Realme X50 Pro Review


Realme’s rise in the Indian smartphone market is nothing short of sensational, experiencing exponential growth in Indian and global markets. After a series of a mid-range smartphones, the company entered into the big league with a well-equipped smartphone – realme X2 Pro to battle the flagships killers.

Now, the company has bought the 5G support into the Indian market through its second flagship device – realme X50 Pro 5G. So, how does the phone stack up in day-to-day use? Do give it a read.

Why should you buy it?

Build and design

The realme X50 Pro sports an aluminum-glass sandwich design with matte-finish texture, similar to OnePlus 7T Pro. Both the sides of the device are protected with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection.

As per the company claims, it chose 25% of haze value to reduce with the emission of light from 8% to less than 1% of ordinary glass. The roughness of the surface is controlled on 0.15um, which makes the matte surface provide delicate and warm hand feel, soft and comfortable, and fingerprint-proof. It comes in just two colors – Moss Green and Rust Red.

Compared to realme X2 Pro, the X50 Pro looks a bit small, with dimensions 158.96×74.24×9.36mm but heavier at 207grams. Coming to the button placements, the power button with a gold accent is present on the right, volume rockers on the right, secondary microphone on the top, loudspeaker grill, USB Type-C port, primary microphone, and the SIM slot on the bottom.

On the front, we have a dual front camera setup similar to Poco X2. You can also see the antenna cut-outs in Black color. The phone has dual SIM slots but doesn’t have a microSD slot. This is the company’s first phone to get rid of a 3.5mm audio jack as well in a bid to push its realme Buds Wireless.

Super smooth display with 90Hz refresh rate

The realme X50 Pro sports a 6.44-inch 1080 × 2400 pixels) Full HD+ 20:9 Super AMOLED screen with a 90Hz refresh rate. It supports HDR10+, has a peak brightness of 1000+nits, and protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 5 Protection. The phone has a 92% screen-to-body ratio, thanks to minimal bezels and screen support hardware-level DC dimming as well. On top of that, we also have an in-display fingerprint scanner from Goodix that can unlock the phone in 0.27 seconds.

In real-world usage, the display is quite accurate, blacks are deep, the color reproduction is on par with other phones at this price range, and viewing angles are good. It has a perfectly readable display under bright sunlight too.

Under settings, we have two presets – Gentle and Vivid. Further, it has ‘Low-Brightness Flicker-Free Eye Care,’ Night shield, and OSIE Vision Effect as well. The OSIE Vision effect boosts the color even more, but it works in select apps. Also, there is an option to adjust the refresh rate automatically between 60 and 90Hz to save battery life. Overall, the display offers a great experience, be it, for watching videos or playing games. However, the dual-punch hole could become an eyesore for some.

Amazing performance with Snapdragon 865 chipset

The realme X50 Pro is the first smartphone to be launched in India with Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 SoC. It also carries Qualcomm’s X55 modem, which means it supports the 5G network. The Adreno 650 GPU takes care of the graphics department. However, in India, there is no functioning 5G network as such right now. The storage standard for iQOO 3 is UFS 3.1 for super-fast read and write speeds. Generally, this helps with app performance and system fluidity.

Being one of the fastest phone currently out there, we experienced no lag or hitches or even remotely a sign of a slowdown. It features an upgraded five-dimensional Vapor Cooling System, which includes Vapor Chamber and Multilayer Solid Graphite, which enables higher heat dissipation performance. This cooling system helps the device to sustain peak performance when playing graphics-intensive games for hours.

Vapor Chamber dissipates heat from an area of up to 1821 mm2, compared with the previous generation of heat pipes increased by 339%, said the company. We played PUBG, Call of Duty, and Asphalt 9, among others. The flagship chipset from Snapdragon-powered every game without breaking a swear.

The X50 Pro comes in several variants – 6GB/8GB/12GB LPDDR5 RAM module and 128GB/256GB UFS 3.0 storage options.

Check out the synthetic benchmark scores.

Revamped realme UI!

The X50 Pro comes shipped with Android 10 on top of realme UI out of the box. As per the company claims, the UI is crafted, keeping the preferences and aesthetics of young consumers.

The new UI offers smooth performance, elegant visuals, and useful features as well. It has lots of customizations, including the option to customize the Icon size and style, Animated wallpapers, Dual Earphone connection, system-wide dark mode, focus mode, and much more.

One of my favourite features is the smart sidebar option that lets users add shortcuts for various actions as well as apps to the sidebar. Similar to Samsung and OnePlus devices, it also now has Screen Light Effects for incoming calls and lock screen notifications. Light effects are available in Neon Purple, Ocean Blue, and Amber Orange.

The X50 Pro has dual stereo speakers tuned by Dolby Atmos and supports Hi-Res audio playback similar to iQOO 3.

Why should you not buy it?

Super quick 65W fast charger, but!

The realme X50 Pro is powered by a 4200mAh battery with 65W SuperDart fast charging that can charge the phone from 0 to 100% in 35 minutes. Also, the phone supports 18W QC/PD charging and 30W VOOC 4.0 Flash Charge.

Coming to the battery life, it is purely an above-average deal. When it comes to casual usage, we just got around a day on a single charge (on refresh rate Auto select). During this time, I got a screen on time of 4.5 to 5 hours on average. However, the battery life takes a hit when used on a 90hz refresh rate.

But, the company is compensating this with a 65W SuperDart feature, which charges the device from 0 to 100% in just 35 minutes. This is a GaN charger adaptor, which uses Gallium Nitride (GaN) semiconductor material that can improve charging efficiency with a smaller charger volume, and at the same time, reduce heat generation.

The realme X50 Pro achieved a One Charge Rating of 17 hours and 52 minutes. We tested in 60Hz refresh rate, but it should be less with 90Hz refresh rate.

Camera not up to the mark!

The realme X50 Pro packs quad rear cameras:

  • Primary camera – 64MP camera with 1/1.72″ Samsung GW1 sensor, f/1.8 aperture.
  • Secondary camera – 8MP 119° Ultra-wide angle camera with the ability to shoot 3cm macro.
  • Third camera – 12MP telephoto lens for 20x hybrid zoom.
  • Fourth camera – 2MP black and white depth sensor.

The phone doesn’t have OIS but comes with UIS Video Stabilization.

  • Front camera – 32MP front-facing camera with Sony IMX616 sensor, f/2.5 aperture and 8MP 105 ° ultra-wide sensor with f/2.2 aperture

The X50 Pro is one of the few devices out there in the market with the versatile camera setup. However, it doesn’t translate into the result we thought a flagship phone at this price point would do. During daylight, the X50 Pro gives us output with crisp details, a decent dynamic range close to natural colors. It also has features like Chroma Boost to increase the saturation and vibrancy in pictures. We had issues at times with focusing as well.

The camera performance in low-light is a disappointment with nightscape mode being of little help. The pictures taken under low-lit environments came out more with noises. However, we believe a software update could fix the quality. The 12MP telephoto zoom can take 2X optical zoom photos, 5X hybrid zoom, and 20X digital zoom photos. The 8MP lens that doubles up as ultra-wide-angle and macro take some good shots as well.

The dual selfie camera offers good details with a 105-degree field of view, which can fit a lot more in the frame. Check out some of our samples below:

Other mentions

Talking about the fingerprint scanner, we could easily unlock the phone, and the reader seemed to be rather snappy. It supports connectivity options including 5G SA/ NSA Dual 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 6 802.11 ax (2.4GHz + 5GHz), Bluetooth 5.1, Dual-frequency (L1+L5) GPS, NFC, USB Type-C.

Notably, the X50 Pro features an advanced antenna layout design, which the company calls a 360° surround antenna. There are 13 antennas, 3 for GPS, 1 for Wi-Fi, 1 for NFC, 1 for Bluetooth, and 8 for 4G+5G. It covers all the world’s mainstream 5G bands, including n1, n41, n78, and n79. It also supports Smart 5G, where it can intelligently perceive the surrounding signal environment and user operation, then intelligently switch from 4G to 5G.

The call quality is good, and we did not face any call drops, and the earpiece volume was loud. Since it carries stereo speakers, the audio through loudspeakers is loud and good.

Pricing and availability

The realme X50 Pro 5G comes in Moss Green and Rust Red colors, is priced at Rs. 39,999 for the 6GB RAM with 128GB storage version, 8GB RAM with 128GB storage version costs Rs. 41,999, and the top-end 12GB RAM with 256GB storage version cost Rs. 47,999, and this is the new rate after increase in GST.  It will be available from realme.com and Flipkart.