aiku is a sub-branded company of vivo which was founded at the start of 2019 and was initially
meant to be vivo's gaming mobile division not even two years down the line vivo released the
iq 5 and 5 pro which shifted the gaming appeal to a racing car aesthetic with their very first bmw
motorsport branded smartphone just a few months later the iq7 landed with the absence of a pro
model which received an iterative upgrade to the iq5 but more noticeably introduced vivo's new
origin os software skin which naturally replaced fun touch os it's now been 8 months since the
iq7 launched in china and vivo have presented us with this the vivo iq 8 pro a massive leap forward
for the smartphone industry not only does the iq8 pro incorporate the same 5-axis gimbal stabilized
camera we've seen in recent vivo x-series devices but it's the world's first smartphone to use
samsung's latest e5 oled display and under that display sits the very first mass-produced qualcomm
3d sonic max ultrasonic fingerprint sensor which is not only the largest smartphone fingerprint
sensor on the planets but the fastest one too this is technic and i'm extremely excited to
test out all of this new smartphone tech in this unboxing and initial review of the aiku 8 pro
the iq 8 comes in two different color variants we get the track black edition and legendary
white edition i've purchased the track black edition this time around since the iq7 i had
was indeed the white bmw edition this is actually a carbon fiber vegan leather finish at the back
the white version is actually sandstone which is also pretty cool in its own we have a black
silicon case in the box over here you see the slogan for bmw motorsports at the bottom of the
cover over there but peeling off that cover things look a lot classier i really do like this vegan
leather finish which has a carbon fiber texture and look to it and really feels fantastic to hold
with quite a bit of fair grip at the back there compared to your regular glass finished phones
with a 4 500 milliamp hour battery under the hood with 120 watt fast charging 50 watt wireless
charging a snapdragon triple eight plus 5g cpu run on five nanometer tech gorilla glass six front
aluminum frame vegan leather back or of course the sandstone back if you do go with the white version
it is quite thick at 9.19 millimeters thick and the black version is slightly lighter than the
white version weighing in at just 202.5 grams at the back of the iq 8 pro sits a 14 millimeter
ultra wide sensor which is indeed a 48 megapixel imax of 598 camera a 23 millimeter main sensor
which is a 15 megapixel imx 766 v the v stands for vivo which is actually a custom made sony
sensor for this phone specifically of course it also has gimbal stabilization as it says at
the bottom of the camera module and last but not least completely in the trio is the 60 millimeter
telephoto they call it a portrait telephoto since the optical zoom only reaches a max of 2.5 times
and when comparing the iq 8 pro in the middle to the oppo find x3 pro on the left and s21 ultra on
the right hand side when it comes to an ultra wide shot the iq 8 pro does quite a good job actually
it's not as wide as the other two though it does have a much better depth perception thanks to
brightening up the shot a lot more than the other two which is actually something i would never
thought i'd say where aiku is doing a slightly better job than samsung over here when it comes
to taking a snap with the main sensor without pixel building over here the iq 8 pro and oppo
find x3 pro are using the exact same sony imx 766 main sensor apart from the v standing for
vivo which is seen on the iq a2 pro which is actually a custom-made sensor as i said earlier
and yes the iq 8 pro does look slightly better than the oppo but i cannot say that it looks
better than the samsung 108 megapixel iso cell hm3 sensor which looks a tad better than the oppo
and ikuz when taking all of these main sensors and pinning them down four to one pixel bend on
the oppo and iq down to 12.5 megapixels and nine to one super pixel binning on the galaxy s21 ultra
from 108 to 12 megapixels all of them look pretty much similar to their previous results which
actually seem to handle light slightly better when indoors as you can see over here once again the
samsung slightly coming out on top showing a tad more bit of detail but the iq and oppo find x3 pro
are not too far behind the first phone to kick in with optical zoom here is the oppo since it
has the lowest two times optical zoom using its 13 megapixel telephoto sensor the two on the
right haven't kicked in their telephoto sensors yet since their optical zoom levels are slightly
higher than that of the oppo at 2.5 times on the iq and three times on the samsung so they're just
sitting at digital zoom and comparing the digital zoom on the iq and samsung to the optical zoom on
the oppo you can truly see that optical zoom is definitely the way to go and of course the iq8
pro does also have optical zoom and it only kicks in at 2.5 times and has a higher megapixel count
of 16 megapixels when using its telephoto lens the oppo is still using its telephoto lens but
is now sitting at digital zoom since it surpassed its two times optical zoom level and the samsung
is sitting at digital zoom using the main sensor store since this optical zoom has not yet kicked
in using its telephoto lens meaning that the best one here should be the iq 8 pro and so far
it looks that way to me and now the samsung's telephoto lens has kicked in with three times
optical zoom over here the other two are still using their telephoto sensors but once again
sitting at digital zoom meaning that the samsung should look better and though the samsung does
show a tad more detail over here i can't say it looks much better than the iq 8 pros which
actually looks a hell of a lot better than the oppo find x3 pro shot over here and the iq 8 tends
to warming up the shot a little giving it a bit of a homey feel when it comes to five times zoom over
here all of them just using hybrid zoom but still sticking to their telephoto sensors over here
this is now not optical on any of them and i think that the digital zoom on the samsung is actually
doing a better job than the two on the left as soon as we hit to 10 times zoom over here samsung
swoops in to take the lead once again since it is fitted with a second telephoto lens and this
time it is actually a periscope lens and it is of course 10 megapixels and reaches up to 10 times
optical zoom you can definitely see that the level of detail is a lot higher on the samsung shots
as opposed to the 10 times digital zoom shots on the oppo and iku's side on the left hand side the
oppo looks closer to the samsung with the aiku lagging behind a bit and when it comes to taking
a shot slightly closer to a subject using the main cameras over here for a natural bokeh effect in
the background i think that all of them are pretty much on par with each other of course they also
all sport 4k 60 frames per second video and you can definitely see the gimbal working there on
the iq 8 pro which makes things seem a tad more smooth compared to the other two devices there
is the gimbal itself it is of course a 5-axis gimbal stabilizer and when you turn it on you can
actually see the little camera moving inside there right at the top if you've missed it which is just
so darn rewarding moving on from that camera and that stunning back carbon fiber finish we have a
power button on the left hand side which is indeed textured with an orange accent we have a dual sim
5g tray over here unfortunately no expandable storage but there is a water resistant seal very
strange there usb a type c 2.0 speeds we do have dual stereo speakers one at the bottom and one in
the top earpiece with a super audio and of course we have a selfie camera as well 16 megapixels with
an aperture of f 2.4 and comparing these selfies to the upper on the left and samsung on the right
the aiku actually doesn't do a half bad job but i do feel like the insane amount of detail that
you're seeing on the s21 ultra truly does up to the other two but when it comes to taking
a portrait shot the samsung still has that crazy level of detail but fails in the edge detection
front while the iq and oppo have no problems giving you pinpoint edge detection around my head
separating the foreground from the background the selfie camera is a selfie camera it does the job
pretty well but what about turning on the phone and getting into the nitty-gritty tech features
that are just having me buzz all over the show we do have a qualcomm 3d sonic max fingerprint sensor
here it is ultrasonic look how massive that thing is you can actually put two fingers in here which
i'll test that in my full review one for you and say one for your kids so that you can authorize
payments i guess it is absolutely massive and is 17 times bigger than the gen 1 ultrasonic
and 9 times bigger than the gen 2 ultrasonic of course you can change the icon patterns
as well as the animation styles though not a huge variety i'm sure that will change going forward
the ultrasonic 3d max is 20 by 30 millimeters in surface area which is a hell of a lot larger than
the others and just takes two seconds to unlock which is a hell of a lot quicker than the previous
generations as well of course we are skinned with origin os over android 11 over here and it looks
i guess you could kind of say roughly similar to ios mixed up with an android experience over here
a lot of similarities throwing around over here but if you do prefer the average android style
going back to fun touch os which you've seen on previous vivo phones you can actually switch to it
on the fly using a mood cube and jumping through a parallel world and back to
origin os which is great yes of course there is google and yes the play store does work even with
the chinese variant that i have over here we are welcome to a snapdragon triple eight a plus cpu
which has a max clock speed of 3 gigahertz and is supposedly 20 more powerful than the vanilla
snapdragon triple h and while i only picked up the 8 gig of ram variance of the device we can use 4
gig extended ram over here bringing up the total to 12 gigs but you've got to bear in mind that
that extended ram is actually using your phone's ufs 3.1 storage instead of your lpddr5 ram speed
and taking those hardware specs and throwing them into antutu benchmark version 9.1.2 over here the
iq 8 pro has truly flown here with a score of 837 407 points which is quite a bit ahead of the
mix 4 and magic 3 pro plus using the exact same chipset the screen is of course seeing a bump up
here to 1440p resolution which is wqhd plus and that is not the only thing that has changed we
are now seeing a larger 6.78 inch ltpo led 20x9 aspect ratio curve display and we do have an e5
panel over here which is made by samsung the first phone in the world to house it which is apparently
25 percent more efficient than the samsung e4 which we saw earlier on this year it is a pixels
per inch of 517 and it has 1.07 billion colors hdr 10 plus supports 112 dcr p3 and 140 srgb color
gamut rating with a thousand five hundred nits of peak brightness and thanks to that ltpo display
we can vary our refresh rate from 1 to 120 hertz and we also get kitted with 300hz touch sampling
rate which is no wonder why it broke 14 records on displaymate the iq8 pro is a phenomenal phone
to say the least that crispy clear display on the front as well as that insane fingerprint sensor
and that more than capable camera system on the back with gimbal stabilization has really got
me excited for the full review which you guys certainly need to stay tuned for so make sure
to like subscribe and smash that notification bell so that you are notified as soon as my full review
drops which should be in the next few weeks this is tech nick and i'll catch you in the next one