iqoo-z1-5g-phone-review-d

iQOO Z1 5G Phone Review – Just How Good Is a Dimensity 1000 Plus Phone?

The great Chinese company Vivo a couple of years ago introduced fans to a line of iQOO smartphones with a focus on gaming. In many ways, the series has become similar to what the Xiaomi Pocophone phone line offers, however, the range Vivo offers its users is wider, more interesting, and more diverse. The hero of this review offers excellent functionality at a reasonable price, however the choice of technical specifications by a manufacturer may surprise several users. Today we are going to introduce and explain all the features found on the outside and inside of the iQOO Z1, and we hope you will stay with us throughout this new iQOO Z1 5G Phone Review!

Just How Good Is a Dimensity 1000 Plus Phone?

iQOO Z1 5G Phone Review – Is It The Best Performance Phone Out There?

iQOO Z1 5G Phone Review – Specification Sheet

iQOO Z1
Screen
LCD IPS 6,57" Full HD+
2.400 x 1080 px, 20:9
144 Hz, HDR10
ProcessorMediaTek Dimensity 1000+
GPUMali G77
RAM6 / 8 GB
ROM128 / 256 GB UFS 3.1
Rear camera48 MP, f / 1.79
8 MP, f / 2.2 wide angle
2 MP, f / 2.4 macro
Frontal camera16 MP, f/2.0
Operating system
Android 10, IQOO UI
Battery4,500 mAh, 44W Fast Charge
Connectivity5G SA/NSA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, USB-C, Minijack

iQOO Z1 5G Phone Review – Design & Display

Before we talk about the specs of this phone, let’s talk about its design, because while its internal features are of utmost importance, many people decide which phone to buy based on the way it looks. The iQOO Z1 features a body that has an aspect ratio of 20:9, a screen-to-body ratio of 84.22% and some dimensions of 163.71 x 75.55 x 8.93mm, which is also available in three colors: Star Silver, Space Blue, and Symphony Meteor. This new smartphone uses a vertical three-camera arrangement, and the entire camera module is placed in the “matrix” in the upper left corner, that while it is not new to the phone market, it is a great touch.

As just said, this Vivo phone uses an LCD screen, so the option of unlocking the phone with the fingerprint on the screen is not available, so it uses a capacitive side fingerprint unlock design, and has done a power button and fingerprint unlock two and one design. With that being said, it also reserves a 3.5mm headphone jack for users; this design greatly improves the sound experience during game play.

Going to talk on its display, the iQOO Z1 features a 6.57-inch perforated LCD-type full screen that works in conjunction with a resolution of 2408 x 1080 pixels. The high 144Hz refresh rate it has makes this device particularly outstanding among the same price models; it may be difficult to pursue the 144Hz refresh rate for the company to make the decision to work with an LCD-type display, as it is capable of independently controlling the current of each liquid crystal cell to change the brightness of the red, green, and blue subpixels. Simply put, it is easier to achieve a high refresh rate with an LCD screen than with an AMOLED screen.

All these features working as a whole give this smartphone a great screen performance, which can be seen represented in a great quality of colors, whites, blacks and a great facility to appreciate all the details of videos, images and games.

iQOO Z1 5G Phone Review - Display

iQOO Z1 5G Phone Review – Hardware & Performance

Now, regarding its hardware and performance, process technology directly affects performance and power consumption performance. Advanced process technology is the basis of performance experience and energy efficiency experience, and also the core appeal of the majority of mobile phone users. Most flagship and sub-flag SoCs in 2019 and now in 2020 use 7nm process, and this Vivo phone is next to them. Moving on to your CPU configuration, the iQOO Z1 directly integrates four large Cortex A77 cores and four small Cortex A55 cores with frequencies of 2.6GHz and 2.0GHz respectively. The performance of A77 is 20% higher than that of A76.

Now, In terms of GPU, this phone integrates nine Mali G77 cores, its performance is up to 40% higher than G76, and supports 90-frame chicken eating games and 120-frame racing games. Mali-G77 GPU uses a new architecture Valhall. Prior to this, the Bifrost architecture was used from Mali-G71 to Mali-G76, and an architecture upgrade is imperative. In fact, compared with Qualcomm’s Adreno GPU, ARM Mali’s performance has always been unsatisfactory.

Hardware & Performance

iQOO Z1 5G Phone Review – Benchmarks

In order to better observe the general capabilities and the way in which a smartphone can get to work, it is always a good idea to see the scores that it gets in the different types of Benchmarks, and here we are going to show you its score in the popular AnTuTu, GeekBench and GFXBench.

AnTuTu Benchmark

Being the most popular and most used of them all, and being the most used when looking at the power that any type of telephone has, on AnTuTu version 8.3.6, this Vivo smartphone scored an overall score of 523,137 points, this being a great score for any phone.

iQOO Z1 5G Phone Review - AnTuTu

GeekBench Benchmark

Now, on GeekBench, which is a cross-platform CPU performance test tool that accurately reflects the single-core and multi-core performance of the device’s CPU, the iQOO Z1 can achieve a single-core running score of 770 points and a multi-core running score of 2,910 points in performance mode, and multi-thread performance has been significantly improved.

GeekBench Benchmark

GFXBench Benchmark

Last but not least, on GFXBench, there are six main test items: T-Rex, Manhattan 3.0, Manhattan 3.1, and Car Chase, which correspond to the performance under the OpenGL ES 2.0 / 3.0 / 3.1 / 3.1 standard. There are also newly added Vulkan off-screen of Aztec ruins and OpenGL off-screen of Aztec ruins.

According to ARM, Mali G77 has 30% higher performance and 60% higher machine learning performance than the previous generation. Performance per mm is expected to be 1.4 times higher than A76, and under the same process and the same performance, the new G77 continues to achieve 30% year-on-year energy efficiency improvement, and saves 50% power consumption compared to Mali G72.

iQOO Z1 5G Phone Review – GFXBench

If you want to have a more in-depth understanding of the CPU performance of the MediaTek Dimensity 1000+ on the iQOO Z1, you are welcome to enter the fast technology mobile phone CPU ladder list to view and compare. At present, the fast technology mobile phone CPU ladder list has included the standard scores of most mobile phone CPUs; it can be compared with the score of this test, or compared with the score of own existing equipment, which has a more intuitive understanding.

Ladder list

Also Read: MediaTek Dimensity 1000 vs 1000L vs 1000+ | Specs | AnTuTu Scores | Differences Compared

iQOO Z1 5G Phone Review – Camera & Samples

If there is one feature that we should talk about in relation to this smartphone, it is its cameras, because this is one of the most expected and desired features by users. In this smartphone you can locate a main camera of 48 megapixel with a focal aperture of 1.7 located on the back of the phone, which works together with an 8 megapixel with a focal aperture of 2.2 ultra-wide angle camera and a 2 megapixel with a focal aperture of 2.4 super macro lens, which are capable of capturing of images with HDR backlight, AI eye tracking and other functions that, in short, will be a pleasant surprise for users.

On the other hand, and being located on the front of the phone, this device also has a 16 megapixel with a focal aperture of 2.0 camera specially created and designed for capturing selfies. According to what can be seen, in this camera section, this new phone has the same characteristics that will be seen in the previous iQOO Neo3, although this is not bad news at all, since they are still the son of providing the users images with a very high quality.

iQOO Z1 5G Phone Review – Camera

Having said all that, and due to the fact that what we get is that the early engineered machine, the camera firmware and other aspects still need to be optimized, so here we are going to show you some samples of the way in which that this phone is capable of capturing images.

iQOO Z1 5G Phone Review – Connectivity & Features

Speaking a little bit about the connectivity of this smartphone, it can aggregate two 100MHz carriers to obtain 200MHz bandwidth, thereby becoming the fastest in the world, with a downlink speed of up to 4.7Gbps in the band below 6GHz. Also, the uplink speed is up to 2.5Gbps, and the 5G signal coverage is increased by 30%. It is worth mentioning that China Unicom and China Telecom have already decided to jointly build a shared 3.5GHz 200MHz 5G frequency band that is 3400MHz – 3600MHz. With that said, this phone supports NSA / SA dual-mode, TDD / FDD dual-mode is of course, and it also supports 5G + 5G dual card dual standby, and any combination of NSA + SA, SA + SA.

According to China Information and Communication Research Institute, MediaTek 5G has already completed the indoor and outdoor field test of 2.6 / 3.5GHz NSA / SA. At the same time, the Dimensity 1000+ inside this phone is also a Wi-Fi 6 single chip (supports Bluetooth 5.1), with a download speed of up to 1.2Gbps in 2×2 80MHz 802.11ac mode.

Connectivity

At the same time, iQOO Z1 has added support for more 5G frequency bands, such as N77 and N79, on the basis of conventional 5G frequency bands to achieve full frequency band support for N1 / N3 / N41 / N77 / N78 / N79. It is also equipped with a full range of antenna systems, using five modes: multi-mode antenna, side distributed antenna, intelligent NR multi-antenna switching, HPUE technology and 4X4 MIMO.

However, the 5G network construction of the three major operators is still steadily advancing. When measuring the network speed, because the network stability of different regions, different times, and different operators may be different, the network speed measurement results may be different from what you personally experienced.

iQOO Z1 5G Phone Review – 5G Connectivity

On the other hand, AI has become an indispensable skill for mobile platforms. MediaTek previously launched the NeuroPilot AI platform, which has designed an independent APU (Artificial Intelligence Processing Unit), which can be one or two DSPs, NPU, or other combinations, which is very flexible. After two generations of evolution on the Helio P60 and Helio P90, this smartphone has integrated the third-generation APU 3.0.

For the first time, it uses a combination of two large cores, three small cores, and a micro-core to better cope with different AI computing power requirements and reduce power consumption, and the overall performance is said to be 2.5 times higher than the previous generation, while the power consumption is reduced by 40%. Among them, the micro-core will always be turned on, mainly used for face detection, to improve the ability to capture faces when taking pictures.

NeuroPilot AI Platform

iQOO Z1 5G Phone Review – Battery & OS

Regarding the battery of this device from Vivo, and due to the addition of a 144Hz high refresh rate display and the addition of the 5G baseband, the battery life pressure affecting all 5G mobile phones is not the same as the one affected phones belonging to the era of 4G technology, which is equivalent to something vastly inferior. The battery found inside this phone has a capacity of 4500mAh, and the quality is capable of working in a great way together with the optimization capabilities of the phone.

Although the iQOO Z1 offers the option to adjust the screen refresh rate to 60Hz to improve battery life, the highlight of the device seen in this iQOO Z1 5G Phone Review is the way it works with its screen, and users are rushing to this point too, so an author of the battery life test simulates most users in a use-refresh rate scenario of the smart switch display.

iQOO Z1 5G Phone Review – Battery

The author uses the Bilibili client to play online videos with 70% brightness and 20% volume, starting with 100% battery for 5 hours, with 53% power remaining and 47% power consumption after this time. The said author recommends using the official original 44W flash charger that it comes with to charge the device, and after it’s testing, charging the battery from 0% to 92% takes only 50 minutes, which is quite impressive for a large battery of this capacity.

Charger

As a last feature, we have its operating system, which is Android v10; his new Android version comes with a lot of new features, and we will show them to you. One of the most outstanding and expected news of the new version of Google’s operating system is the native dark mode, this being something that the customization layers already had, and that finally now comes natively. In this way, both Android and the applications that support it adopt that dark theme that allows you to rest your eyes in low light, but also scratch some battery on mobiles with OLED screens.

Another of the improvements of Android 10 is the navigation by gestures. Apple took the lead in this regard with the iPhone X, and Android did not know how to react with its operating system. Other companies have added different gesture navigation options, and now it’s something that comes natively to Android. And it works really well, everything has to be said. It is an intuitive system, with only a few combinations and the most fluid performance.

iQOO Z1 5G Phone Review – OS

Another key to Android 10 is the content sharing bar. Although it does not seem like a big deal, if you spend the day sharing images, videos and links between applications, with other people or sending these contents by mail, it will be very useful. Now, Android 10 makes things easier for us with a list of applications that are rearranged depending on our tastes (the artificial intelligence of Android 10 is supposed to come into play here), and what we use those applications.

Likewise, this version also has Live Caption, which is one of the most important accessibility features of Android 10. It is a feature that allows you to enter subtitles for videos and other audio files that do not have them. Basically, it is a transcription of what is playing and, as we say, can be activated at any time. In the end, it all comes down to an improved user experience.

Android v10

iQOO Z1 vs iQOO Neo 3

iQOO Z1iQOO Neo 3
Screen
LCD IPS 6,57" Full HD+
2.400 x 1080 px, 20:9
144 Hz, HDR10
IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
ProcessorMediaTek Dimensity 1000+Qualcomm Snapdragon 865
GPUMali G77Adreno 650
RAM6GB / 8GB6GB / 8GB / 12GB
ROM128GB / 256GB UFS 3.1128GB / 256GB
Rear camera48 MP, f / 1.79
8 MP, f / 2.2 wide angle
2 MP, f / 2.4 macro
48 MP, f/1.8, 26mm (wide), 1/2.0", 0.8µm, PDAF
8 MP, f/2.2, 16mm (ultrawide), 1/4.0", 1.12µm
2 MP, f/2.4, (macro)
Frontal camera16 MP, f/2.016 MP, f/2.0, (wide)
Operating system
Android 10, IQOO UIAndroid 10, iQOO UI 1.0
Battery4,500 mAh, 44W Fast Charge4.500 mAh, 44W Flash Charge
Connectivity
5G SA/NSA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, USB-C, MinijackWi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/6, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct, hotspot

Our Verdict

Frankly speaking, in the field of semiconductors, it is difficult to find out which mobile platform has developed like MediaTek, which has undergone ups and downs, but it must be MediaTek’s dedication to the impact of the top flagship, and the unprecedented compromise of the Dimensity 1000+, the predecessor of the Dimensity 1000 that made the newborn calf iQOO Z1 willing to work with it. The performance of the iQOO Z1 relies on the Dimensity 1000+, and the performance of this SoC far exceeds our expectations. Looking at the specifications found inside this smartphone, mixed with the design it has and the way it is made, it results in not only a high-quality device, but also one of the best phones that are available in the current market worldwide.

This mobile phone that sells the price of the Snapdragon 765G model, but has the performance of infinitely close to the Snapdragon 865 model is very unusual, even if only based on the Dimensity 1000+ and the price, it has a strong attraction force. Standing on the basis of 307 USD from the sale, this phone assumes the role of “Dragon Slayer“, let us see the high premium of many performance flagships in the 5G era, the combination of the two strives to return to the world an original look.

Price & Availability

The Vivo IQOO Z1 is official at the moment in China, where it has been put up for sale in three RAM and storage configurations, which are the following.

  • Vivo IQOO Z1 6 + 128 GB: 2198 yuan, about 307 USD to change.
  • Vivo IQOO Z1 8 + 128 GB: 2498 yuan, about 349 USD to change.
  • Vivo IQOO Z1 8 + 256 GB: 2798 yuan, about 392 USD to change.

iqoo-z1-5g-phone-review-d
iQOO Z1 5G Phone Review – Just How Good Is a Dimensity 1000 Plus Phone?
Summary
Frankly speaking, in the field of semiconductors, it is difficult to find out which mobile platform has developed like MediaTek, which has undergone ups and downs, but it must be MediaTek’s dedication to the impact of the top flagship, and the unprecedented compromise of the Dimensity 1000+, the predecessor of the Dimensity 1000 that made the newborn calf iQOO Z1 willing to work with it. The performance of the iQOO Z1 relies on the Dimensity 1000+, and the performance of this SoC far exceeds our expectations. Looking at the specifications found inside this smartphone, mixed with the design it has and the way it is made, it results in not only a high-quality device, but also one of the best phones that are available in the current market worldwide.
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