iQOO Neo12 Goes on Sale at 4,399 Yuan With a Cooling Fan, a 9,000mAh Battery and Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

Vivo's gaming sub-brand launched the phone on Wednesday night and opened sales right away. Launch offers and China's national subsidy bring the entry model to 3,149 yuan.

DONGGUAN, China - iQOO launched the Neo12 in China on Wednesday night and put it on sale as soon as the event ended, as the company said it would on Oct. 19. The base model, with 12GB of memory and 256GB of storage, lists at 4,399 yuan. A 200 yuan launch discount and a platform subsidy of at least 550 yuan bring it to 3,649 yuan, and buyers who qualify for China’s national device subsidy pay 3,149 yuan, according to iQOO’s launch pricing, reported by IT Home. The offers run through Nov. 3.

The other four versions follow the same ladder. The 16GB and 256GB model lists at 4,799 yuan, the 12GB and 512GB model at 5,099 yuan and the 16GB and 512GB model at 5,499 yuan. The top 16GB and 1TB model costs 6,499 yuan before discounts and 5,149 yuan with every offer and the national subsidy applied.

The Neo12’s new square camera module, with the cooling fan grille beside the lenses. Image: iQOO

The fan is the feature iQOO wants buyers to notice. It is part of what the company calls its Ice Dome air-cooling system, a component the Neo11 did not have. iQOO says the fan has 59 blades and measures 17 millimeters across and 4 millimeters tall, and that airflow is up nearly 10 percent, while new fins in the air channel raise cooling efficiency by 15 percent. Behind it sits an 8,200-square-millimeter 3D vapor chamber that the company says spreads heat 15 percent better than the one in last year’s Neo11.

Inside is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, the chip in iQOO’s flagship iQOO 16, paired with iQOO’s own Q3 gaming chip. The company pitches the Q3 as something like a discrete graphics card for a phone. iQOO says 10 popular games support full-scene ray tracing on the Neo12, 13 support 2K upscaling, 12 support native upscaling and frame interpolation, and six can run all three at once. Gadgets 360 reported a peak clock speed of 4.6GHz and up to 1TB of UFS 4.1 storage.

iQOO says the Neo12’s 2K 185Hz screen uses a new light-emitting material developed with Tsinghua University and Visionox. Image: iQOO

The flat 6.83-inch display runs at 2K resolution and up to 185Hz. iQOO claims it is the only phone screen to combine pTSF technology with a new light-emitting material called “Mirror of the Sky,” developed with Visionox and Tsinghua University, and says a custom display driver chip is 28 percent faster and uses 30 percent less power than the one in the Neo11. The company rates full-screen peak brightness at 2,200 nits.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 slide from iQOO’s launch. Image: iQOO

The battery is a single 9,000mAh cell with 100W wired charging. That is 20 percent larger than the Neo11’s 7,500mAh battery, Notebookcheck reported, and iQOO rates its energy density at 916Wh/L. On the back, a 50-megapixel Sony main camera with optical stabilization sits beside an 8-megapixel ultrawide, and there is a 16-megapixel front camera. Gadgets 360 said the phone runs OriginOS 7 based on Android 17, measures 8.5 millimeters thick and weighs about 226 grams.

iQOO’s pricing for the five Neo12 configurations, from list price down to the national subsidy price. Image: iQOO

The Neo12 arrives a day after Redmi’s K100, which starts at 3,499 yuan with a 10,000mAh battery and last year’s Snapdragon 8 Elite. iQOO’s phone costs more at list price but carries the newer chip and a fan, and the two will compete through China’s Double 11 shopping season. iQOO’s launch covered China only, and the company has not said whether the Neo12 will be sold elsewhere.