From iQOO 13 to Offline Expansion, and Whether AI Will Be a Differentiator for Consumers: CEO Nipun Marya Talks to Gadgets 360

iQOO 13 has launched in India today, bringing the brand’s signature performance credentials at a competitive price. While iQOO 13 brings a host of upgrades over iQOO 12, as per the brand, it is more than a successor. The iQOO 13 is the first flagship smartphone from the brand that gets an ingress protection rating, and it is among the first in the country to sport Qualcomm’s top-tier Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC. The list of upgrades is big, and to walk us through the product and give us in-depth insights, Gadgets 360 sat with iQOO CEO Nipun Marya ahead of the launch.

iQOO 12 and beyond

The iQOO 12 was an excellent product, and it won accolades in the industry, including the Best Gaming Smartphone title at our NDTV Gadgets 360 2024 awards. We wanted to understand what consumers should expect from the all-new smartphone from iQOO. Marya explained, “From iQOO, we will continue to do some things that we have been doing, and they will remain constant. And, of course, some things we will keep improving. When it comes to things we will not change – our DNA, which is hardcore performance. We want to stand true to what we say and believe that with iQOO 13, we are really taking the performance multiple levels higher. Things like the Snapdragon 8 Elite and Q2 chip, among others, are the first parts that should not change and are not changing with iQOO 13. Second is innovation and constant improvements. We want to be really close to our community and consumers. We love to get feedback from our community and consumers. We love to take feedback from them about what they feel is good about the product and what can be further improved.”

iQOO 12 that launched in 2023

Briefly touching upon offline expansion, Marya said that the iQOO 13 launch would have more details and added that this was feedback the brand had received from its consumers for a long time. Gadgets 360 was the first to report that iQOO will finally foray into the offline market starting in December. iQOO phones will be available via Vivo-exclusive stores and other retail channels.

During the conversation, Marya also confirmed that the iQOO community reached another benchmark of 2 million members. iQOO is among a handful of handset manufacturers with an active community.

CEO Nipun Marya during the iQOO 13 launch

What’s new in iQOO 13?

iQOO 12 was among the rare products on Amazon that received a 4.5-star rating from consumers. Still, if one has to nitpick and see how you can improve, there were certain areas where people might have told you to improve further. Marya added, “Things like an IP rating, so with the iQOO 13, we have included the IP rating, then USB 3.2 as content creation and live streaming are gaining a lot of traction amongst our consumers, so USB 3.2 was something we wanted to add, and it is now part of the iQOO 13. The other thing is even on software, last year, for the first time, we offered a 3+4 software update policy; this year, we are taking it one step ahead and offering 4+5 for iQOO 13. Talking about innovation, this will come with the world’s first Q10 2K with up to 144Hz LTPO AMOLED display. So, overall, the goal is to give your consumers a holistic user experience.”

iQOO has always pushed its flagship phones to be all-rounder devices that aren’t limited to gaming or performance. What would you want to add here? “With iQOO 12, we were talking about a 2 million AnTuTu score, which at that time was considered great. Now, we are talking about a 3 million AnTuTu score, which was certainly unheard of earlier. See, it’s not just hardware and many times, we can’t just say 8 Elite SoC did the job. It’s the right combination of what Qualcomm has done and what iQOO R & D has done, which is to take the power of the chipset and optimise it to deliver the best performance for your users. And that’s what we take a lot of pride in as it’s just not fitting the chip or getting the fastest chip. But, it’s about how you optimise with software so that the experience is really good and fast,” said Marya.

He further added, “For gamers, iQOO becomes the first choice, not just for gamers but also for people who do heavy graphic tasks and heavy files on their devices. Recently, I met a couple of IT professionals, and they said they are on the go when they have to run a code or do some compiling work and for that, they need heavy computation, and iQOO can really do that for them. So, those kinds of people are tech-first power users. They are the ones who like iQOO. So, in performance, there’s 8 Elite in iQOO 13, but we just don’t stop at 8 Elite SoC as we also have the Q2 chip, which extrapolates or with game-frame interpolation, we go to 144Hz that’s again a very good experience and not just this, with VC cooling also you get a holistic heavy performance experience.”

iQOO 13 comes with an all-new Halo light design around the camera

What’s new in design and camera?

iQOO 12 was praised for its design, so what do consumers get on the iQOO 13? Marya, on the design, said, “People really liked the iQOO 12 design, and in many ways, aesthetically, it is one of the best-designed phones we ever made. So we continued the good part from iQOO 12, but there have been some adjustments or minor improvements that we thought could be done. For example, the camera bump has been further reduced, and the overall hand grip is much better now. So, Halo light is much more obvious and aesthetically pleasing; one can easily notice it, but there are more subtle small differences when a user starts using, and one can really feel that.”

When asked about the camera improvements on the iQOO 13, Marya said, “On the camera front, we have the Sony IMX921 sensor, which is tuned with VCS, which is the Vivo colour science algorithm. We have taken all the learning from the Vivo camera and put it into iQOO, especially the software bit. So, overall, whether you talk about day pictures, the ISP of the 8 Elite is much more powerful than the previous generations. So, again, it’s not just the chip or the camera sensor. The whole machinery is working to produce the output that’s coming. So, whether you are looking for portrait or, day or night or travel shots, iQOO 13 will do justice to the pictures you want. Additionally, some good AI features have been suggested by our consumers again, so we have added them as well.”

When will AI become the differentiator for consumers?

AI is the new buzzword, and this year, we do not expect any product presentation at launches to end without a few slides of these AI additions. Marya gave us a few AI features that are part of the iQOO 13. Features like AI photo Enhancer, where AI intelligently optimises photo parameters automatically, enhancing clarity and colour without the need for complex manual adjustments, and Instant cutout, which allows users to extract text from any image, and Instant Text, where users can easily extract a subject from an image and separate it from its background. iQOO 13 also joins the club of phones with Circle to search this year, finally. Then, there’s Like Transcribe, which can convert speech into text. The feature is said to support over 80 languages and dialects, with 9 offline languages. Lastly, there’s Live Call Translate, which translates phone calls in real-time directly on the device.

Then, we wanted to understand that smartphones are getting AI features, but are these enough to convince consumers to switch? Marya explained, “I have a slightly contrarian point of view on AI. Firstly, AI is not new and has become a marketing buzzword in 2024. It’s just that OEMs started picking it up as a marketing lever and tried to leverage it. So, consumers might think this is new, but fundamentally speaking, the amount of improvement we have seen in cameras in the last few years can be attributed to AI. Then, the improvement in gaming or cooling systems we see on phones can also be attributable to AI. So, AI has been running on our phones in the background for some time; it is just that the whole world has warmed up to AI. So, in smartphone marketing, it was also leveraged accordingly.”

However, the next question is whether it improves the overall experience, and the answer is yes, as per Marya. “However, I feel that they will keep improving the overall experience over the long term is when people start buying phones to experience AI. Right now, it can do a few nifty tricks, so I don’t think it is solid fundamentally as long as it is trick only. Right now, it is like a low-hanging fruit that brands are trying to leverage,” he added.

iQOO 13 comes with IP68 and IP69 rating

2025 is iQOO’s 5th year in India: What to expect?

2025 will be iQOO’s fifth year in India; how has the response been to the overall products, and what should consumers expect from the brand? Marya started, “In general, the response we have received for products higher than ASP (average selling price) has been encouraging. Industry ASP is around 20K, whether you talk about our Z9s Pro, which was around 20K to 25K, or our Neo series, which is 30K, or our flagship product at 50K. All are above industry ASP, and for a brand that’s as young as ours, the kind of response we have received for these products is very encouraging. This means people are understanding what iQOO is doing.

It’s also true that everyone is warming up to the idea of higher ASPs, but seeing that trend, the fact that people are accepting us with higher ASPs and, in fact, making us best-sellers in many cases, I think that’s very encouraging.

On iQOO 13 manufacturing and after-sales, Marya said, like other products from iQOO, the all-new iQOO 13 is being manufactured at Vivo’s Greater Noida facility. Talking about after-sales service, he said it provides access to over 670 company-owned service centres nationwide, ensuring convenient and reliable support across the country.

Just to recap, the iQOO 13 has launched in India at Rs. 54,999 for the 12GB RAM and 256GB storage and Rs. 59,999 for the 16GB RAM and 512GB storage.