iQOO 15 Review: A Genuinely Class-Leading Display and Battery, Held Back by Bloatware

The iQOO 15 also happens to be featured as the #2 pick in this site's Best Gaming Phones 2026 round-up, and the full review backs up why: genuinely class-leading display and battery specs, undercut by real, repeated software criticism.

Design and Build

Available in Black, White, Green, and Blue, with IP68/IP69 dust and water resistance, the iQOO 15 introduces a customisable Monster Halo RGB LED ring around the camera island — GSMArena's review noted it as a genuine, if niche, personalisation touch carried over from the sibling Vivo X300's design language. At 215g and 8.1mm thick, it's a substantial but not unusually heavy phone for a 7,000mAh flagship. GSMArena's own pros list singles out several hardware touches that are easy to overlook on a spec sheet: a genuinely useful infrared blaster (rare on 2026 flagships), an ultrasonic under-display fingerprint reader rather than the more common optical kind, and an industry-first dual-axis (x and y) haptic motor that Fonearena's hands-on found delivered noticeably more dynamic, precise vibration feedback than the single-axis motors most rivals still use. The hybrid stereo speakers are a weaker point — GSMArena's lab testing measured a "Very Good" -25.0 LUFS loudness score, louder than the iQOO 13, but found the actual sound quality flat, with the top earpiece-speaker noticeably quieter than the bottom one and vocals lacking depth.

Display

This is the marquee spec on paper: a 6.85-inch 2K LTPO panel using Samsung's debut M14 2K LEAD OLED technology, running at up to 144Hz and marketed at 6,000 nits peak brightness. The real, lab-measured numbers are genuinely bright but well short of that marketed figure — GSMArena's own testing recorded 831 nits in manual mode, 1,313 nits in auto mode with a 75% white pattern, and a peak of 3,014 nits with a smaller 10% pattern, rising further to a "jaw-dropping" 4,747 nits specifically inside the default Gallery app. All of that is excellent for outdoor visibility and genuine HDR10+/Dolby Vision playback, just not the 6,000-nit figure iQOO advertises. The 144Hz refresh rate itself comes with a significant, easy-to-miss catch: GSMArena's own testing found the panel wouldn't boost past 60Hz in most games it tried, including Call of Duty: Mobile, PUBG, and Real Racing 3, even in the phone's High refresh-rate mode — the full 144Hz is only reachable by manually enabling a separate refresh-rate interpolation setting inside Ultra Game mode. Outside that specific, opt-in case, the headline refresh rate is effectively unused during actual gameplay, which undercuts the display's billing as a gaming-first showcase. 91Mobiles specifically called the display one of the areas the iQOO 15 is "bold" in, alongside power, cooling, and battery endurance — and 8,000mm² of single-layer vapour chamber cooling, which 91Mobiles noted as India's largest at the time of review, is the same hardware doing the work described in Performance below.

Camera

The triple 50MP system carries the main and ultrawide sensors over largely unchanged from the iQOO 13, but the telephoto gets a genuine upgrade — GSMArena's testing confirmed the sensor is now physically larger and optical zoom increases from 2x to 3x, with a Super Macro mode at 1x/2x/3x/6x magnifications as a bonus. Beebom Gadgets found daylight photos from the main sensor "striking" with balanced exposure and good highlight control in challenging conditions like overcast skies, and GSMArena's own testing found the telephoto held up well at night too, with wide dynamic range and decent sharpness even without Night mode enabled. This is honestly this phone's weakest category relative to its other specs, reflected in the lower camera subscore, and GSMArena's own published cons list is specific about why: the ultrawide and selfie cameras "could be sharper," and — despite the new Super Macro mode — the telephoto camera "can't focus close" in normal shooting, meaning genuine close-up work still has to fall back to the main sensor. GSMArena's own competitive verdict is blunt on this point too: anyone who wants a true cameraphone-first experience is better served spending considerably more on something like the Oppo Find X9 Pro or Vivo X300 Pro. Solid, competent photography, in other words, rather than a standout strength like the display or battery.

Performance

Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, paired with iQOO's in-house SuperComputing Chip Q3 and 12 or 16GB of RAM, delivers genuine flagship-tier peak power — 91Mobiles specifically praised the power delivery as one of the phone's clearest strengths. The honest, more complicated story is what happens once that peak has to be sustained. 91Mobiles' own thermal test found the iQOO 15 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 — a real, measured advantage from the larger 8,000mm² vapour chamber. But a cooler surface isn't the same as no throttling: GSMArena's own stress test found both CPU and GPU performance dipping below 50% of peak under prolonged load, and GSMArena's published verdict explicitly lists "sustained performance is weaker than last year" as a con versus the iQOO 13. 91Mobiles' own Burnout CPU Throttle test measured the chip retaining 51.7% of its peak performance — genuinely better than the OnePlus 15's 33.2% in the same test, but still real, significant throttling rather than the sustained-performance non-issue the cooling story alone might suggest. Gaming performance is inconsistent across specific titles too: 91Mobiles' testing found BGMI's frame rate dropped sharply once performance logging was switched on, a real optimisation gap even with the dedicated gaming chip.

Software

This is the first iQOO phone outside China to ship with OriginOS 6 rather than the older Funtouch OS, and reviewers agree it's a real, meaningful upgrade — Beebom Gadgets called it "easily one of my favourite skins out there" compared to what it described as a previously "dated and bland" experience, specifically praising the Liquid Glass-inspired transparency effects and faster animations. The honest, repeated catch: 91Mobiles counted 53 pre-installed apps on the review unit, seven of them third-party, and The Mobile Indian specifically flagged that certain bloatware — including V-Appstore — can't be disabled at all, calling it "a major disappointment" on a flagship-tier device. iQOO commits to 5 major OS updates and up to 7 years of security patches, a genuinely strong support window despite the bloatware complaints.

Battery and Charging

A 7,000mAh semi-solid-state battery is genuinely enormous and backed up by real endurance — The Mobile Indian found it could "easily last you two full days with minimal usage," and GSMArena's own lab testing scored an Active Use Score of 21:47h, a figure it called "more than respectable" and directly comparable to phones with bigger batteries, driven especially by strong web-browsing and video-playback runtimes. The honest catch is charging: 100W wired charging is a real downgrade from the iQOO 13's 120W, and GSMArena's own measured numbers show it's not just a downgrade on paper — a full charge from empty took 52 minutes in testing (57 minutes over generic USB PD), reaching 60% in the first 30 minutes. That leaves the iQOO 15 genuinely slower to top up than its own direct rivals from the same test round: the iQOO 13 needed just 32 minutes for a full charge, the Realme GT 8 Pro 40 minutes, and the OnePlus 15 41 minutes. New 40W wireless charging, absent on the iQOO 13, is a genuine first-time addition that partly offsets the wired slowdown, but it doesn't erase it.

Competition

At its new, higher price, the iQOO 15 lands right alongside two direct rivals rather than undercutting a full tier of them the way the iQOO 13 once did. The most obvious is the OnePlus 15, which GSMArena and 91Mobiles both note shares the exact same ₹72,999 starting price and the same Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset — making the choice almost entirely about priorities rather than raw hardware. 91Mobiles' own head-to-head found the iQOO 15 pulling ahead on display brightness and thermal efficiency, while the OnePlus 15 wins out on gaming-centric software features, its 7,300mAh battery, a cleaner and more intuitive UI, and a slightly stronger telephoto. GSMArena's own device-data comparison reaches a similar conclusion from a different angle: the iQOO 15 is the wiser pick specifically if camera performance matters most, while the OnePlus edges it out on gaming and battery testing.

The Xiaomi Poco F8 Ultra is the other genuine rival GSMArena calls out directly — a similar price, the same Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 SoC, and, per GSMArena's own testing, a more refined overall camera experience on the iQOO 15's side, even though its telephoto reach is more limited than the F8 Ultra's. The Poco counters with faster charging and Xiaomi's own HyperOS ecosystem, which may appeal more to buyers already inside it. None of this changes the fundamental availability problem, though: whichever way the comparison lands, all three phones share the same restriction of official sales limited to China, India, and Malaysia, with no UK, US, or EU launch.

Verdict

Frequently Asked Questions

How it compares: iQOO 15 vs Vivo X300 Ultra

iQOO

iQOO 15

From £650 (import only)

87

Vivo

Vivo X300 Ultra

From £1,399

92

vs

Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

Chip

Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

6,000 nits peak, 144Hz

Display

—

7,000mAh · 100W

Battery

—

From £650

Price

From £1,399

Full iQOO 15 review

Full Vivo X300 Ultra review