iQOO 12, slated to launch in India on December 12, has been confirmed to come with Android 14-based Funtouch OS. But that was mostly expected. The Vivo spin-off is sharing an extra nugget, today, alongside that claims the upcoming iQOO 12 will also be the first modern-day iQOO phone to come sans two prominent sources of bloat: Hot Apps and Hot Games.
For more context, Hot Apps and Games are two folders you’d normally find on an iQOO/Vivo phone that serve as quick access points or shortcuts for apps and games from Vivo’s app store, not Google’s Play Store. Since they’re not really apps, but extensions to Vivo’s app store, you can’t uninstall them much in the same way you can’t uninstall the Vivo app store. At best, you can hide them and that, too, varies from phone to phone. Long story short, it’s something nobody asked for and yet, it’s there for reasons only iQOO and Vivo know of.
But the Funtouch OS based on Android 14 finally removes the Hot Apps and Hot Games folders from the iQOO 12. It remains to be seen if this is a one-off thing exclusive to the iQOO 12. Chances are the upcoming Vivo X100 series phones will also come without them. But the real thing to watch out for would be if iQOO and Vivo will do something similar on their more budget-oriented phones also.
Elsewhere, iQOO also bills the iQOO 12 to be the first non-Pixel phone in India to ship with Android 14 right out of the gate beating Samsung, OnePlus and virtually every other Android brand to the race to do that. iQOO is committing three years of major OS and four years of security updates. The iQOO 12 will also be the first commercial phone in India to come powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor. Since the iQOO 12 is already a go in China, we can also expect it to come with top-tier camera specs and a design upgrade over the iQOO 11.
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