The iQoo Z7 5G, the successor to the Z6 5G, is poised to shake up the sub-Rs. 20,000 smartphone market in India. Priced slightly higher than its predecessor, this new phone packs a punch with its brighter display, an improved camera system, and support for faster charging. It throws down the gauntlet to other contenders like the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite 5G, Redmi Note 12 5G, and Moto G73 5G. But with so many options, is the iQoo Z7 5G truly worth your hard-earned money? Let’s dive into our comprehensive review and find out!
iQoo Z7 5G Price in India
The iQoo Z7 5G launches in India with two storage configurations. The base model with 6GB RAM and 128GB storage is priced at Rs. 18,999. Our review unit, featuring 8GB RAM and 128GB storage, is priced at Rs. 19,999.
iQoo Z7 5G Design and Display
The iQoo Z7 5G bears a striking resemblance to the more affordable iQoo Z6 Lite 5G, featuring a rectangular camera module that’s slightly larger. The phone boasts a flat polycarbonate body and frame, a common trait in this price segment. Our review unit, in the Pacific Night color, exudes a premium feel, its rear panel shimmering with a glittery finish when light hits it at an angle. Despite its shiny matte finish, it rarely attracts fingerprints.
The iQoo Z7 5G offers a comfortable grip thanks to its flat edges, and its lightweight 173g makes it easy to handle. The phone features a 6.38-inch display that has been upgraded to an AMOLED panel, delivering vivid colours, deep blacks, and outstanding contrast and brightness levels, perfect for enjoying HDR10 content on Netflix and YouTube. The display seamlessly transitions between 60Hz and 90Hz refresh rates with its "Smart Switch" setting, ensuring smooth animations and scrolling, though I would have preferred a 120Hz AMOLED panel like the Redmi Note 12 5G.
The phone’s thick chin and waterdrop notch might seem outdated compared to the hole-punch cutouts offered by most competitors. However, the iQoo Z7 5G compensates with an IP54 rating, offering basic water and dust protection, slightly better than the Redmi Note 12 5G’s IP53 rating and the Moto G73 5G’s IP52 rating.
The iQoo Z7 5G also includes a 3.5mm headphone jack, a welcome addition as its single speaker setup isn’t the best in the segment. While the sound quality is decent, it can become slightly distorted at full volume. For biometric security, the phone offers a responsive in-display fingerprint scanner and AI-based face recognition.
iQoo Z7 5G Specifications and Software
The iQoo Z7 5G is powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 920 SoC, an upgrade over its predecessor. Another significant improvement is the 44W fast charging, although the battery capacity has shrunk to 4,500mAh. The phone features a hybrid SIM slot, a USB Type-C port, Bluetooth 5.2 support, Wi-Fi 6, and GPS.
On the software front, the iQoo Z7 5G runs Android 13-based Funtouch OS 13, with iQoo promising two major Android updates and security patches for three years. RAM management has witnessed a slight improvement over the previous model, with most apps remaining open in the background and not requiring reloading upon switching back to them. However, this doesn’t always apply to heavy apps like games and video recording apps.
The phone comes pre-loaded with a few third-party apps that can be uninstalled. However, there are the notorious "Hot Apps" and "Hot Games" recommendation folders in the app drawer, which can be hidden via the V-App Store settings. I found that the V-App Store was rather intrusive, sending a couple of recommendations to my notifications shade every few hours. Thankfully, you can disable these by long-pressing any notification and selecting "Turn off all V-App Store notifications."
The iQoo Z7 5G boasts the same Funtouch OS 13 features found on the more premium iQoo Neo 7 5G and flagship iQoo 11 5G. These include support for Android’s Material You theme engine, allowing for customization of various elements like animations, wallpapers, and icons.
iQoo Z7 5G Performance and Battery Life
The iQoo Z7 5G delivers a commendable performance in its segment, effortlessly handling routine tasks like social media browsing and gaming. Heavier apps, like Call of Duty: Mobile, take a bit more time to load, but the overall gaming experience is quite enjoyable. In fact, I found gaming on the iQoo Z7 5G more pleasurable than on the similarly priced OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite 5G.
Call of Duty: Mobile defaulted to "Max" frame rate with "Low" graphics settings, but you can adjust these to "High" graphics quality and "Very high" frame rate settings. In both cases, the phone remained lag-free and stutter-free during gameplay, although I did notice some jerkiness when notifications popped up. To mitigate this, you can enable the "Block notifications" feature in Ultra Game Mode settings. Despite its slim profile and powerful SoC, the iQoo Z7 5G doesn’t heat up quickly, even during extended gaming sessions.
In benchmark tests, the iQoo Z7 5G scored 4,36,524 in AnTuTu, surpassing the Moto G73 5G (4,22,824 points) with its MediaTek Dimensity 930 SoC and the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite 5G (4,12,150 points) with its Snapdragon 695 SoC. In Geekbench 6’s single-core and multi-core tests, the Z7 5G achieved scores of 729 and 1,835 points, respectively.
Battery life is commendable, with the iQoo Z7 5G averaging a screen-on time (SoT) of about nine hours. The phone takes just over an hour to charge from 1 to 100 percent using the included adapter. In our HD video battery loop test, the Z7 5G lasted for 18 hours and 51 minutes, a very impressive result.
iQoo Z7 5G Cameras
The iQoo Z7 5G features a dual-camera setup on the back, comprising a 64-megapixel primary camera with optical image stabilization (OIS) and a 2-megapixel portrait lens. For selfies, there’s a 16-megapixel front camera. Unfortunately, the phone lacks an ultra-wide camera, which is a missed opportunity.
The primary camera delivers impressive daylight performance for the price, capturing vivid colors and excellent detail across the board. However, sometimes the shadows aren’t properly exposed in HDR shots, and the same applies to low-light photos. Thankfully, Night Mode comes to the rescue, effectively curbing noise in the darker areas of photos.
Portrait mode with the rear camera is also commendable, producing natural and creamy background blur in both day and night shots. However, the software sometimes sharpens images a bit too much. With the front camera, I noticed that the skin is often smoothed out a bit, even when beauty mode filters are disabled. On the other hand, Portrait mode on the front camera does a good job with edge detection, but it can make skin appear a touch fairer than it actually is. If this type of color tuning doesn’t bother you, then you shouldn’t have any issues.
The iQoo Z7 5G supports 4K 30fps video recording using the rear camera. For its price, the video quality is excellent, with good dynamic range and colors. The front camera captures decent 1080p 30fps videos. The absence of an ultra-wide lens is a notable oversight, limiting the camera setup’s versatility.
Verdict
The iQoo Z7 5G emerges as a clear winner in the sub-Rs. 20,000 segment, offering impressive performance and catering to content consumers with its AMOLED display, great battery life, and fast charging. The front and rear cameras also put in a commendable performance, but the lack of an ultra-wide camera is a noticeable omission.
The iQoo Z7 5G falls short in the audio department, with its single speaker setup not measuring up to the performance of dual-speaker setups. Software preferences are subjective, but if you’re comfortable with Funtouch OS, then the iQoo Z7 5G is a great buy in this price range.
