Vivo IQOO: a Gaming Phone to Take on Razer?

Mobile gaming is busy growing at an incredible speed, partly due to the fact that smartphone specs and technology are catching up to consoles/PCs and also partly because the number of people with smartphones is constantly growing rapidly.

It’s no surprise, then, that we’re seeing a return to gaming-oriented phones with the kind of specs necessary to fully enjoy the increasing quality of mobile games. The Vivo ‘I Quest On and On’ or IQOO is one of the next in line to offer a serious challenge to Razer’s gaming phone.

Vivo might be a new name to many consumers, but the Chinese brand is actually at the cutting edge of smartphone innovations. They’re the first brand to have notch-less full-screen displays, in-display fingerprint sensors, and use pop-up selfie cameras – so it’s no surprise they’re going after hardcore gamers with a tech-packed smartphone.

The IQOO has pretty great features:

• 4-inch AMOLED display
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipset
• Glass-back LED screen
• Vapor cooling system to prevent over-heating
• 4,000mAh capacity battery
• Up to 12GB of RAM/256GB of Storage
• 3-lens Primary Camera

If you switch to landscape mode, there are even two pressure-sensitive buttons that can imitate the use of triggers on a controller (think L1 and R1 on a PS4 controller), making its gaming viability second to none.

Despite all the gaming-centric features they’ve included, the general specifications make this a flagship-beater that can pose a threat to any of the bigger brands, so it’s unlikely to appeal exclusively to gamers.

Although it’s only currently available in Chinam Vivo has communicated that it’s likely to be released in other markets eventually, and considering its rather modest price of $450 (around R6,400), it’s probably going to be a seriously considered option wherever it’s available.