iQoo 15R - You Won't Believe This!

The iQOO 15 is something quite different from your usual flagship smartphone. And that’s because iQOO have made it their mission to create a compact powerhouse smartphone designed to cater for both working professionals and gamers. And if you’re a professional gamer, well, that’s even better. There are a few secret weapons inside this one that are literally game changers, and I could call this phone a powerhouse — and trust me, this isn’t just a marketing term. It is, in fact, an accurate description, because this phone right here, with this screen size, is in fact the thinnest phone to have a 7600mAh battery.

Just for context, so you know how big the battery inside this phone is, it is, in fact, double the size of the battery found inside the regular iPhone 17, and here is another power move by iQOO: there is, in fact, a power brick in the box, and it is a 100-watt charger, which is the peak charging speed supported by the iQOO 15. This is especially useful because it is powerful enough to recharge laptops or even portable gaming devices. Now listen — if you’re thinking about getting an iQOO device, or if you already own one, stick around, because I’ve got some really good news for you. But first, let me give you a guided tour of the design.

Design

iQOO has designed the iQOO 15 with the golden ratio in mind. It’s much more compact than a typical flagship, which of course makes it much easier to hold. The frame is metal, the sides are flat, the corners are rounded, and it’s got these sleek, angled curves. And if you look closely at the top, you will notice there’s an infrared blaster for when you inevitably lose your remote control down the side of your sofa. The device is thin at just 7.9mm, and the weight is just 202g, which is hard to believe when you consider the size of the battery inside this phone. They’ve also managed to make extra room for another game changer in regard to connectivity, and we will come back to that when we get to the gaming segment of this video. Hidden under the display is an ultrasonic 3D fingerprint scanner, and around the back, hidden beneath the surface here, is a 6.5K vapour cooling chamber known as the Ice Core At 6.5K, it’s just another way of saying a 6500mm² vapour cooling chamber, which is on the larger side for a phone of this size. And just to make the gaming segment a little more interesting, I will show you guys what the Ice Cool looks like after a prolonged gaming session with a thermal imaging scan.

And before we move on, I should really address the elephant in the room. The pattern on this version of the phone is so nice. This particular colour is actually called silver, but it’s kind of a checkered silver. And actually etched beneath the surface are these kinds of fabric-like patterns, which kind of gives it this organic look. And I really like it. It stands out from pretty much every other phone. And not only is the iQOO 15 built to withstand the heat, but it’s also built to withstand pretty extreme conditions. It has an official IP68 rating, which is flagship level, but it’s also IP69 rated, which means it can survive high-pressure water jets. The camera module floating design is also pretty interesting. I will run through the camera specs and show you some camera samples in a moment, but first, let’s get a good look at this display. It is a 6.59-inch, 1.5K AMOLED, 1260 by 2750 resolution, with up to 5000 nits peak brightness in high brightness mode. And it does support HDR10+, and I think you’ll agree it is impressive. The colours are nice and accurate, the brightness is incredible, and the animations are fluid. But what is most impressive is the fact that this display does support 144Hz, which does make it perfect for gaming. And when you combine this display with that game-changing feature that I mentioned in the intro of this video, you will truly understand why this deserves the title: powerhouse.

Camera

Now let me show you what these cameras are all about. The floating camera module houses two cameras: a 200 megapixel Sony LYT-700V with optical image stabilisation, which is of course, the primary camera and star of the show. There’s also an 8 megapixel ultrawide, which is certainly handy to have around. Around the front, the sensor behind that selfie camera is 32 megapixels. So check out these photo samples from these cameras and let me know what you think. When it comes to video, it can shoot up to 4K 60 frames per second. Around the front with the selfie camera, you can also shoot 4K 60.

Performance

Now, let’s talk about a secret game-changing weapon that the iQOO has equipped the 15 with. It is, of course, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 processor. This is a 3-nanometer chip, just like the flagship elite chip from Qualcomm. And even though this is one step down from the top, it is still more powerful than almost all of the smartphone flagships released in 2025. And this doesn’t just make this phone a beast for gaming — it also makes it much more power-efficient.

When you combine that with the massive battery, you could expect two-day battery life here. And not only that, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 assists with its camera abilities and improves the AI processing speeds. And this chip isn’t the only bit of good news for you gamers out there, because there are actually two more upgrades inside this device that I think you’re going to want to know about.

Gaming

One is iQOO’s own Q2 supercomputing processor. This takes some of the workload off of the Adreno 829 graphics built into the Snapdragon chip, and it’s this that allows the iQOO 15 to upscale lower-res games to 1.5K resolution to match the display. And if the game you’re playing doesn’t support 144Hz or even 120Hz, the Q2 chip can boost the frame rates using frame interpolation, which ultimately makes the game’s motion look smoother than it actually is. Now, this all sounds good, right? But what happens when you have bad data signals? Well, here is that second game changer: iQOO have equipped this with a third chip designed to do one thing — boost and stabilise signal strength. They call it the Z1, and apparently, it can reduce latency by 20%. And also when it comes to signals, because this is a new phone for 2026, it also supports Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. So you’re going to get fantastic wireless speeds here for audio and for data.

And something you should know about this phone is that you can actually enable bypass charging, which allows the phone to run off the external power source as opposed to the built-in battery, which can potentially keep the device even cooler. All right, now let’s do the thermal imaging scan after more than 20 minutes of intense gaming here on PUBG. Okay, so this is a pretty interesting thermal scan. I’ve not seen one like this before. Typically, the heat is stored in the top right corner of the device, but on this phone, the heat is spreading down so quickly that the hottest part is just below the camera module. And the temperature there is just 35 degrees, which is very good. Anything close to 40 is not so good. The sensor mark is actually 34 degrees as well. So that shows that the heat has been evenly spread across the back surface of the phone, which is great because it allows the heat to escape more quickly. And this, in turn, helps the processor run at maximum speed. So it’s a big thumbs up for iQOO’s Ice Cool.

The Software

Let’s talk about software. This phone is currently running on OriginOS 6, the same software running on vivo smartphones, and iQOO offer four years of operating system updates, and six years of security patches. And this software is packed full of awesome features. And here is that bit of good news that I talked about in the intro of the video: I have made a dedicated tips and tricks guide to highlight the best features of OriginOS 6. If you guys have a Vivo phone or an iQOO phone right now with OriginOS, you should definitely check that video. And if you don’t have one of the phones yet, well, definitely take a look at that, because then you’ll get a good idea of what you can do with phones like the iQOO 15.