T Pro
  2740
• ROG Phone 6D
  2555
• Tecno Pahntom X2 Pro
  2393

Naturally, sustained performance isn't amazing on these top-end chips, but the iQOO 11 still manages a very respectable showing in the CPU throttling test, where it ramps down gradually and settles around the 80% mark. Continued GPU load does have a more dramatic effect on the numbers, however - again, nothing out of the ordinary.

CPU Throttling test • 3D Mark Wild life stress test