iQOO has confirmed that its new flagship, the iQOO 16, is coming to Malaysia in November 2026. The phone was unveiled globally in Shenzhen on 29 September, built around the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 chip and a display iQOO co-developed with Samsung.
Contents
A 2K 165Hz display, built with Samsung
The headline feature is the screen. iQOO 16 carries what the company calls the world's first 2K 165Hz Samsung Everest Display, developed jointly with Samsung Display and built on Samsung's M16 emissive material and 2K LEAD 2.0 technology. iQOO says global peak brightness reaches 2,800 nits, and that the panel draws 31 percent less power than a 1.5K screen of the same size. The display supports 165Hz in more than 100 apps and over 50 games, with iQOO's own Q-flex touch control layer aimed at cutting input latency for fast-paced play.
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6, not the Extreme tier
iQOO 16 runs on the 2nm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6, the wider of Qualcomm's two new flagship chips this generation, paired with LPDDR5X Ultra Pro memory, UFS 4.1 storage and an 8.5K Ice Dome vapour chamber for cooling. iQOO's own Monster Core Engine handles scheduling at the kernel level to keep frame rates steadier under sustained load. On top of the Snapdragon silicon, iQOO has built an in-house Q4 esports chip that it says lifts performance by 15 percent and AI compute by 19 percent over the previous generation, and that supports full-scene ray tracing, super resolution and frame interpolation running together, which iQOO describes as working like a discrete graphics card inside the phone.
iQOO has also announced a mobile gaming partnership with Unreal Engine, bringing Lumen lighting and Nanite geometry into its software and hardware roadmap. Honor of Kings is named as the first title to support native 165 frames per second at maximum image quality on the phone.
Camera, battery and design
The main camera uses a 1/1.3-inch 50MP sensor that iQOO says captures 79 percent more light than before, alongside a 50MP Sony periscope telephoto lens and a 50MP ultrawide camera, tuned with vivo's imaging software. The phone ships with an 8,400mAh Blue Ocean battery, 100W wired charging and 40W wireless charging, and carries IP68 and IP69 ratings for dust and water resistance. It runs iQOO's new OriginOS 7.
Design-wise, iQOO 16 comes in three finishes: Chasing Light, Legend and Racing Track. The Chasing Light version uses AG glass with a laser holographic imaging process that shifts between red and blue light as the phone turns, and all three carry a camera module iQOO calls the Tomorrow Porthole, with three lenses arranged beneath a single piece of glass.
What this means for Malaysia
iQOO says the 16 will be available globally in four configurations: 12GB+256GB, 12GB+512GB, 16GB+512GB and 16GB+1TB, across the three finishes above. Malaysian pricing has not been announced, and iQOO's release only commits to a November 2026 local debut. For context, the outgoing iQOO 15 launched in Malaysia from RM3,699; where the 16 lands will depend on how iQOO prices the jump to the new Snapdragon chip and display. We will update this story once iQOO confirms Malaysian pricing and an exact launch date.
