Days before it became official in the Philippines, realme Philippines again for nth time dropped their upcoming smartphone, a first in their "6" series. Despiite of some limitatons due to the quarantine, this might be your next high midrange smartphone for under 10k, here's our review on Realme 6i
As we encountered Realme C3 already with Realme UI based on Android 10, there was almost no learning curve for us on Realme 6i with all of the nifty features that we love from dark mode in the pulldown menu, app drawer now out of the box but a bit faster thanksOne thing that it worked fine this time was the dual mode audio found in realme lab option which you can run wired and Bluetooth audio device at the same time.
With this new Mediatek Helio G80 processor comes with another question on connectivity. The device does not have 5 GHz WiFi support but the said department marked very good to us on 2.4 GHz WiFi, Bluetooth, mobile data, GPS, texts and calls.
On battery, our video battery rundown test said that the device lasted for 31 hours and 5 minutes. A bit short compared to Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 but on real time usage, we got the same battery life in heavy mixed usage for 2 days with average of 13.5 hours of screen on time. Charging took me at a bit over 2 hours with it's 18 watt charging, an improvement to almost 3 hours of refueling it to Realme 5i
In a bit of gaming, we were happy that Mobile Legends is playable in HFR settings
On benchmarks, we will be honest here as on Antutu with the said processor and our review unit which has 4 GB RAM/128 GB ROM storage, it scored on over 196,000 on Antutu without performance enhancements and over 205,000 in high performance settings. Happy to know that the device has 7 out of 9 working sensors so no shortcuts on this department
On cameras, it was an upgrade compared to Realme 5i featuring with it's 48 MP primary camera. Good to know that to access the 48 MP camera, you do not need to go deep to the settings unlike on the devices. Indeed, the 48 MP camera has better color and details. The ultra wide camera cam also worked nice. There's no "Realme Nightscape" mode in this device but there's a night mode which also worked like magic. Both normal and portrait selfies were on the spot too overall.
Realme 6i normal, 48 and ultra wide rear camera comparison
realme 6i 2x and 5x zoom rear camera samples
More realme 6i rear camera samples
realme 6i normal to night mode camera comparisons
Realme 6i normal and portrait selfie camera samples
Realme 6i is priced at Php 9,990 (for the 4/128 that we reviewed) and Php 7,990 for 3/64 version which we already expected for the upgrades compared to realme 5i but it was all worth it for faster charging, USB Type-C, a bit better processor and the 48 MP primary camera as well as the better camera on the other sensors. Great battery life and the much loved Realme UI. It's gonna be 4.5 out of 5 for us on Realme 6i which you can get on Green Tea or White Milk which we had for the review. Check out our other blog post on how to get and even save more money to get this great high midrange device under 10k which they sticked to their promise
