Realme X Full Review : I'm Impressed!
Oppo's Child company Realme has been making headlines lately with their new releases. I had heard a lot of great things about their U series of phones, but then they came out with a new one: the Realme X.
It seemed to be a promising phone with a pop-up camera, an AMOLED screen with an In-display fingerprint sensor, and more for the price of around 16 Thousand Indian Rupees. I thought it would be a great gift for my cousin, so I bought one.
After using it for a while before passing it on to its new owner, these are my thoughts on the 128+4 GB version of the phone.
Design and Build:
One of the most impressive things about modern day smartphones is their build quality. Even the most budget friendly options have fantastic hardware, at least on the outside. The realme X is made out of the usual premium recipe of a metal frame sandwiched between two glass sheets, the front glass being Gorilla Glass 5 and the rear one being some strengthened tempered glass.
The buttons are placed at the center of the phone’s body
length, which makes them very ergonomic to reach with your thumb. In fact, they’re
a bit too low for my hands, which had me fiddling around to find the volume
buttons, especially in landscape mode.
For video nerds like me, the centered buttons would mean that
you cannot clamp them down in the usual way on a tripod mount. But for hand
held use, they’re pretty spot on.
The top of the phone only has the rising camera at the center
and the bottom houses the speakers the USB-C port and the much loved headphone
jack.
On a side note, the speaker cut-out and the other ports are
pretty well aligned, which tickles my OCD spots.
But that excitement quickly went away when I start typing on
the keyboard here, as the rather mediocre haptics made me turn off the vibrations
entirely. That keyboard made me realize something about the screen corners on
the top and bottom corners, more on that later.
There is no SD card slot here, but I suppose the 128 GB of
storage will make sure you never find the need for one. Still, having an option
would’ve been nice though. There is also no ingress protection to speak of, so
that’s something to keep in mind.
Display:
The organic LED panel ensures inky dark blacks and slightly
greenish whites with pretty much zero visible light bleed. It’s great!
What’s not so great are the “rounded” corners. The display
doesn’t seem to be cut in that shape, but is probably hidden under a curved black
bezel. This is seen while viewing some content on screen where the corners seem
unnaturally cut off.
In some instances, like while playing PUBG, a pretty
significant part of information was cut off from the corners. I tried changing orientation
of the device, but the results were the same.
The Fingerprint Sensor:
On the brighter side of things, the AMOLED panel makes it easier for them to implement the in-display optical fingerprint sensor, which works marvelously.
The included animations appear awesome on standby. The
fingerprint indicator comes up whenever the phone detects movement, and once authenticated,
unlocks with some pretty satisfying high framerate animation sequence around
your finger.
Cloud animation |
I’m actually pretty surprised that realme managed to
incorporate such a high accuracy sensor in this mid-budget smartphone. Massively
appreciated, mates!
Usability:
The phone is running on Oppo’s signature ColorOS on top of
Android 9.0 Pie. It is actually one of the better skinned versions of android I’ve
used in recent times. It manages to stand out while not being too over-the-top
so as to ruin the user experience in certain ways. I’ll take that over plain
old boring stock android any day.
While 4 Gigs of ram may not seem like enough memory to satisfy
power users, it actually managed to hold its own in all the tasks I threw at
it.
Now, granted, I did not edit 4K videos or do any other heavy
lifting tests (Other than Gaming) on it, but I’m sure it would’ve performed
just fine. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 chip under the hood is no slouch.
It's chicken for dinner tonight |
There’s a dedicated Game optimizer thingy on board called
as the Game Space. It kind of reminds me of the “Shark Space” from the Xiaomi
Black Shark phone from the way it looks.
It essentially detects a game launch, clears the background
tasks to free up some extra RAM and enables DND mode.
Even after extended online gaming, the device did not get
very hot at all. In fact, it was barely warm to the touch. I’m very impressed.
UI navigation wise, there are one handed gestures in the
settings that replace the on-screen buttons. They are a lot similar to the ones
on Samsung’s new OneUI. So, being a long time Samsung Galaxy User, I felt right
at home with them on, quickly swiping my way around the UI like it’s my second nature.
The Cameras:
There is an option to zoom in 2X, but that’s just digital
zoom. I guess the company figured that when you have such a huge resolution on
your main sensor, 2 times digital zoom won’t kill anybody. And they were right!
Full-Auto (Rear camera) |
The pictures look pretty great, with ample amounts of
details and fantastic low light performance, once again besting my Note 8 in
Auto Mode.
There is, of course, am “Expert mode” which allows you to
manually dial in the settings as you please.
The rear camera can record 4K 30 FPS video, and save for the
noticeable over-saturation of the green color, the video looks as sharp and
detailed as ever.
Full-Auto Low Light |
"Expert mode" (Long exposure) |
Backlit shot |
Boost Color mode enabled |
Rear camera Portrait mode |
The 2x digital crop of this 48-megapixel sensor pretty much always outperforms the 12-megapixel telephoto optical zoom on my Galaxy Note 8. The second camera on the top with the golden rings around it is simply a 5-megapixel depth sensor to help out in the portrait mode.
Now, let’s get to that motorized front camera. That sensor is, once again, the best one I currently have in my pocket when it comes to selfies in low-light.
Images come out looking crisp, with plenty of contrast if
not a bit over-sharpened. But most phones are guilty of digitally sharpening
their images to some extent.
The front camera also has portrait mode, which makes use of
face recognition as reference to blur out the background, similar to what we
find on Google Pixel devices. Even under extreme backlit conditions, the
selfies come out to be very serviceable.
I am a fan of this camera, and I can’t believe this phone
costs 3 times less than my daily driver!
Battery Life:
The built in 3765 mAh unit along with Oppo’s VOOC FlashCharge through the USB-C port delivers excellent battery backup.
Top up only took 65 minutes from 10% to 100% in my case and
lasted for over 6 hours of mixed usage. As long as you have that incredible
charger handy, you don’t have anything to worry about.
Whatever magic OnePlus is doing on their devices to keep
them from heating up during charging is present here as well. The phone didn’t
even get noticeably warm despite charging up so rapidly! I still can’t believe
it costs 3 times lesser than my everyday phone!
Final Verdict:
Boy, has this been fun for me or what! This smartphone is
phenomenal at its asking price. You get a beautiful AMOLED display, exceptional
set of cameras and great battery life to back it all up. You really can’t go
wrong with this one!
You can check out the latest pricing and availability online
by clicking here.
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