iQOO launched its Z6 Lite 5G smartphone in India last month. And it is the company’s most affordable 5G phone in India. It is the first phone in the world to be powered by the latest Snapdragon 4 Gen 1. Is it the best 5G phone in the price range? Is this worth the price? Let’s dive into the review to find out.
Box Contents
- iQOO Z6 Lite 5G in Stellar Green colour
- USB Type-C Cable
- SIM Ejector tool
- Clear protection case
The phone doesn’t come with a charger in the box.
Display, Hardware and Design
The iQOO Z6 Lite 5G sports a 6.58-inch (1080 x 2408 pixels) Full HD+ 20:9 aspect ratio LCD screen with 120Hz refresh rate. The display is bright, viewing angles are good and sunlight clarity is also good.
You can select from standard (default), professional and bright screen color modes. The 120Hz refresh rate provides a smooth user experience, especially. When you’re scrolling through the UI and when gaming. You can select Smart Switch or force 60Hz, 90Hz or 120Hz. Has a 240Hz touch sampling rate.
The phone has an 8MP front camera inside the notch. There is an earpiece at the top end.
You may also notice a small bezel at the bottom of the screen. Haptic feedback is decent.
In terms of button placement and ports, the power button is present along with. The fingerprint scanner along with the volume rocker on the right. The hybrid dual SIM slot is on the top. The 3.5mm audio jack, microphone, USB Type-C port and loudspeaker grill are present at the bottom. The phone has a polycarbonate frame with a matte finish.
The back of the phone has a camera section with dual rear cameras. It also features iQOO branding. Although it has a polycarbonate back, it feels good to look at. And hold and has a smooth matte finish that doesn’t attract fingerprints. The phone is only 8.25mm thick and weighs 194 grams as it houses a massive 5000mAh battery.
Camera
- 50MP rear camera with f/1.8 aperture
- 2MP macro camera with f/2.4 aperture
- 8MP front-facing camera with f/2.0 aperture
The camera UI is like other phones running FunTouch OS 12. It has several features like AR stickers, Pro mode, 50MP mode and more. While the phone has a 50MP rear camera. the final output after pixel binning is 12.5MP in size and the front camera output is 8MP.
In terms of camera quality, daylight shots are good, and it is recommended to enable the HDR option. Which automatically turns on HDR according to the shot, so that the dynamic range is good. The camera can focus quickly. Macro shots are also good, but the 2MP macro camera is useless due to the low resolution. The phone does not have a wide-angle camera.
There is portrait mode and you can manually. Adjust the aperture in portrait mode for the best background blur. The eye autofocus feature allows you to clearly focus on the subject. Low light pictures are decent, but could be better. Night mode is slightly better, but doesn’t offer much. Also, the 4GB RAM model does not have a night mode option.
The 8MP camera is decent in daylight. And the front-facing camera’s portraits are also decent. But not the best in low light.
Check out some camera samples below. It can record videos at 1080p resolution up to 60 fps from the rear camera. And the front camera supports 1080p 30fps recording.
Software, UI and Apps
Coming to the software, the phone runs on Android 12 on top of Funtouch OS 12. It contains Android security patches for September 2022. The company promises two years of Android updates. And three years of monthly security updates Funtouch OS 12 brings. New home screen widgets like nano music player, album highlights. Stickers, grid view for multitasking, extended RAM technology allocates part of ROM storage. To RAM and increases RAM space as well as Android 12 features. Like privacy dashboard, security enhancements, microphone and camera indicators and more.
About 5.5GB of the 6GB LPDDR4X RAM is usable, of which 2.5GB is free when default apps are running in the background. Of the 128GB UFS storage, 105GB is free out of the box. We got sequential read speeds of around 500MBps on Android Bench.
Apart from the usual set of utilities and Google apps. It comes preloaded with many apps like Facebook. Spotify, Byjus, Amazon, LinkedIn, Moj and more. These apps can be uninstalled, but come back after a reset.
Fingerprint sensor and face unlock
The phone has a side-mounted fingerprint sensor. That unlocks the phone instantly by placing your finger on the sensor. The phone also has face unlock which can unlock the phone in seconds, but it is not as secure as fingerprint.
Music and Multimedia
The default music player also has an equalizer and deepfield sound effects. It does not have FM radio support. Audio is good and loud through the bottom ported speakers. Audio through headphones is also good. It has Widevine L1 so you can play HD content on Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and other streaming apps. It doesn’t support HDR playback on Netflix or YouTube. Although DRM info apps show it’s HDR certified.
Dual SIM and connectivity
It has the usual set of connectivity features and G with support for n77 and n78 bands, dual 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11. Ac (2.4 + 5GHz), Bluetooth 5.1, GPS + GLONASS, but no NFC support. It also has USB OTG support. The phone also has carrier aggregation. We didn’t experience any call drop and the volume in the earpiece is good, although it is present at the top end.
Body SAR of iQOO Z6 Lite 5G is 0.66W/Kg and Head SAR is 1.18/Kg which is slightly higher. Than some mid-range phones, but in India it is 1.6 W/kg (more than 1 g).
It is the first phone powered by the Snapdragon 4 Gen 1 6nm mobile platform that uses Qualcomm Kryo CPUs. It has 2 x Kryo Performance CPUs (A78-based) up to 2GHz, 6 x Kryo Efficiency CPUs (A55-based) up to 1.80GHz.
The Adreno GPU offers a smooth gaming performance, and the phone doesn’t heat up while gaming. Thanks to the 4-component cooling system that includes graphite cooling film. Cooling copper foil, thermal gel and temperature sensors. That can effectively cool the phone when it’s under high load. remains
The phone gets a bit warm during intensive gaming, but it doesn’t get too hot. We didn’t encounter any issues or frame drops in graphic-intensive games. Like COD, BGMI and Genshin Impact. It reached a largest of 39º in our tests inside Wi-Fi, but this can vary outside on 4G. That said, check out some synthetic benchmark scores below.
battery life
In terms of battery life, the phone packs a 5000mAh (typical) battery. which is common in most mid-range phones. Thanks to the optimization, it can last up to two days with normal usage and up to one day with 4G enabled. I got over 6 hours of screen time with 2 days of use, mostly on Wi-Fi. Since the phone has support for 18W fast charging, it can charge from 0 to 50% in about an hour and takes over 2 hours to 100%. The company offers a charge on the box.
Conclusion
At a starting price of Rs 13,999, the iQOO Z6 Lite is a decent budget phone. The phone delivers smooth performance and has no heating issues while gaming. Camera is good in daylight and battery life is good too. There’s no ultra-wide camera, so those who go for the 64GB version may need a dedicated microSD slot.
