iQOO 13 was launched today in India, bringing the brand’s iconic performance at a competitive price. Although iQOO 13 brings a host of upgrades over iQOO 12, according to the brand, it is more than a successor. The iQOO 13 is the brand’s first flagship smartphone to get a tamper protection rating, and it is among the first in the country to sport Qualcomm’s high-end Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC. The list of upgrades is long, and to walk us through the product and give us detailed information, Gadgets 360 spoke to Nipun Marya, CEO of iQOO, ahead of the launch.
iQOO 12 and beyond
The iQOO 12 was a great product and it won industry accolades, including the title of Best Gaming Smartphone in our NDTV Gadgets 360 2024 Awards. We wanted to understand what consumers should expect from the all-new iQOO 12 smartphone. ‘iQOO. Marya explained: “From iQOO, we will continue to do some of the things that we have been doing, and they will remain constant. And, of course, we will continue to improve certain things. As far as things go, we won’t change – our DNA. , which is a hardcore performance. We want to stay true to what we say and believe that with iQOO 13 we are really increasing performance by several levels. Things like the Snapdragon 8 Elite and the Q2 chip, among others, are the first things to do so. should not change and does not change with iQOO 13. Second, constant innovation and improvements. We want to be very close to our community and our consumers. We love to receive their feedback on what they think of the product and our consumers. which can still be improved.”
iQOO 12 launched in 2023
Briefly touching on the offline expansion, Marya said that the iQOO 13 launch will contain more details and added that this is feedback that the brand has been receiving from its consumers for a long time. Gadgets 360 was the first to report that iQOO would finally foray into the offline market starting this December. iQOO phones will be available through Vivo exclusive stores and other retail channels.
During the conversation, Marya also confirmed that the iQOO community has reached another goal of 2 million members. iQOO is one of a handful of phone makers with an active community.
CEO Nipun Marya at the launch of iQOO 13
What’s new in iQOO 13?
iQOO 12 was among the few products on Amazon that received a 4.5-star rating from consumers. Still, if you have to nitpick and see how you can improve, there are some areas where people could have told you to improve more. Marya added: “Things like IP rating, so with the iQOO 13 we included IP rating and then USB 3.2 because content creation and live streaming is gaining a lot of popularity among our consumers, so USB 3.2 was something we wanted. add, and it is now part of iQOO 13. The other thing is even software, last year for the first time we came up with 3+4 software update policy this year we are taking a head start; and offering 4+5 for iQOO 13. Talking about innovation, this will come with the world’s first Q10 2K with up to 144Hz LTPO AMOLED display. So overall the aim is to offer your consumers a holistic user experience.
iQOO has always pushed its flagship phones to be all-rounders that aren’t limited to gaming or performance. What would you like to add here? “With iQOO 12, we were talking about an AnTuTu score of 2 million, which at the time was considered excellent. Now we’re talking about an AnTuTu score of 3 million, which was certainly unheard of before. You See, it’s not just hardware and many Sometimes we can’t just say that 8 Elite SoCs did the job. It’s the right combination of what Qualcomm did and what R&D. What iQOO has done is take the power of the chipset and optimize it to deliver the best performance to your users. And that’s what we’re very proud of, because it simply does. not about installing the chip or getting the fastest chip, but it’s about how you optimize with the software to make the experience really good and fast,” Marya said.
He added, “For gamers, iQOO becomes the first choice, not only for gamers but also for people who perform heavy graphics tasks and heavy files on their devices. Recently I met a few IT professionals, and they told me that they are sure they need to run some code or do some compilation work and for that they need heavy calculations, and iQOO can really do it for them. These kinds of people are therefore experienced users who favor technology. like iQOO therefore, in performance, there are 8 Elite in iQOO 13, but we do not stop at 8 Elite SoC because we also have the Q2 chip, which extrapolates or with game-frame interpolation, we go to 144 Hz c It’s still a very good experience and not only this, with VC cooling you also get a holistic high performance experience.
iQOO 13 comes with an all-new Halo lighting design around the camera
What’s new in terms of design and camera?
The iQOO 12 has been praised for its design, so what do consumers get on the iQOO 13? Marya, about the design, said: “People really liked the design of the iQOO 12 and in many ways, aesthetically, it’s one of the best-designed phones we’ve ever made. So we continued the good part of the iQOO 12, but there were some minor adjustments or improvements that we thought we could make. For example, the camera bump has been further reduced and the overall grip is much better now. Thus, the Halo light is much more obvious and aesthetic, we can easily notice it; but there are little more subtle differences when a user starts using it, and you can really feel it.”
When asked about the camera improvements of the iQOO 13, Marya said: “On the front of the camera, we have the Sony IMX921 sensor, which is tuned with VCS, which is the science algorithm colors from Vivo. camera and insert it into iQOO, especially the software. So overall, whether you’re talking about daytime images, the 8 Elite’s ISP is much more powerful than previous generations. So, again, it’s not just the chip or the chip. camera sensor. All the machinery works to produce the result to come. So whether you are looking for portrait, day, night or travel photos, iQOO 13 will do justice to the images you want. Additionally, good AI features are available. were suggested again by our consumers, so we added them as well.
When will AI become a differentiator for consumers?
AI is the new buzzword, and this year we don’t expect a product presentation at launches to end without a few slides of these AI additions. Marya walked us through some AI features that are part of the iQOO 13. Features like AI photo Enhancer, where AI automatically optimizes photo settings, improving clarity and color without the need for manual adjustments Cutouts, which allows users to extract text from any image, and Instant Text, where users can easily extract a subject from an image and separate it from its background. iQOO 13 also joins the club of phones with Circle to search this year, finally. Then there is Like Transcribe, which can convert speech to text. The feature would support over 80 languages and dialects, with 9 offline languages. Finally, there is Live Call Translate, which translates phone calls in real time right on the device.
Next, we wanted to understand that smartphones have AI capabilities, but are they enough to convince consumers to switch? Marya explained: “I have a slightly contrarian view on AI. Firstly, AI is not new and has become a marketing buzzword in 2024. It’s just that OEMs started using it as a marketing lever and tried to exploit it. Consumers might think this is new, but fundamentally the improvement we’ve seen in cameras over the past few years can be attributed to AI. Then the improvement in gaming or cooling systems that we see on phones can also be attributed to AI. . So, AI has been running in the background on our phones for some time; it’s just that the whole world has become accustomed to AI. So, in smartphone marketing, it has also been exploited accordingly. »
However, the next question is whether it improves the overall experience, and the answer is yes, according to Marya. “However, I think they will continue to improve the overall experience in the long term, when people start buying phones to experiment with AI. Right now, it can do some nifty tricks, so I don’t “I don’t think it’s fundamentally strong for that long because it’s just a trap at the moment, it’s like a low-hanging fruit that brands are trying to exploit,” he added.
iQOO 13 comes with IP68 and IP69 ratings
2025 is the 5th year of iQOO in India: what to expect?
2025 will be iQOO’s fifth year in India; What has been the response to the overall products and what should consumers expect from the brand? Marya began: “In general, the response we have received for products above ASP (average selling price) has been encouraging. The industry ASP is around $20,000, whether you’re talking about our Z9s Pro, which was around $20,000-25,000, or our Neo. series, which is 30K, or our flagship at 50K. All are above the industry ASP, and for a brand as young as ours, the type of response we have received for these products is very encouraging. This means people understand what iQOO does.
It is also true that everyone is interested in the idea of higher ASPs, but seeing this trend, the fact that people accept us with higher ASPs and, in fact, make us bestsellers in many cases I think it’s very encouraging.
Regarding the manufacturing and after-sales service of the iQOO 13, Marya said that like other products from iQOO, the all-new iQOO 13 is manufactured at Vivo’s Greater Noida factory. Talking about the after-sales service, he said that it provides access to over 670 company-owned service centers across the country, ensuring convenient and reliable support across the country.
To recap, the iQOO 13 was launched in India at Rs. 9,999. 54,999 for the 12 GB RAM and 256 GB storage and Rs. 999. 59,999 for the 16 GB RAM and 512 GB storage.