iQOO 15 Ultra Review: Massive 7400mAh Battery & Active Cooling Test

💡 Key Takeaways:

Battery King: A massive 7400mAh battery provides nearly 20 hours of mixed-use screen-on time.
Cooling Controversy: The active fan works well but cannot be toggled manually outside of “Game Mode.”
Elite Performance: Locked 144FPS in major titles via Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.
Universal Charging: The included 100W charger supports PPS/PDO for laptops and other phones.

The Fan That Thinks It Knows Better Than You

There is a tiny, 17mm centrifugal fan inside the iQOO 15 Ultra. It spins at thousands of RPM. It moves air. It keeps the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset from melting through the chassis during a Genshin Impact marathon.

But here is the problem: I cannot turn it on.

Unlike the RedMagic series, which lets you toggle the fan like a light switch, iQOO has locked this mechanical marvel behind a wall of software logic. It only spins up when the “Game Mode” detects a game. Want to cool down the phone while fast charging? No. Want to run a heavy video export? No. Want to show off the whirring noise to your friends? Tough luck.

This decision defines the iQOO 15 Ultra. It is a piece of monstrous hardware trapped in a padded room of safe, restrictively “smart” software.

Design: Cyberpunk, But Make It Corporate

iQOO has abandoned subtlety. The phone comes in two flavors: a “2077” black and a “2049” silver. The back panel uses a TOF (Texture on Fiber) process that shifts its honeycomb pattern depending on how the light hits it. It looks expensive. It feels expensive.

The camera island is where things get weird. Instead of a solid black slab, they went with a transparent “Explorer Edition” style cover. Underneath, there is an LED strip. If you are driving a car in Cyberpunk 2077, the LEDs mimic the strobe lights.

It is a gimmick. A cool gimmick, but a gimmick. The real story is the physical vent on the side. This is not a sealed unit; it has an intake and an exhaust.

📝 Editor’s Note on Durability:
iQOO claims IPX8 water resistance despite the holes, citing a special dust-proof coating and mesh system. I dunked it in a sink for five minutes. It survived. However, I still wouldn’t recommend taking it swimming.

Performance: The Brute Force Approach

⚙️ Tech Specs / Deep Dive:

Chip: Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5
RAM: Up to 24GB (LPDDR6 expected)
Cooling System: 59-blade active fan + 8000mm² VC plate
Display: Blinding 8000-nit Samsung panel

The specs read like a fever dream for spec-sheet addicts. In Honor of Kings and Delta Force, the phone sits at a locked 144FPS. That is expected for a 2026 flagship.

The active cooling does its job here. The chassis gets warm, but never hot. The heat is physically being pushed out of the device. However, the “super resolution” features in Genshin Impact (upscaling to 2K at 120Hz) introduce noticeable latency. It feels floaty. Pure hardware rendering is still the way to go, even if the resolution is lower.

The AnTuTu score hits 4.45 million. That number is meaningless for checking email, but it proves the silicon quality is high.

The Battery Behemoth

This is where the iQOO 15 Ultra justifies its bulk. It packs a 7400mAh battery. For context, most flagships in 2025 capped out around 6000mAh. iQOO is giving us two full days of normal use. Even with heavy gaming, I got nearly 20 hours of screen-on time in mixed usage. That is absurd.

Charging is equally robust. The box includes a charger that supports 100W PPS/PDO. This is rare. Usually, proprietary chargers are e-waste for anything other than the phone they came with. This brick actually fast-charged my Samsung foldable and a MacBook.

The Verdict

The iQOO 15 Ultra is frustratingly close to perfection. The hardware is elite. The screen is gorgeous. The battery life changes how you use a phone. The active cooling works.

But the software philosophy is patronizing. By refusing to give users manual control over the fan, iQOO is saying, “We know when you need cooling, you don’t.”