Realme, the sub-brand of OPPO, a few days back launched its first phone in the Indian market dubbed as Realme 1 in an exclusively tie up with Amazon. This mid-ranger is launched to take on Xiaomi’s Redmi Note 5, Note 5 Pro, Asus Zenfone Max Pro M1 and other smartphones at the price segment. Starting at Rs. 8,990, does it have all the might to defeat the competitor? Let’s check it out here.
Unboxing
Box Contents
- Realme 1 in Diamond Black color
- 2-pin charger (5V-2A)
- Micro USB cable
- SIM ejector tool
- Screen protector
- Silicon back case
- User manual and warranty information
Display, Design, and Hardware
The Realme 1 sports a 6-inch (2160 x 1080 pixels) Full HD+ IPS display with 1.98mm slim bezels on the sides and 84.8% screen-to-body ratio. The display is bright, text looks sharp, color reproduction is on point and viewing angles are good. The display is perfectly readable under sunlight conditions and other outdoor scenarios as well.
This device also offers screen Color temperatures adjustments — Default, Warm and Cold. It also has a ‘Night Shield’ feature that reduces blue light from the screen thus preventing the eye strain. Users can schedule the time upon which, it turns on automatically. In addition to it, there is a color temperature option, where you can adjust to fit your desired eye protection effect. On a lighter note, the wallpaper collection in this device is absolutely good.
Unlike any other Chinese smartphones, the Realme 1 comes with a refreshingly new design with a glossy back and symmetrical design that makes the phone look like a diamond with each angle reflecting and shinning different black colors. The symmetrical-artwork and spatial effect are created by compressing 12 layers including optical filming and so on, plus nanoscale metallic coating. There are 15 tangent planes carved on the back body, and each plane has different colors. These colors differ as for the density and dip angle changes. There is a glossy rim running on the sides that house the interactive elements of the device. Talking about the build, the Realme 1 feels solid in hand and definitely looks premium too. It offers good grip, attracts fingerprints on the back and bit slippery as well. The device feels a bit big, but I guess, it won’t be a problem.
Talking about the placement, we have a dedicated SIM and MicroSD card slot and power button on the right side. The left side houses a volume rocker button and that’s about it. The bottom side of the device has a speaker grille, MicroUSB port, secondary microphone and 3.5mm audio jack. The front side of the device has 8MP front-facing camera, earpiece and bunch of sensors on top of the display. The device has no physical button, instead, the company has opted for the on-screen navigation button. Flipping it back, we have a 13MP rear camera with LED flash and a Realme branding beneath it.
Camera
The Realme 1 comes equipped with a 13MP rear camera with an aperture value of f/2.2 accompanied with LED flash. The front side of the device is taken care of 8MP camera with an aperture value of f/2.2. The camera UI in Realme 1 is pretty much simple and minimalistic without cramming too many functions on the apps home screen.
The top consists of toggle for flash, HDR, depth effect, super vivid mode, timer, and screen size. Just above the shutter button, there is a strip, which when swiped selects various camera mode and it includes Time-Lapse, Video, Photo, Sticker, Pano, and Expert. At the bottom, we have a mini gallery, shutter button, and a camera switch option.
Talking about the real world usage, the daylight pictures come out very well with good amount of details, so does the Macro shots. The camera is quick to focus the object, thanks to laser autofocus. Most of the pictures are sharpened to a level that it looks bit unnatural. The low light shots look decent but have some noise to it as well.
The 8MP front camera produces some good images too considering the number specified on the spec sheet. Most of the images turned out to be good both in daylight and low light conditions. It also has ‘AI beauty’ feature that intelligently provides the most suitable beautification for users. If not AI, there are different level of beautification The shots with beautification turned out to be soft Having said that, it is pretty good for video calls as well. There are AR Stickers with many different avatars for fun usage and share easily on social media. Check out the camera samples.
Software and Storage
The Realme 1 is shipped with Android 8.1 (Oreo) based on ColorOS 5.0 out of the box. From the lock screen menu, you can access the camera and nothing else. By swiping down, you can access notification panel and other settings. There is ‘Quiet Time’ feature when enabled, the phone will be put to silent mode with no vibration except for the alerts that user you have permitted.
There is an option to change the placement of navigation keys too and it can be hidden when the toggle is turned on. Another option available for navigation is the ‘Swipe up gesture’. Under the Swipe Up gesture, there are three layouts — Back at both sides, Simple gestures, Back on right, Back on left.
In addition to it, there is an Assistive ball option with various functionalities as well for navigation. Talking about the privacy protection, there are app locks, Kids space and, Private Safe.
It also has other security features including Secure apps store, Verification code protection, preventing background recording of Audio/images and a secure keyboard. Whenever you are entering important credentials like passwords, it automatically switches to the OPPO Secure Keyboard. It doesn’t record any input ensuring your information is absolutely safe.
There is a “Clone apps” feature when turned on, generates the duplicate version of the app you chose. The good thing here is that both the original and cloned app can run simultaneously without affecting each other. Moreover, there is a separate toggle for Split screen, when enabled, just swipe up with three fingers to enter the Split screen.
Talking about the storage, the Realme 1 comes with 6GB RAM and 128GB onboard storage on board. Out of 6GB RAM, we got around 2.95GB free in general and got around 106GB free onboard storage free in first boot. If not enough, you can expand the storage up to 256GB via MicroSD card slot.
Face Unlock
Since it lacks Fingerprint scanner, you can unlock the device with Face Unlock feature and pass codes. When it comes to Face unlock, users need to register their face on the device. This feature can be also used for App lock and Private Safe as well.
Performance
The Realme 1 is powered by Octa Core MediaTek Helio P60 (MT6771) 12nm processor (Quad 2GHz Cortex A73 + Quad 2GHz Cortex A53 CPUs) with 800MHz ARM Mali-G72 MP3 GPU under the hood. On our day-to-day usage, the device did not miss a beat and we haven’t seen stutter, hang or lag. It processes everything regardless of what you throw at it, thanks to 6GB RAM (In our unit). We also did some intense gaming on this phone, and we found no problem at all since most games like PUBG was smooth, and the graphics was good as well. Check out the synthetic benchmark score below, in which in tops in all the benchmarks.
Connectivity
The Realme 1 supports connectivity options including 4G VoLTE, WiFi 802.11 ac (2.4GHz/5GHz), Bluetooth 4.2 LE, GPS, USB Type-C and NFC on board. It has VoLTE support for Reliance Jio and Airtel. It has Dual 4G and Dual VoLTE option that lets you enable 4G and VoLTE on both the SIMs and switch between them easily. It also has USB OTG support that lets you connect USB drives. Moving on, the call quality is good and we did not face any call drops and earpiece volume was loud as well.
Battery
It is powered by a 3410mAh battery that uses AI battery management that learns your patterns and habits over time and snoozes or closes inactive apps to save power. To be honest, the battery life was fantastic and got us throughout the day on a single charge, even on heavy usage. At the end of the day, on a casual usage, we got around 30% charge remaining, thanks to AI battery management.
In our One Charge rating, the Realme 1 achieved a rating of 17 hours and 50 minutes, which is brilliant for a phone with a 6-inch screen and a 3410mAh battery. Also, it can charge from 0 to 50% in 51 minutes and from 0 to 100% in 2 hours and 21 minutes, since it doesn’t have support for fast charging. We will bring you the complete set of battery life test results soon.
Conclusion
The Realme 1 is a bang for the buck at a starting price of Rs. 8,990. With the launch of this device, Xiaomi and other competitors will face heat as this one has all the ingredients to be the better one. The Realme 1 comes in Moonlight silver and Diamond black colors, is priced at Rs. 8990 for the 3GB RAM with 32GB storage version, 4GB RAM with 64GB storage version costs Rs. 10990 and the top-end 6GB RAM with 128GB storage version costs Rs. 13,990. It will be available exclusively from Amazon.in starting from May 25th. To summarize the review, here are the pros and cons
Pros
- Build quality and design
- Smooth performance
- Good battery life
- Competitive pricing
Cons
- Lacks fingerprint sensor
- UI