5 Minutes
That tiny fan on a smartphone? It changes the game. iQOO’s new 15 Ultra is the brand’s first handset to ship with active cooling and, for once, the ‘Ultra’ badge feels earned.
Under the hood sits Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, but the headline is the 17x17mm ‘Ice Dome’ fan that moves 0.315 cfm to keep sustained performance sane. Pair that with blazing 10,667 Mbps LPDDR5X memory and UFS 4.1 storage, and you have hardware built for long, brutal sessions rather than short bursts. There’s a dedicated Q3 gaming co-processor too — it handles resolution upscaling and frame generation so the main SoC can breathe.
Gamers will notice the small things. Two 600Hz shoulder triggers accept tap and swipe gestures. Dual-axis haptics and Dolby Atmos stereo speakers add texture to gameplay. An RGB LED strip on the camera island gives the phone a bit of personality. In lab runs across seven popular titles the 15 Ultra kept a steady 144 fps while livestreaming; it’s also the first phone to push Honor of Kings to 144 fps at Ultra Quality, holding around 41.5°C on the phone’s rear.
The display is a 6.85-inch Samsung M14 LTPO OLED with 144 Hz refresh and 480 Hz multi-finger touch sampling. Color and HDR support are comprehensive — Dolby Vision, HDR10+, HDR Vivid and a claimed 118% P3 gamut — and the panel can spike to an eye-searing 2,600 nits when needed. DC dimming is present for low-brightness comfort, a small but useful touch.
Battery life is where the 15 Ultra takes its other big step: a 7,400 mAh cell packed at 867 Wh/L, inside an 8.7 mm, 227 g chassis. Fast charging is 100 W FlashCharge (with 55 W PPS compatibility), and wireless charging tops out at 40 W. For context, the standard iQOO 15 keeps a smaller 7,000 mAh pack in a thinner, lighter shell — the Ultra’s trade-off is weight for endurance.
Camera hardware keeps things symmetrical: a 50 MP Sony IMX921 main (1/1.56" with CIPA 4.5 OIS), a 50 MP 3x telephoto (1/1.95" with OIS), and a 50 MP 107° ultrawide. Selfies are handled by a 32 MP front shooter. If you were expecting a radical imaging overhaul, think instead of refined parity — the 15 Ultra borrows the proven optics from its vanilla sibling and tunes the experience for power users.
Here’s a practical surprise: despite the active fan, the phone carries IP68/IP69 ingress protection. That’s not common on ventilated devices, and it suggests vivo invested in more than just performance bragging rights — they engineered for real-world durability. Other niceties include a faster ultrasonic fingerprint reader, NFC, and three Wi-Fi antennas designed to keep connections stable even when a palm gets in the way.
- Processor: Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 + Q3 gaming co-processor
- Cooling: 17x17mm Ice Dome fan, 0.315 cfm
- Memory & Storage: LPDDR5X 10,667 Mbps, UFS 4.1 (up to 24 GB / 1 TB)
- Display: 6.85" Samsung M14 LTPO OLED, 144 Hz, 2,600 nits peak
- Battery & Charging: 7,400 mAh, 100 W wired, 40 W wireless
- Cameras: 50 MP main (IMX921), 50 MP 3x tele, 50 MP ultrawide, 32 MP selfie
- Durability: IP68 / IP69
iQOO has opened pre-orders in China with two dark, sci-fi color names — 2049 (silver) and 2077 (black). Pricing starts near the mid four-figure yuan mark for the base 16 GB / 256 GB model and climbs into premium territory for the top-shelf 24 GB / 1 TB configuration. The phone ships with a case, charger, cable and a cleaning brush for the fan — a small accessory that hints at a new maintenance routine for phone owners who want extreme performance without overheating.
Will this exact model land worldwide? vivo has been expanding its reach in recent years, but for now the 15 Ultra is a China-first proposition. If sustained performance and battery life matter more than absolute thinness, this one is worth watching. Who would have thought a spinning fan would feel like progress?
Source: gsmarena
Comments
Tomas
Is the IP68/IP69 with a spinning fan actually believable? seems like engineering magic or a fragile seal waiting to fail. Who wants to clean a tiny fan inside their phone though lol
atomwave
Wow that tiny fan actually sounds wild. 7400mAh + fan = marathon gaming beast, but 227g? gonna feel chunky tho. Curious about noise, dust maintenance... if it's quiet, I'm sold.
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