vivo iQOO 12 Pro Hands-On

Vivo’s subsidiary, iQOO, has a new camera-centric flagship smartphone — the iQOO 12 Pro. It’s also the very first device to sport the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset.

We managed to snag an early unit, which is a China-exclusive release. The unit comes in Legend White with a matching white PU case.

As mentioned earlier, this is the first Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 device out in the market, and we were very curious about its performance. Take note that the chipset is paired with super-fast 16GB LPDDR5X RAM, plus 16GB Extended RAM for a total of 32GB usable memory.

Likewise, it uses UFS 4.0 internal storage that goes up to 1TB.

The result is a massive score in synthetic benchmarks like PCMark and Antutu. As a matter of fact, this is the first device we tested that scored over 2 million points in Antutu (2,076,050).

The device itself looks simple but elegant, with an all-metal body, curved glass up front, and tapered edges on the back side that have a shiny or glossy finish.

The display has a 6.78-inch Samsung E7 AMOLED panel with 2K resolution, curved edges, a 144Hz refresh rate, and a peak brightness of 2700nits.

It’s not too thick at 8.1mm but feels pretty heavy on the hand, coming in at almost 204 grams. There’s a huge camera module at the back, which is a bit flushed to the left side, with the triple-camera system protected by a glass enclosure.

If you noticed, the iQOO 12 Pro has that massive triple-camera system at the back. The primary camera is a 1/1.3-inch 50MP sensor with f/1.68 aperture (OmniVision OV50H). That is paired with another 50MP f/2.0 wide camera (Samsung JN1) and a 64MP f/2.57 periscope telephoto camera (an OmniVision OV64B) that has 3x optical zoom and 100x digital zoom.

Check out some of the sample photos we took here:

You can see the sample zoom capability from 0.6x to 100x in the Photo Gallery embedded above. That’s pretty impressive. Night shots all look equally great from the samples we took.

Along with the latest SD8 Gen 3 chipset, you get dual 5G capability, WiFi 7 compatibility, Bluetooth 5.4, NFC and multimode GPS capabilities. You also get an under-display fingerprint sensor, an IR blaster and IP68 dust and water resistance.

The unit we have runs on Origin OS 4.0 based on Android 14 and has a ton of native Chinese apps pre-installed since this is actually running on a Chinese ROM.

As for battery, there’s a 5,100mAh Li-Ion battery that comes with a 120W wired fast charging, 50W wireless charging and a 10W reverse wireless charging.

Al in all, the vivo iQOO 12 Pro is a pretty solid flagship device and checks everything we’re looking for in a flagship smartphone. Impressive display, the latest flagship chipset, impressive camera, water resistance and battery.

Too bad iQOO isn’t readily available in the Philippines but if you are keen on getting one, the pricing is also very competitive as well.

iQOO 12 Pro Prices:
16GB + 256GB: CNY 4999PHP 40,296USD 687INR 58,202EUR 654 (~Php 38,900USD 663INR 56,195EUR 631CNY 4,827)
16GB + 512GB: CNY 5499PHP 44,327USD 756INR 64,024EUR 719 (~Php 42,800USD 729INR 61,829EUR 695CNY 5,311)
16GB + 1TB: CNY 5999PHP 48,357USD 824INR 69,845EUR 785 (~Php 46,700USD 796INR 67,463EUR 758CNY 5,795)

vivo iQOO 12 Pro specs:
6.78-inch LTPO AMOLED 2K E7 display @ 2800 × 1260 pixels
144Hz refresh rate, 1600 nits (2700 nits peak brightness)
Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset
1x ARM Cortex-X4 3.3GHz + 5x ARM Cortex-A720 3.2GHz + 2x ARM Cortex-A520 2.3GHz
Adreno 750 GPU
16GB LPDDR5X RAM (+16GB Expandable RAM)
256GB, 512GB, 1TB UFS 4.0 storage, no card slot
50MP f/1.68 1/1.3-inch Sensor
50MP f/2.0 wide
64MP f/2.57 periscope telephoto
8K @ 30fps video recording
16MP f/2.45 front-facing camera
Dual-nano SIM, 5G
WiFi-7
Bluetooth 5.4
GPS (BeiDou, GLONASS, Galileo, QZSS, NavIC, GNSS)
NFC
IR Blaster
USB Type-C
IP68 dust and water resistant
Fingerprint (under-display, ultrasonic)
Accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass
OriginOS 4 based on Android 14
5,100mAh battery, 120W FlashCharge, 50W wireless, 10W reverse wireless
Alpha (Black), Legend (White)
163.22 x 75.88 x 8.10 mm (dimensions)
203.7 grams (weight)