Done with the number of days that we played on this one of their newest smartphones, here is our verdict on Realme 5.
ColorOS 6 is already no stranger for us since we got experienced some from their Realme 3 phone. No changes from the beloved app drawer, gestures, features and pulldown which is not a problem for all.
We went into 2 system updates up to it's Philippine launch. The good? Better overall camera performance in all of it's four cameras but the bud, not that friendly in terms of RAM management. In first boot-up out of our 4 GB RAM model, you can only gonna get around 1,6 to 1.7 GB RAM remaining. What more if they will gonna make the 3 GB RAM models available locally?
With both Realme 5 brothers have Qualcomm chipsets, it was almost a already dead giveaway that we had a smooth sailing in the connectivity department from calls, texts, mobile data, Bluetooth, WiFi and OTG. The phone also had 4G+ support
On battery, Realme 5 now holds the whole record in our video battery rundown test taken down by it's previous phone from Gionee. With it's 5,000 mAh battery and 6.5 inch HD+ display, it went the distance to 37 hours and 55 minutes. Using it as a daily driver in heavy usage in 11 hours average in screen on time, we can use this phone from 2 to 2.5 days. Luckily that the phone only has 5V 2A charging, the phone can be fully charged at around 2.5 hours
On extras: Got no problems on fingerprint sensor.
On extras: Got no problems on fingerprint sensor.
On gaming, we chose to have eveyone's fave Mobile Legends and it can easily go on the highest settings possible
Probably the biggest story on Realme 5 is having a quad main cam system consisting of it's primary + ultra wide + portrat and macro. For those who are about to buy it soon, some might be bothered on where is the macro lens sections as we suggest to open the AI scene recognition feature when you search "camera" in the settings menu. The first OTA update, the camera mostly struggle in mixed lighting but for some reason after just a reset, the primary cam worked fine most of the time. Having HDR auto mode activated will still provide quick image processing time and the AI scene recognition worked properly almost of the time. Just like in it's previous model, Nightscape was still easy to use as long as you will gonna have a proper dark subject like a road with less street lighting. Color accuracy is on point. The f/1.8 aperture on its primary shooter helped in some tweaks that we did when had pro mode in a rainy night. Ultra wide photos - no warping issue. Portrait with a few filters to use were also good. Selfies? The normal mode was a-ok but the AI beauty was just too aggressive especially with with just single digit percentage on the smoothen mode which almost looks like we already did it at max level. Of course, expect a watermark on the phone too
Here are our massive set of camera samples:
Realme 5 without to with nightscape camera comparison
Realme 5 normal to ultra wide camera samples
Realme 5 rear camera samples
Realme 5 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x zoom rear camera samples
Realme 5 selfie camera sample
Realme 5 normal to AI beauty (smoothen mode set at 10%) selfie camera sample
- Realme 5 is definitely one of the 2019 high midrangers that we loved so far for it's daring quad camera set-up that is trying to challenge for it''s pricing (as we do not have the PH pricing just yet, we will gonna be basing this one on it's India pricing). Strong performer for it's primary cam, good combo of quad camera system, battery life, design and new yet great peforming processor were the pros of this standard Realme 5 version. What really bugged me so far was the RAM management that needs a fix hopefully soon. Realme 5 for us is at 4.5 out of 5
Update: Realme 5 price in the Philippines will be at Php 7990 (3/64, yes that variant is not available compared to it's global launch in India) Php 6990 for 3/32 version and the one that we used for this review, the 4 GB RAM/128 GB ROM version at Php 9,990
