Update | iQOO confirms an upcoming release for its flagship smartphones through Amazon in India as the 9 flies through a durability test

Update: iQOO India has now confirmed that the 9 series will debut via Amazon on February 23, 2022. The OEM has also now unambiguously stated that at least 1 of these phones will arrive with the brand's full-fat 120W FlashCharge technology, rated to charge its battery by 50% in just 6 minutes.

Original Article: The iQOO 9 series currently provides high-powered alternatives to the Xiaomi 12-series or OnePlus 10 Pro units of the Chinese market. Their maker had hinted that it would start to make them available in other markets - well, in India at least - as part of its Battlegrounds Mobile Series championship campaign in that country. Now, the Vivo brand is following through with a launch announcement for the phones via Amazon.in.

This new preview page appears to confirm that the 9 and 9 Pro will indeed be "unleashed" on this retail platform "soon". The brand has reportedly indicated that these units would be capable of their top-end 120W charging speeds, whereas the last flagships it had released in this country had had to do so with downgraded 66W batteries.

Furthermore, iQOO has reportedly indicated to GSMArena that these India-specific flagships would arrive alongside a heretofore-unseen 9 SE (a rebranded Neo5 variant, perhaps?). As for the pre-existing flagships, its fans in India may already be wondering how their potential upcoming purchase might hold up in the long term.

To this end, the YouTube channel PBKreviews has acquired one of these 9-series devices to answer this question. Its host has put it through a battery of tests similar to those of the typical JerryRigEverything video, Mohs hardness picks and all. Then again, there were some additional tweaks, such as seeing if the phone could survive immersion in water for 30 seconds.

The 9 held up arguably well to all of this punishment, especially considering it has launched without official certifications for ingress protection. PBKreviews then proceeded to assess the ease of taking the phone apart and putting it back together again.

The new iQOO flagship performed less well in this video: replacing the display, for example, requires a heat-gun and dissecting it for fiddly internal components. In addition, its profusion of moisture-indicator stickers might make one less confident in its integrity.

All in all, its fans in India might now be able to anticipate a phone that, while more than durable enough, exudes industry-standard mediocrity in terms of repairability.

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