Although the iQOO 15 was already launched in China last month, the successor to the powerful iQOO 13 is set to drop in India on November 26.
Now historically, iQOO has been more of a performance orie nted smartphone maker and has not really paid that much attention to its cameras. Well, with the 15 series, they hope to change that perception.
Now, along with top-notch performance, they have also tried to go all-out with their cameras as well. But has it worked?
I experienced the phone before its Indian release, and it’s quite clear that iQOO has done some sort of an engineering wizardry with their cameras this time around.
It features a triple camera setup at the back and comes with a 50MP main camera with Sony IMX921 sensor, a 50MP periscope 3x telephoto camera with a Sony IMX882 sensor and OIS, and a 50MP ultra wide camera.
And this being an offering from iQOO, it packs insane performance thanks to an all new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.
We take a deep dive into the cameras of the iQOO 15 and see how it fares.
The 50MP main camera (23mm, f/1.88) actually sets the tone for the entire camera system on this phone. The level of detail it pulls is insane and genuinely surprising. The camera perfectly balances light, even in intense, harsh sunlight, preventing the sky from blowing out and keeping shadows well under control.
For instance, in a shot panned directly towards the sky (like a hanging house model), details remain sharp and not excessively shadowy.
This is a massive improvement over older iQOO models that sometimes had the tendency to oversaturate colours to make up for poor contrast. With the iQOO 15, the colors are rich.
The 50MP ultrawide (15mm, f/2.1) camera is a massive step up from previous iQOO models, benefiting significantly from its high resolution and the new sensor. The 15mm lens delivers true flagship consistency, with superb dynamic range and excellent color signature matching the main sensor. While distortion correction is top-tier, a minor area for refinement is observed in complex low-light scenes, where there is a subtle, yet discernible, increase in digital noise when compared directly to the Main lens. Overall, it is a highly useful and powerful lens.
This phone really hits its stride when you move beyond the main lens, mixing crops from the main sensor with the dedicated periscope telephoto, which goes up to 100x magnification. Although the sweet spot is typically around 20-30x
The sample images genuinely demonstrate the phone's capabilities. The first image, shot at 165mm focal length, captures multiple subjects in the mid-distance. By zooming further to around 666mm the camera isolates the single pigeon, maintaining a recognizable texture on the bird and bricks despite the extreme zoom.
The Portrait Mode performs exceptionally well. It captures images with stunning depth and detail. It also has an 85mm lens option included in this section, for the perfect portrait capture. By offering versatility and professional results, it maintains good subject separation, and the colors are vibrant which looks naturally stunning.
For tighter headshots, the 2x portrait crop is pretty solid. The camera does a pretty impressive job with edge detection, creating a beautiful, natural-looking separation from the background without weird halos or fuzzy hair. The depth of field is shallow and looks very smooth and creamy, which really helps the subject pop out.
Colours are again, very impressive, and the camera handles yellow tones really well, and balances it out beautifully.
Portraits with the dedicated 3X optical telephoto camera are simply insane; in our example, one can easily see the texture on a watch face or the weave of a shirt's fabric without any mushiness. It also captures the skin tone perfectly balanced, without going overboard with the colours.
I also liked the perspective compression at this focal length. Seasoned photographers who have used a proper, full-frame DSLR or mirrorless camera will see how natural-looking it is. It also makes people look flattering, something previous iQOO flagships, which often skimped on a proper optical telephoto.
Even when pushed to the 100mm setting, the detail held up way better than expected, maintaining clarity and ultra-depth behind the subject in portrait shots.
Although there is some room for improvement in the colour section here, sometimes in exposed lighting conditions the color vibrance acts differently and seems unnatural, this is a testament to the applause-worthy processing engine, which makes this hybrid zoom genuinely useful.
If the daylight shots were impressive, the low-light performance is what really sells the flagship status.
In this photograph of the couple in their cocktail outfits, the phone pulled in a remarkable amount of light in what was a challenging scene with only a couple of fairy lights as a source. It handled this perfectly, blurring those lights into a soft, ethereal bokeh while maintaining texture and detail in the black suits and sequined dress in the foreground. Skin tones stayed true, even under the tricky, warm ambient lights.
Similarly in the cat’s image, taken in minimal to practically no light) I was totally blown away. It captured a crisp image with no colour distortion. Of course, in such an extremely low-light condition, the camera takes a second or two to capture the image, but the processing is pretty much instantaneous.
The 32MP front camera is again glorious, especially when challenged by harsh lighting. In a series of selfies with the sun blazing directly on the subject, the iQOO 15’s HDR instantly kicked in to make sure the face was properly lit and not a distracting silhouette. You get natural-looking detail on skin and clothing, steering clear of that artificial, overly-smoothed "beauty filter" look that ruins so many selfies.
In today's world where everybody wants to be a content creator, video capabilities of a phone truly are kingmakers, and iQOO 15 does not disappoint here .
You can shoot up to 8K on the main camera, but the 4K@60fps available on both the main and telephoto cameras yields seriously smooth results.
The video quality itself is impressive, holding onto detail perfectly, especially challenging conditions. Crucially, its dynamic range is also solid, balancing the light so the bright sky doesn't get completely washed out, and you don't lose all the detail in the shadows.
Normal stabilisation on the main camera is pretty solid since it uses OIS. That said, if you engage the special ultra-stabilization mode, I feel there’s a little room for improvement there.
The iQOO 15 shows that iQOO is no longer content with having one of the most bang for the buck devices in the performance category; it wants a similar crown in terms of cameras too, and is willing to pursue it pretty aggressively.
The consistency is what wins here; all three rear camera systems share the same excellent color science and image quality, which is a huge accomplishment.
The new periscope lens is a genuine powerhouse, and the night modes prove that iQOO has finally figured out how to use computational photography to create art, not just pump the brightness up. For me, this camera system is a whole new experience and easily the most exciting part of the entire iQOO 15 package.