IQOO introduced two ‘s’ models to its Z9 series, the Z9s and Z9s Pro. In terms of design, both smartphones are intended for young, multitasking individuals, mostly college students and young professionals. The Z9s Pro served us well on our media tour in Baku, Azerbaijan, but we also used it in other departments for about a month, and here’s what we found.
Design
iQOO Z9s Pro features a 6.77-inch curved AMOLED display with a 120 Hz screen refresh rate and 4,500 nits peak brightness, as well as a fingerprint sensor underneath.
A higher placement of the fingerprint scanner would’ve made unlocking a smartphone more convenient, as well as faster and more accurate.
The phone’s reverse side shows a squircle-shaped camera island, which reminds us of the iQOO 12. On flat surfaces, it keeps the Z9s Pro from wobbling, however it is bigger in size. There is a circular flash and two working cameras, one of which is 50 MP and one which is 8 MP.
iQOO Z9s Pro is available in Luxe Marble and Flamboyant Orange colors, and we received the former.
There’s a marble-like pattern on Luxe Marble’s back panel, and it has a glossy finish, while Flamboyant Orange features a vegan leather back – a first for the Z series. A better grip and resistance to smudges are provided by the Flamboyant Orange model’s extra 5 grams. Fingerprint smudges are picked up by the Luxe Marble, but they aren’t immediately visible.
IQOO’s Z9s Pro is IP64-rated regardless of the version you choose. As well as its curved edges, its lightweight design makes it comfortable to use for long periods of time.
A shiny, reflective frame surrounds the iQOO Z9s Pro, with the volume rocker and power button located on the right side. On the bottom, you’ll find a USB-C port and the SIM card slot, along with a speaker grille and a primary microphone. There is a secondary microphone on top. Stereo speakers are also included with the Z9s Pro.
iQOO Z9s Pro has a good overall design. A good build and comfortable design make it ideal for extended use.
Display
This device comes with a 6.77″ curved AMOLED display with a resolution of 2,392×1,080-pixels and pixel density of 387 pixels per inch. A refresh rate of 120 Hz is used in addition to a sampling rate of 300 Hz for touch. On the iQOO Z9s Pro, 2,000 Hz instant touch sampling rate is supported by Garena Free Fire, Mobile Legends, Call of Duty: Mobile, Genshin Impact, Garena ROV, and PUBG Mobile.
As a result, the iQOO Z9s Pro’s display supports 1.07 billion colors. A wide selection of HDR, HDR+, and HLG codecs are also supported, along with Widevine L1 certification, which allows 1080p video streaming.
Schott Xensation Up glass protects the display of the iQOO Z9s Pro, as well as Wet Touch, which, iQOO says, “distinguises between fingers and water droplets using specialized algorithms, so your screen responds to touch quickly and accurately no matter how wet it gets.”
In HDR content, the screen of the iQOO Z9s Pro is 4,500 nits bright. Even at maximum brightness, the panel on our unit wasn’t legible outdoors in sunlight, so we had to cover the screen with our hand to read text and watch videos and images.
iQOO Z9s Pro’s Always-On Display mode is only activated when you tap the screen or move it slightly, so it does not really always display. There is no option to keep it on all day or during certain hours, which is a bummer. It may be better for iQOO not to call it an “always-on display” since the display does not always remain on. Software updates can fix this.
There are three refresh rate options available on the iQOO Z9s Pro’s 120Hz panel – Smart Switch, Standard (60 Hz), and High (120 Hz). In the menu, you can also select the apps or games you want to run at 120 Hz when you select the High refresh rate option.
After setting the screen refresh rate to High and enabling all apps/games from the “Apps running at a high refresh rate” option, the refresh rate bumped from 60 to 120 Hz for the system menus and apps that interact with the display. If you view an image in Google Photos or watch a video, it stays at 60 Hz. YouTube videos follow the same rules.
In Standard mode, everything remained at 60 Hz, while in Smart Switch mode, things were handled differently than they were in High mode. Switching between apps and scrolling on the home screen, app drawer, Settings app, and Play Store brought the refresh rate up to 120 Hz. GSMArena and Quora are the only apps with restricted refresh rates, which are 90 Hz. Most apps could only run at 90 Hz in High Mode.
iQOO Z9s Pro allowed us to run Call of Duty: Mobile, Dead Trigger 2, Real Racing 3, and Sky Force: Reloaded at 120 FPS in High Mode only.
In conclusion, the High refresh rate mode of the iQOO Z9s Pro will provide the smoothest experience.
Software and Performance
iQOO Z9s Pro features a Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 SoC, 12GB of LPDDR4X RAM, and 256GB of UFS 2.2 storage. A top-of-the-line 12GB/256GB version runs Funtouch OS 14 out of the box, based on Android 14.
A two-year update cycle for Android version and three-year security update cycle for Android security has been promised by IOQO for the Z9s Pro. The rollout frequency of security updates has not been committed.
The Z9s Pro also comes with three-party apps pre-installed, but these can be uninstalled. iQOO Z9s Pro offers the same software experience as the iQOO 12, so you can read our iQOO 12 review to learn more about Funtouch OS 14.
As a result, it’s worth noting that App Retainer – which came with the Neo7 Pro and later to all vivo and iQOO smartphones through Funtouch OS 14 – still doesn’t support some popular apps, like Facebook. So, if you switch to Facebook from another app, it will refresh, and you can’t continue. Vivo and iQOO need to fix this soon.
It was mostly smooth to use the iQOO Z9s Pro in everyday situations. Although switching between applications and scrolling the content did stutter at times, we’d say mostly because it stutters most of the time. On the same internet connection, ChatGPT also displayed its textual responses slower than other phones. Although the Z9s Pro handled heavy games very well during long gaming sessions and remained relatively cool throughout, we had no issues with its gaming performance.
In terms of game enhancements, the iQOO Z9s Pro comes with 4D Game Vibration, Motion Control, and Artificial Intelligence Game Voice Changer. In the current version of 4D Game Vibration, only PUBG Mobile and BGMI are supported.
Camera
The iQOO Z9s Pro comes with three cameras, one on the front and two on the back. On the front, a 16MP Samsung S5K3P9SP04-FGX9 1/3.0″ sensor with an f/2.45 aperture records 1080p videos at 30 frames per second.
On the back, you get a primary camera with 50MP resolution and an ultrawide camera with 8MP resolution. Sony’s IMX882 1/1.95″ sensor features OIS and a f/1.79 aperture, providing 720p and 1080p video recording at 30 and 60 frames per second, while 4K video is limited to 30 frames per second.
It features an f/2.2 aperture and a 120° field of view on its 8MP ultrawide sensor, the OmniVision OV08D10-GA5A-001A.
AI Photo Enhance and AI Erase are both AI-powered features included on the iQOO Z9s Pro, which both require an active internet connection to function. A blurry photo can be quickly fixed with the former, whereas a photo can be removed with the latter.
To use AI Photo Enhance, open the photo in the default Album app on the iQOO Z9s Pro and choose Edit > Repair > AI Photo Enhance. Select AI Erase from the Edit menu.
With AI Erase, you can choose either Smart circle or Manual smudge. If you draw a circle on an object or person, it first identifies them and removes them. If you draw a line on an object or person, it removes the object or person.
Images captured by the iQOO Z9s Pro’s primary and ultrawide cameras were fast. In 50MP High-Res mode, shutter lag occurred occasionally, but most of it has been resolved.
Photos and high-resolution images taken with the primary camera in daylight weren’t perfect. A similar statement can be made about ultrawide cameras. It was difficult to predict how the camera would perform. In some pictures taken with the ultrawide camera, the sky color was the same as the default Photo mode of the primary camera, but it was different in the High-Res mode.
When the primary camera is used in the Photo mode under strong sunlight, the pictures come out nice, but the photos taken in the High-Res mode are duller and less sharp, especially when the sun is behind. There were some detail issues in the highlights and midtones, though.
Ultrawide camera photos had noisy midtones in dim daylight conditions – something the primary camera’s Photo and High-Res modes did not have. The shadows in some ultrawide shots were also noisy, while the shadows in high-resolution pictures were more detailed compared to photo mode and ultrawide shots.
At night, sky colors were inconsistent due to the fact that sometimes they looked close to the source when clicked with the primary camera, and sometimes they looked far from the source when clicked with the secondary camera. At times, they appeared purple. The primary camera’s pictures, especially the text, were sharper in High-Resolution mode.
In Photo mode, some pictures had more sharpness, but the shadows had less detail and were darker. However, the highlights were more detailed. There was more noise around the edges of these same scenes when they were captured in High-Res mode.
In pictures taken with the ultrawide and the primary cameras’ Photo and High-Resolution modes, the light sources were also overexposed, while the surrounding midtones were soft and lack details. I was pleased with the quality of the primary camera’s night photos, although the ultrawide camera’s was not as good.
Our primary camera in Portrait mode produces good portraits that don’t receive many complaints. At 1x and 2x magnification, the subjects were nicely separated. We were pleasantly surprised by how good they were.
In terms of AI Erase, the Smart circle method worked better than the Manual smudge option, and we thoroughly enjoyed using it. Although it isn’t perfect, it worked well.
Daylight Photos
In the default Photo mode, the 50MP primary camera has an output of 12.6MP, so we will take a look at daylight photos first taken with the 8MP ultrawide camera and then with the 50MP primary camera.
An ultrawide camera with 8MP and 0.6x magnification (16mm).
Battery
iQOO Z9s Pro packs a 5,500mAh battery with wired charging support up to 80W and reverse wired charging up to 7.5W, so you can charge other devices as well.
On the iQOO Z9s Pro, we were not able to run our standard battery tests. A day’s battery life is likely to be achievable with moderate usage, 120Hz refresh rate, 5G mobile data, and Wi-Fi hotspot enabled on the Z9s Pro, but anecdotally speaking, it should last people about a day.
During our test, we were able to keep the screen on for about six hours with 120Hz refresh rate, 5G mobile data, and Wi-Fi hotspot on. The majority of our time was spent on web browsing, social media apps, and YouTube videos, followed by about an hour of heavy gaming. Our phone got 8-9 hours of SoT when we only watched videos and used social media apps using the Wi-Fi hotspot.
The included 80W power adapter lets you charge the iQOO Z9s Pro once its battery runs low. Our charging tests showed that it took 46 minutes to charge a cell from 1 to 30%, 21 minutes to 50%, and 41 minutes to 100%.
According to our testing, the iQOO Z9s Pro charges from 1% to 9% within 5 minutes, 19% within 10 minutes, 28% within 15 minutes, 38% within 20 minutes, 50% within26 minutes, 58% within 30 minutes, and 100% within 52 minutes.
A 5G mobile data connection was turned on and the Wi-Fi hotspot was disabled during the charging test. As a result of the Wi-Fi hotspot enabled, the iQOO Z9s Pro went from 1% to 100% in 60 minutes; therefore, your mileage will vary depending on your usage and the ambient temperature when charging it.
Conclusion
iQOO Z9s Pro is one of the best smartphones on the market in its segment in India right now. This device features a slim design and is IP64 rated. Even though we haven’t seen the fastest phone, the Z9s Pro performs smoothly and handles games well.
IQOO Z9s Pro’s battery life is impressive, and it is fast-charging. The smartphone also takes decent daylight pictures and portraits are good, but the cameras aren’t always consistent. Also, iQOO should offer longer software support.
