Hi, I am Aryan Gupta, a 23-year old student from Delhi. Some of you may know me from Twitter (as SavageAryan007).

I have decided to create a first post on the iQOO Community to test the waters, and what better device to talk than the Neo 10!

This is more of a summary of my full review of the iQOO Neo 10, which I posted on Twitter a few weeks ago (Full review)

✅ THE GOOD:

🏎️ STRONGEST PERFORMANCE in its price class so far, incredible for gaming. I love how this phone just goes on and on in heavy games like Genshin Impact and Wuthering Waves without a hint of heavy throttling, even when the phone's temperature rises.

🔋INSANE BATTERY LIFE. For my unit, I have gotten no less than 12 hrs of SoT on normal usage, and 8 hrs of SoT with heavy Genshin Impact gaming. 

⚡I LOVE THE CHARGER. Not only does it fill up the phone in less than 50 minutes (which is crazy fast for a 7000 mAh battery), the fact that it also supports 65W PD has been a godsend for me.

🔊 The speakers are quite loud and clear, but they also come with caveats of their own. I'm not a fan of the 300% volume mode as it adds a lot of distortion. But 70% to 100% volume is actually quite good!

🖥️ The DISPLAY IS EXCELLENT: well-tuned with natural color calibration. Supports Netflix HDR which is great.

The default PWM is well-tuned, so you may not even need to enable the 3840 Hz PWM setting via Developer options. Also, the 2000 nits HBM of this phone's display is actually noticeable against some of my other phones.

🫡 The design stands out a lot against other performance-centric phones at this price, which all overuse the vertical camera design. The ring flash accentuates it a lot, and my Titanium Chrome colorway looks simple yet elegant.

My personal preference is the Inferno Red, though. 

📸 I have tested a lot of phones with the IMX882 sensor on my Twitter account, but I'm confident in saying that this is the most well-tuned iteration of the sensor that I've seen till date. 

Typical iQOO oversaturated color science, but retains a lot of details in the shadows. The exposure and HDR are better than some earlier iQOO phones, and the night shots aren't too half bad.

🤌 The software (FuntouchOS 15) has a lot of new features: Lockscreen customisations have been massively expanded, there are new animations sprinkled around, the app drawer can be customised. The notifications now have blur which looks very modern.

🔥 Apart from these, the software is also extremely bug-free, and very stable on this device. The animations are smooth, everything just flies. Have received three updates since the launch which is nice.

🔗 You finally get NFC, which I know we've been feedbacking iQOO to add for a very long time, and I'm glad it's here on atleast the higher-end iQOO Neo devices. 

I hope the Neo 10R's successor next year also gets NFC.

👍 Haptics are good and precise for the price, just that FuntouchOS needs to implement better support in the UI for haptics feedback in the future.

🤖 This phone has all the essential AI features without going overboard: Notes app, Circle-To-Search, the AI Eraser and the new AI Image Expansion. Looks great, works great!

❌ WHAT COULD BE BETTER:

👎 The Build Quality is NOT THE BEST. While the plastic quality here feels sturdier than the iQOO Neo 10R that came before, I feel the brand needs to implement better materials next year. Plastic is still plastic, and this segment has many competitors with better builds.

Still, it helps to keep the weight lower at 208 grams, and helps to prevent extremely hot surface temperatures when gaming, so, I guess it's more of a tradeoff.

📷 While the main camera sensor is well-tuned, the OTHER SENSORS ARE AVERAGE: Selfies and Ultrawide. The selfies, except for ideal conditions, are largely disappointing despite the 32 MP sensor. I hope the next generation has a wider focal length for selfies: 28 mm is too narrow.

🎥 Video recording has the usual boosted saturation, but the bigger issue is EIS jitter. While it has been improved with newer updates and fixed in the Ultra Stabilisation mode, it is not great for Standard Stabilisation mode. 

I hope this can be fixed further with OTAs.

🔊 The speakers, while loud and immersive which many people prefer, lack the bass and depth seen on speakers of some of the competition.

🤧 Inconsistent Proximity Sensor. Since it is a virtual sensor and not physical, I've had a few instances where the phone was turned on in my pocket because the Pocket mode failed to trigger. However, it gave me no issues when taking calls.

😐 There are still a lot of places where FuntouchOS NEEDS TO REDESIGN: Control panel & notifications panel (please bring back the old notifications spacing from FuntouchOS 14), fixing the issues with Third-party widgets (shape and spacing) on the homescreen, a better Sans font for the UI, allowing us to disable V-Appstore and Browser completely like some other skins.

I hope atleast some of these changes are added soon with the Android 16 update.

✨ VERDICT:

Despite its issues, the iQOO Neo 10's optimisation stands out: great performance, smooth experience, insane battery life and a well-tuned main sensor.

If you are fine with FuntouchOS in its current state, this phone receives my recommendation, easily.

Thanks for reading till the end, hope this helped people here make a purchase decision.