Rumors of the iQOO 16 are already floating around, but iQOO, a Vivo brand, is not quite done with the 15 series. Joining the OG iQOO 15 and the iQOO 15 Ultra is the new iQOO 15T. That’s right—there’s yet another iQOO 15 variant, and like many recent Chinese smartphones, it feels more like a power bank that happens to have flagship phone features.
The “T” does not stand for tame. At its core is the world’s first MediaTek Dimensity 9500 Monster Edition, a customized 3 nm processor developed with iQOO’s Monster Super-Core Engine baked into the foundations. It works alongside the brand’s self-developed Q3 gaming chip, up to 16 GB of four-channel LPDDR5X Ultra RAM, and as much as 1 TB of UFS 4.1 storage.
The Q3 chip handles visual trickery such as real-time ray tracing, 2K upscaling, and frame interpolation at up to 144 FPS. It can even run 2K upscaling and 144 FPS interpolation simultaneously in supported games, for players who believe ordinary pixels and frames are signs of weakness.
Keeping the Monster from cooking the phone is an 8,000 mm² vapor chamber supported by more than 14,000 mm² of heat-dissipating graphite. Unlike the iQOO 15 Ultra, however, the 15T [CH] does without an active cooling fan. Your phone will therefore not sound like a tiny gaming laptop preparing for takeoff.
Up front is a flat 6.82-inch BOE Q10+ AMOLED display with a 3,168 x 1,440 resolution and an adaptive 1–144 Hz LTPO refresh rate. It delivers 1,800 nits of full-screen brightness and up to 4,500 nits locally, along with a maximum instantaneous touch-sampling rate of 4,000 Hz. A 3D ultrasonic fingerprint sensor sits beneath the screen and can work with wet fingers, which is useful when the match has become sweatier than expected.
The headline number may be the 8,000 mAh battery. It uses fourth-generation silicon-anode and second-generation semi-solid-state battery technology, with iQOO claiming up to 12.2 hours of MOBA gaming or 25.7 hours of long-form video. It supports 100 W wired charging, direct power supply during gaming, reverse charging, and exactly zero watts of wireless charging because something had to be sacrificed.
Photography receives more attention than you might expect from a gaming-focused phone. The rear carries a 200 MP, 1/1.56-inch main camera with OIS, CIPA 4.5 stabilization, 4x lossless sensor cropping, and up to 40x digital zoom. Beside it is a 50 MP f/2.0 ultrawide camera, while a 16 MP camera handles selfies. The rear system can also record video at up to 8K.
There is no dedicated telephoto camera, however. That remains one advantage of the regular iQOO 15, along with its more premium Samsung M14 display and wireless charging. The 15T instead directs more of the budget toward gaming performance and battery capacity. It knows why you are here.
Other features include symmetrical stereo speakers, an X-axis linear motor, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, NFC, an infrared blaster, dual-SIM 5G, Face Wake, and IP68/IP69 dust and water resistance. OriginOS 6, based on Android 16, runs the show and brings the expected collection of AI search, memory, photo-editing, and recommendation features.
The phone adopts iQOO’s Future Cabin camera design with a metal frame and is offered in Track Edition, Legend Edition, and Qingyun finishes. The Track Edition uses a fiberglass back, measures 8.25 mm (0.32 in) thick, and weighs 216 g (7.6 oz). The glass-backed Legend and Qingyun versions are 8.4 mm (0.33 in) thick and weigh 223 g (7.9 oz).
The iQOO 15T was launched in China on May 20, 2026. Suggested retail prices start at 4,099 yuan [CH] (about US$570) for the 12 GB/256 GB model and rise to 5,999 yuan (about US$835) for the 16 GB/1 TB version. No international release has been confirmed.
The iQOO 16 may be on the horizon, but with an 8,000 mAh battery, a 200 MP camera, and enough gaming hardware to give the word “Monster” contractual relevance, the 15T does not look ready for retirement. This phone, along with the many others we have looked at recently, serves as yet another reminder of just how cutthroat the smartphone market has become.
Images: Vivo [CH].
