iQOO 15

GSMTechTok analysis

Who it's for

The iQOO 15 is for a buyer who wants a true performance flagship at a price below the mainstream Ultra tier, and who prioritizes raw capability over camera versatility or polish. GSMArena's own verdict calls it an excellent all-rounder that builds on a strong predecessor, with downsides that are few and far between. It's a strong fit for anyone specifically choosing between this, the OnePlus 15, and the vivo X300 — GSMArena's own comparison found the iQOO 15 the wiser choice if camera performance matters most, while the OnePlus edges it out on gaming and battery testing specifically. It's a weaker fit for anyone outside China, India, or Malaysia who wants official warranty support, since every other unit is a grey-market import.

Standout features

Surface-level thermal management under sustained gaming load is a genuine, measured strength — 91mobiles' own testing found the phone heated up by less than 5°C after 30 minutes of demanding gameplay, meaningfully cooler than the OnePlus 15's 6.8°C rise in the same test, thanks to the large 8,000mm² vapor chamber and dedicated Q3 gaming chip. That cooler surface doesn't mean no internal throttling, though — see tradeOffs. The telephoto camera saw a real, disclosed upgrade this generation too — a considerably bigger sensor paired with genuine 3x optical zoom, up from a fairly generic 2x unit on the previous model. Display quality held up well in independent testing too — GSMArena's own lab measurements found 831 nits in manual mode and up to 3,014 nits peak in auto mode (10% pattern), both genuinely high even if well short of the marketed 6,000-nit figure. Software support genuinely improved too, with iQOO now promising 5 major OS upgrades, up from 4 the year before.

Trade-offs

The headline 144Hz refresh rate is barely usable in practice — GSMArena's own testing found most games, including Call of Duty Mobile and PUBG, capped at 60Hz by default, with the full refresh rate only reachable by manually enabling a refresh-rate interpolation setting in Ultra Game mode. Sustained CPU/GPU throughput is a genuine, measured step down from the iQOO 13 too, despite the cooler surface temperature noted in standout — GSMArena's own stress test found both CPU and GPU dipping below 50% of peak performance under prolonged load, and 91mobiles' own Burnout test recorded the chip retaining 51.7% of peak (better than the OnePlus 15's 33.2%, but still real, measurable throttling); GSMArena's own published verdict lists 'sustained performance is weaker than last year' as an explicit con. Gaming performance itself is inconsistent across titles too: 91mobiles' testing found BGMI's frame rate dropped sharply once performance logging was active, a real optimization gap even with the dedicated gaming chip. Camera quality remains the phone's clearest comparative weakness — GSMArena's own competitive analysis is blunt that anyone who wants a true cameraphone experience will need to spend considerably more on something like the Oppo Find X9 Pro or vivo X300 Pro; GSMArena's own cons list also flags the ultrawide and selfie cameras as needing to be sharper, and the telephoto as unable to focus close despite its dedicated Super Macro mode at fixed zoom steps. And GSMArena's own verdict is candid that this year's price increase, while arguably justified by the hardware gains, came in higher than expected — India's 12GB/256GB variant jumped from the iQOO 13's ₹54,999 launch price to ₹72,999, roughly an ₹18,000 (about 33%) increase.