Realme focuses on good design, good cameras, and powerful performance at an honest price. That’s why the Realme 5 Pro is one of the examples of a promising device for us. Let’s know: Was it worth all the words or not?
Design
The design of the device is a holographic crystal design using polycarbonate material. There were two colour variations: crystal green and sparkling blue. While reflecting at certain angles and shining brightly in reflection, the cut texture of a polycarbonate material would question the device’s durability. The diamond-shaped pattern glows in light and dark. Shane’s white tilt shows the device applied.
While holding the device, it feels quite nice and considerably hefty, but not close to Reality X because it has a different level of design. As if to say, the looks of the device are pretty eye-catching in this price segment, but the device easily attracts a lot of scratches and finger smudges, so even if you clean it, it still attracts a lot of smudges. I suggest you use a case; you also get a case inside the box, and more on their website.
The case could easily be used for 2 months because it is a transparent silicon case. Aesthetically, the button is not so satisfying. The tactility of the buttons, which is obvious to see on those phones, is entirely built of plastic. On the bottom, you will find a USB Type-C port along with a 3.5mm audio jack and single speaker grills.
The earpiece on the front works very fine; even in cellular calls, it is very clear, and there is no issue we found. The single-bottom speaker is not the lowest, but it is equally loud compared to other devices in the same price bracket. The network reception worked well; it was neither bad nor the best I ever saw fit in the middle. In the case of Low Network, it works perfectly fine and has no general problems; I would not say it is the best among others.
The audio quality from the headphone jack and single-firing speaker is unimpressive, like most mid-range smartphones. However, the device is splash-proof, meaning it is suitable for normal daily usage but not for the extreme situations also found in Realme 5. If you think this is similar to the IP rating, then it is not. The ports and openings of the phones are sealed with rubber gaskets to prevent moisture and water damage.
Moving to the headphone jack, the headphones via cable or Bluetooth are pretty clear and loud. At 70%, the sound is acceptable. Realme 5 Pro Depth Long-Term Review: Problems and Cons The real deal? It is comfortable to hear music and other stuff. So you don’t have to worry about the headphones’ audio quality at all.
Display
It is the same display used in Realme 3 Pro. It comes with a 6.3-inch (16.0 cm) Dew-Drop Notch Design IPS LCD Display with a 2340 x 1080 Pixel Resolution at 409 PPI. Which can go up to 450 units of maximum brightness, providing you with a 90.6% screen-to-body ratio alongside night mode for eye care. Which is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3+, which can handle minor drops and impacts.
Moreover, the display produces good colours and a vibrant course. Not at the AMOLED level, but not bad either. The brightness level is usable in both outdoor and indoor conditions as well. Even though it has various battery-saving options to use, the MINI Drop Notch is quite small and equipped with a selfie camera. Meanwhile, the device is not obtrusive at all.
Further, there is a colour temperature slider inside the display setting that allows you to change the display temperature as per your reference. There is not much change happening, but the display is familiar to use in Realme 3 Pro. The screen quality is an IPS LCD, and the viewing angles on the device are accurate.
Performance
Under the hood, the Realme 5 Pro is powered by the Qualcomm 10nm Snapdragon 712 SoC using an 8x Kryo 360, which is essentially the same as the Snapdragon 710. Expect a slightly higher clock speed of 2.2 GHz. This leads to a higher performance score, and for the GPU, it is still the Adreno 616. In general, you are not going to experience any lag with a 10% improvement in CPU performance. Which you are not going to notice all that much.
Not to mention, the device has a significant improvement over the Realme X, Redmi Note 7 Pro, and Vivo S1. The Realme 5 Pro Graphics also improved by 35%, helping the AI Engine increase efficiency during speech recognition and image optimization. The chip is coupled with 4GB/6GB/8GB LPDDR4x RAM and 64GB/128GB UFS 2.1 ROM. You can expand storage up to 256GB using a microSD card.
You are going to experience a read speed of 498.25 MB/s and a write speed of 191.05 MB/s. Which means faster load times for apps and games. There is also a dedicated MicroSD card slot and a 2x Nano SIM port, which is handy. In everyday use, we found the device to be smooth. Even you can play games in high-graphics settings.
Games and applications on the device run very well, and even in the heating department, you are not going to experience much. Likewise, it has a normal rise in temperature sometimes, which is normal during intense gaming. Which is nothing to worry about at all. Ram management on this device is also done well.
Software, privacy, and security
The device runs on Android 9 Pie-based Custom Skin ColorOS 6 right out of the box. We know that the UI is very mature, but on real devices, it doesn’t feel the same as what we experience on Oppo devices. While it is the same offering on other real devices, it is just the same experience. We are waiting for Realme OS X and Android 10 updates in the future, as well as Q1 of 2020.
There is also a dedicated game booster, which frees up resources to focus on your gaming. It also offers you a night mode with a lot of options to play. There are some pre-installed apps from a third party, but you can uninstall them. There are no ads in their UI, and privacy sharing is negligible.
It has both a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor and face unlock, which works pretty fast. Most of the time, it is accurate, and you can use both at the same time. Which you have to enable in Settings. By default, it doesn’t. Face-unlock is fast, but still, it uses a selfie camera. I prefer to use a physical fingerprint sensor.
Camera
This is the first time Realme has featured a quad-camera setup. It is harmful that they didn’t think of a triple camera setup; they jumped straight from dual to quad cameras. Anyway, the rear 48MP quad camera setup includes an ultra-wide-angle macro lens.
The rear quad camera is equipped with a 48MP primary Sony IMX 586 sensor with an f/1.79 aperture, 8MP 119° wide-angle, 2MP depth, and a 2MP macro lens with a 4CM shooting distance. The rear primary sensor is the same as found on the Realme X, which brings great sharpness and is nice and detailed yet not oversaturated. If you need more vibrant images, then you can turn on Chroma Boost.
There is a separate full-fledged 47MP ultra mode, but you would not find much difference at first glance over 12MP images. While the Realme X and Redmi 5 Pro have the same ISP and chipset, apart from a slight colour difference, there is not much difference, but the Realme 5 has more still images along with edge detection. Selfies are also the same with both portraits and Norman Selfies.
Moving forward to wide-angle lenses, this is the first device from Realme to pack a wide-angle lens. The primary and wide-angle don’t suffer much from colour shifting. Similarly, we can expect to see fewer details in wide-angle images, but there is nothing to worry about. The depth sensor is great as well, and the edge detection for 2MP is slightly pleasing and social media-friendly.
The macro lens is not good at all, but it does the job. Similarly to Realme 5 Pro, it is a gimmick because taking the same image from a distance using a macro for normal is just the same most of the time. We can expect Realm to provide a better-than-current nightscape feature that is there just for compensation, which is to balance the lighting conditions by adjusting exposure.
The video recording on the device is nice; it has 4K video recording at 30 fps, 1080 HD video recording at 30 fps or 60 fps, and 720 HD video recording at 30 fps or 60 fps. While slow motion is recorded in 1080p and 720p at 120fps and 960fps, respectively. This is great, and the video stabilisation is okay at this price, but you can use a gimbal to record in 4K.
Battery
To power the device, it packs a massive 4045mAh battery, which can run for almost a day with a (4V@5V) 20W VOOC 3.0 Fast Charger bundle inside the box. You can charge under 0~85 minutes, impressive, isn’t it? The battery life is good because having a 10nm SOC is power efficient, which means you can easily get ~7-8 hours of battery life for general use.
Cons about the device
The device supports up to three multiple touches, but the fourth touch is having an issue. It just shows ghost touches on the device, but again, we can expect a real fix via an update in the future. Again, in day-to-day use, I don’t feel any of it, but yeah, it’s there. I guess you are going to miss out if you are a Redmi user.
We suggest you go with a 6GB RAM variant, which is just ₹1,000 more, but you will be future-proof if you are going to buy it for long-term usage. We all know that the device will be getting updates about Android 10 in Q1 of 2020, and apps are getting heavier than before. You are getting a lot of hardware in this segment, and everything packed into this device offers you a lot of value.