I had some hands-on time with Realme 5i — would I consider buying this?
Realme Philippines has launched its first official smartphone in the country for 2020, the budget contender, Realmi 5i. In fact, it’s almost the same with Realme 5 but with a ‘little bit’ downgraded features to make it even more affordable.
However, it still has lots of interesting specs just like Realme 5, which would make you consider to buy one. The realme 5i is now available for only P6,990 at some selected local gadget stores.
Design
Undeniably, 5i doesn’t differ that much from 5 in terms of design and construction. By looking at it, Realme 5 and 5i could be mistaken to be just actually the same.
The Realme 5i has two color choices: Aqua Blue and Forest Green. At the back of its “matte” case, it has a sun rays design which made it stand out as a budget phone. 5i comes up with a 6.5-inch LTPS IPS 1600 x 720 display and it also uses a 2.5D curved IPS display with HD+ resolution and Gorilla GLass 3+ protection.
Brightness is good enough especially when used under direct sunlight even for just a 50-60% level. Colors are well-saturated and its screen remains sharp for watching HD movies and viewing texts.
Performance
On top of that, this phone is powered by 5i’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 655 chipset and Adreno 610 GPU. 5i also gives pretty good performance when doing multiple tasks at the same time, but it wasn’t that speedy at all.
Speaking of memory, the phone has 3GB and 4GB RAM variants while also having internal storage options of 32GB/64GB/128GB. In the Philippines, Realme 5i has only 3GB ram compare in India which has up to 4GB.
Camera/Photography
In terms of difference, Realme downgraded the front/selfie camera of 5i, but just a little bit. The Realme 5 has a 13-megapixel front camera while the 5i’s only has an 8-megapixel. Yes, that’s the downgrade but not really a big issue. In addition, the selfie-camera is quite brighter than its predecessor.
But still, 5i’s camera has 2-megapixel main shooter, 8-megapixel (ultra-wide), 2-megapixel (depth sensor) and 2-megapixel (macro) camera.
Gaming Performance
Playing games in very high definition settings is also a factor when buying phones (especially if you’re a gamer). For a budget phone, not all the brands aren’t as good as Realme 5i to have a good gaming performance.
To test its gaming performance I tried playing some of the popular games like Mobile Legends set in the highest frame rate mode. In fact, there are some working apps opened while playing but it doesn’t affect the game — something that I almost encounter in some budget phones. Well, I hope it is consistent even when the storage became larger soon.
Personally, this phone is capable of giving us a good enough gaming performance.
Battery
While testing the gaming performance, I noticed it only consumed 2 percent battery for about 15 mins of playing, which is absolutely a plus factor. The phone has a large 5,000mAh battery with a 10W battery charging feature.
For some budget phones, playing games, especially in cellular data, consumes too much battery percentage which would trigger you to charge the phone while playing. Perhaps, this phone won’t let you do that bad habit of using your phone.
For details, here are the full specs below:
