- iQOO has announced its 'Q3' mobile gaming chip
- This is the world's first to support full-scene ray tracing
- It will be included in the upcoming iQOO 15 handset
iQOO isn’t a brand we talk about much, but this Vivo-owned company has just announced something that could transform the smartphone gaming landscape.
The company has unveiled its new self-developed Q3 gaming chip, which is designed to work alongside a phone’s processor to give gaming a boost. Described as a “mobile graphics card” this isn’t something we see in many phones, though it’s the third generation of ‘Q’ chip from the company, so not a totally new idea.
The Q3 though sounds especially impressive, with iQOO claiming it’s the “only one in the industry to support full-scene ray tracing, super resolution, and super frame rates.”
Ray tracing can be used to improve reflections and other lighting effects, but so far on mobile if your phone supports ray tracing at all, it will only be used in certain parts of the scene. With full-scene ray tracing, light physics are more accurately simulated across the whole scene.
Super resolution meanwhile is an AI-powered technique for upscaling lower resolution visuals, and super frame rates simply means very high frame rates. So if the Q3 is capable of all that it could dramatically boost the visuals and performance of smartphone games.
You'll need an iQOO phone to get this iQOO chip
Of course, you’ll need a handset with this graphics chip in it, and so far only the iQOO 15 has been announced as including it.
This phone isn’t out yet, but iQOO has already revealed that it will have a 6.85-inch QHD screen with a 144Hz refresh rate, and thanks to an early Geekbench listing (via GSMArena) we also know that it should have a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset and 16GB of RAM (though other configurations may be available as well).
That chipset is the next generation on from the Snapdragon 8 Elite found in the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S25 series, and along with the Q3 chip it delivers impressive results here, with a single-core score of 3,824 and a multi-core score of 12,402.
That’s a similar single-core result to what you’d get with an iPhone 17 Pro Max, but it’s a far higher multi-core score, and both scores have current Android phones beat.
Leaks also suggest that the iQOO 15 could have a massive 7,000mAh battery and a trio of 50MP cameras, so while this is a niche brand in the west, it’s one that might be worth paying attention to.
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