Last month Redmi K30 Pro launched in China with a starting price of 2,999 Yuan, making it the cheapest Snapdragon 865-powered phone. Well, iQOO Neo3 launched in China today, and its pricing beats that of the K30 Pro, making it the cheapest phone with Snapdragon 865 currently in the market. It is crazy that at a starting price of just 2,698 Yuan ($381), you’re getting the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 SOC.
iQOO NEO3 – DESIGN & SPECIFICATIONS
iQOO Neo3 comes with a design that is similar to the iQOO 3 that launched earlier this year. It has a punch-hole display on the front and triple cameras on the rear. There are stereo speakers where the primary speaker is placed on the bottom, and the secondary is placed in the earpiece.
The fingerprint scanner is not under the display but on the right side. The reason? Well, there is an LCD panel instead of OLED. This isn’t a surprise since companies do cost-cutting to keep the pricing as low as possible. The Poco F1 is a perfect example which was the cheapest Snapdragon 845-powered phone when it launched but had a plastic build and an LCD screen.
On the front, the iQOO Neo3 features a 6.57-inch Full-HD+ LCD panel with 20:9 aspect ratio. The best thing about this panel is that it refreshes 144 times every second, thanks to the 144Hz refresh rate. The display also supports HDR10. Under the hood, there is Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 5G SOC paired with 6/8/12GB LPDDR4X RAM and 128/256GB UFS 3.1 storage. For better performance, there is Super Liquid cooling as well.
The triple cameras on the back include a primary 48 Megapixel Sony IMX586 sensor with f/1.79 aperture lens, a secondary 8 Megapixel ultrawide camera, and a third 2 Megapixel Macro camera. The rear camera can shoot up to 4K videos. On the front, there is a 16 Megapixel camera with an f/2.0 aperture lens.
Finally, the iQOO Neo3 packs a 4,500mAh battery and an impressive 44W Fast Wired Charging. iQOO UI based on Android 10 runs out of the box.
iQOO NEO3 – PRICING & AVAILABILITY
The phone comes in four storage options and two colors. Here is the pricing for the Chinese market –
- 6GB RAM + 128GB ROM – 2,698 Yuan ($381 | Rs 30,000)
- 8GB RAM + 128GB ROM – 2,998 Yuan ($424 | Rs 32,000)
- 8GB RAM + 256GB ROM – 3,398 Yuan ($480 | Rs 36,000)
- 12GB RAM + 128GB ROM – 3,298 Yuan ($466 | Rs 35,000)
iQOO Neo3 is up for pre-order in China and the sale starts from April 29th. There is no word from the brand on the launch in other markets outside China.