#realme 5i camera samples

[clejay62]

New Post has been published on http://www.2020bizz.com/science-technology/realme-5i-unboxing-and-first-impressions-i-for-improvements-tingnan-natin/

realme 5i Unboxing and First Impressions - "i" for improvements? Tingnan natin...

Previous video: https://youtu.be/wxl2yLdoS7U

👉Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sulittechrev… 👉Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sulittechre… 👉Twitter: https://twitter.com/sulittechreview

For business inquiries: sulittechreviews@gmail.com

_________________________________________

Abangan ang full review sa January 29!

_________________________________________

WATCH SOME MORE VIDEOS…

Top Earphones

Asus ROG Phone 2: After Two Weeks

Redmi K30

Mi Note 10 vs Oppo Reno 2

Perfect phone

Honor Band 5

Android Tips

Huawei Y6s vs Samsung A10s and Oppo A5s

Asus ROG II

OnePlus 7T

Mi Note 10

Pamu Slide

Mezone B6 TWS

Haylou TWS

Oppo Reno2 F Nebula Green

realme Buds Wireless

Asus Zenbook Duo

Huawei Y6s

Lazada Tech Haul

FreeBuds 3 vs AirPods 2

Paano Mare-recover ang Files mo?

Sabbat E12 Ultra

Sabbat X12 Ultra

Oppo A9 (2020) Vanilla Mint

Huawei FreeBuds 3

Playground Campers 7.0

Asus Zenbook Duo

realme 5 Pro vs realme XT

Samsung Galaxy Watch

Best Mid-Range Phones of 2019

Redmi 8A

Redmi 8

Rockspace Accessories

realme XT

Redmi Note 8

Oppo Reno 2F

Oppo Reno 2

realme XT Unboxing

Mi 9 Lite Review

realme 5 Pro vs Redmi Note 8 Pro

Oppo A9 (2020) vs Samsung A50s

realme 5 Pro vs Huawei nova 5T

Redmi Note 8 Pro:

Huawei nova 5T vs Oppo Reno vs Samsung A70

Note 10 Plus Review

OnePlus 7 Full Review

Silver Play Button

Redmi 7A Full Review:

Samsung A70 Full Review:

Infinix Note 5 Stylus

Nokia 6.1

Bluedio V2 Headphones

Lenovo Z6 Lite/youth

Umidigi F1 Play

iPhone XR – Full Review

OnePlus 7 Pro

Zeblaze Thor 5

Marshall Acton II Voice

Mi 9T Full Review

Kospet Hope 4G

Google Pixel 3A Full Review

Redmi K20 Pro Full Review

Mi 8 Lite

#realme #5i #SulitTechReviews

[magzoso-tech]

New Post has been published on https://magzoso.com/tech/realme-c3-review/

Realme C3 Review

Chinese smartphone maker Realme had an eventful year in 2019. The company launched multiple smartphones every quarter forcing the competition to pick up the pace. Realme started 2020 with a budget smartphone called the Realme 5i, and hot on its tail, the company is bringing in yet another very affordable smartphone called the Realme C3. The C series is Realme’s entry-level lineup, and offers good hardware at affordable prices. In this highly competitive price segment, can the Realme C3 carve out a niche of its own? We put the new Realme C3 to the test to find out.

Realme C3 design

Realme has opted for a new look for 2020 that it calls the Sunrise design. We’ve seen it on the Realme 5i (Review), and it is now being used on the Realme C3 as well. The company offers the Realme C3 in two colour options: Frozen Blue and Blazing Red. We have the former for this review. The colour is definitely catchy, appearing to radiate outwards from the camera module, and the back has a texture that you can feel when you run your fingers over it.

Realme has equipped the C3 with a bigger display than its predecessor. It measures 6.5 inches diagonally and has a 20:9 aspect ratio. This aspect ratio makes the smartphone tall and slim, so it’s relatively comfortable to hold and use. The bezels are thin on the sides but the bottom chin is thicker. Like most other Realme smartphones in the market, this one also has a dewdrop notch which houses the selfie camera. Right above it is the earpiece, which is finished in black and blends in with the display.

The tiny dewdrop notch houses a 5-megapixel selfie shooter

The frame of the smartphone is made out of plastic. The power button is on the right while the volume buttons are on the left. We found these buttons to be well positioned, but they’re recessed into the frame a bit which can make them hard to find by feel. Once pressed, these do have solid feedback.

The SIM tray on the Realme C3 is just above the volume buttons on the left, and has individual slots for two Nano-SIMs as well as a microSD card. At the bottom, this phone has a Micro-USB port, 3.5mm audio jack, and a loudspeaker grille. Realme could have offered a USB Type-C port, as the competition has started offering this in the budget segment. The top of the device is completely blank.

From the back, this phone looks very similar to the Realme 5i. This model also has a protruding camera module at the back, which houses two camera sensors. Realme has added a metallic rim around this camera module to help keep the lenses from getting scratched. The Realme C3 packs a 5,000mAh battery which is excellent for a smartphone at this price, but it does bring the weight of the device up to 195g.

Realme C3 specifications and software

The Realme C2 (Review) used a Mediatek Helio P22 SoC, and while that was a good processor for the price, it was dated even at the time of that model’s launch. The Realme C3 sports the new MediaTek Helio G70 SoC, which is an octa-core processor clocked at 2.0 GHz. The C3 is offered in two variants – the base variant sports 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage while the higher one has 4GB RAM with 64GB of storage. Realme has priced these two options quite well, with the base variant coming in at Rs. 6,999 and the higher one priced at Rs. 7,999. You do have the option to expand storage using a microSD card.

The Realme C3 is a dual SIM smartphone with support for 4G as well as VoLTE. Connectivity options include Bluetooth 5, Wi-Fi, five positioning systems, and the usual sensors. Just like the Realme C2, the C3 does not have a fingerprint scanner. We have seen a leak recently which suggested that a version of this phone called the Realme C3s could be launched sometime in the future, but we don’t know if or when it might come to India.

The Realme C3 runs Android 10 out of the box.

Software is where Realme has taken a new direction. The Realme C3 no longer runs ColorOS like its older siblings, instead, it runs RealmeUI V1.0 which is based onAndroid 10. This is the first smartphone from the company to ship with Android 10 out of the box. Our unit was running the December security patch, which is acceptable.

The new RealmeUI is very similar to ColorOS 7 and introduces a lot of changes compared to what ColorOS 6 offered. The overall UI is similar to stock Android and we like the layout. There is still some amount of bloatware, which includes Facebook, Helo, Dailyhunt, Gaana, Opera News, UC Browser, and a few Realme apps. The smartphone also has an App Market store which is an alternative to the Google Play Store.

Swiping right from the home screen does not take you to the smart assistant anymore, but there is no Google Assistant screen here either. Universal search is still available, and one simply has to swipe down on the home screen to access it.

Realme also offers Dark Mode, and it is no longer an experimental feature like it was on the Realme 5i. There is Focus Mode as well, which can be enabled from the notification shade. Enabling Focus Mode stops notifications from distracting you for a fixed duration, and lets you play relaxing sounds to help focus better. We found it to be helpful to some extent, but the number of relaxing sounds is limited and we found a few of them to be distracting.

Just like other Realme smartphones, this one also features Game Space, which helps you block calls and notifications while gaming. Realme is also advertising a Personal Information Protection feature that spoofs blank or dummy information when apps request access to your call history, contacts, and messages.

Realme C3 performance and battery life

We were expecting average performance from the Realme C3 considering that it is a budget smartphone. However, the device does pack a punch, delivering good performance. We did not notice any lag while scrolling through the menus and while multitasking. Our review unit had 4GB of RAM and it could multitask fairly easily without needing to kill apps in the background.

We set up face recognition on the device and found it quick to unlock the smartphone in different lighting conditions. The display gets bright enough when outdoors but the viewing angles could have been slightly better.

To test this new processor, we ran our usual set of benchmarks on the device. Surprisingly the Realme C3 managed to score 192,187 in AnTuTu which is higher than the scores of the much more expensive Samsung Galaxy A51 (Review) and Oppo F15 (Review) which we recently tested. In Geekbench 5’s single-core and multi-core tests, the phone scored 354 and 1,260 respectively. To get an idea of graphics performance, we ran the GFXBench T-Rex and Car Chase benchmarks, and rhey ran at 51fps and 14fps respectively.

The Realme C3 still sports a Micro-USB port

We played PUBG Mobile on the Realme C3 and it defaulted to the High preset with graphics set to HD and frame rate set to High. We did notice occasional stutter at these settings and the game worked better when we turned them down. The Realme C3 did get slightly warm to the touch after playing for 15 minutes at the High settings.

This phone packs in a big 5,000mAh battery which delivered excellent battery life. It lasted us for close to two full days on a single charge with our usage which consisted of playing a few games, using an active WhatsApp account, and running Google Chrome to browse the Web. In our HD video loop test, the smartphone lasted for an incredible 28 hours and 20 minutes, which is among the longest we have yet seen from any smartphone in this test. While the big battery is a boon, Realme should have offered fast charging abilities on this phone. The 10W charger that you get in the box takes over two hours to charge the smartphone completely.

Realme C3 cameras

The Realme C3 sports a dual-camera setup at the back consisting of a 12-megapixel primary shooter with an f/1.8 aperture, and a 2-megapixel depth sensor. At the front, it has a 5-megapixel selfie shooter. The camera app is unchanged compared to previous Realme phones, and has Portrait, Time-lapse, Slo-mo, Expert, and Pano modes in addition to the photo and video modes. It also has quick toggles for HDR and Chroma Boost as seen on older Realme devices.

Realme C3 daylight sample photo (tap to see full-size sample)

Realme C3 close-up photo sample (tap to see full-size sample)

When taking pictures in daylight, the Realme C3 was quick to lock focus and did a fair job of metering light. Photos looked good on the phone’s screen, but we noticed a lack of detail after zooming in. However, quality is better than what some of the other smartphones at this price point can produce. For close-ups, we noticed that the Realme C3 struggled to lock focus when too close to a subject. There were also occasional focus hunting issues. Once focused, the Realme C3 does deliver a decent shot.

Realme C3 portrait photo sample (tap to see full-size sample)

The Portrait mode puts the secondary depth camera to use and the smartphone gives you the option to set the level of blur before taking a shot. The Realme C3 managed good edge detection but we found the output to be flat.

Realme C3 low-light photo sample (tap to see full-size sample)

In low light, the Realme C3 produced average photos. These lacked detail and weren’t very sharp. Realme’s official website initially listed a Super Nightscape mode but we didn’t find it in the camera app. When we enquired about this, a Realme representative confirmed to Gadgets 360 that it was a mistake and that this model does not support any such feature. The website has since been corrected.

Realme C3 selfie sample (tap to see full-size sample)

Selfies taken outdoors in daylight had a slightly inaccurate colour tone. They also weren’t sharp, and lacked detail. Video recording maxes out at 1080p for both the primary as well as the selfie shooter. There is no video stabilisation, resulting in shaky footage. In low light, the Realme C3 metered light well for a phone at this price.

Verdict

The Realme C3 is a solid update to the Realme C2, and it further strengthens the company’s budget series. Realme has picked a powerful SoC that steamrolls the competition when it comes to performance. Battery life is excellent as expected, and Realme smartphones have been consistently acing our battery tests. Of course, camera performance isn’t the best, but it is acceptable for the price.

Starting at just Rs. 6,999 for the base variant, and at Rs. 7,999 for the variant we reviewed, the Realme C3 is an easy smartphone to recommend. Realme could have offered a fingerprint scanner like most of its competition, and we would like to see USB Type-C become standard.

[magzoso-tech]

New Post has been published on https://magzoso.com/tech/honor-9x-review/

Honor 9X Review

Honor rang in 2020 by launching the Honor 9X in India, alongside the Honor Magic Watch 2 smartwatch and the Honor Band 5i. The Honor 9X succeeds the Honor 8X, and brings some notable upgrades such as a faster SoC, a full-screen display, better cameras, and a larger battery, to name a few. Starting at Rs. 13,999, the Honor 9X offers a compelling package in terms of hardware and design. However, it goes up against some well-received rivals from Xiaomi, Realme, Nokia, and Vivo. Does the Honor 9X have what it takes to stand out and disrupt the segment? Read our in-depth assessment of the phone’s merits and demerits to find out.

Honor 9X design and build quality 

Design is one of the key selling points of the Honor 9X. The 3D geometric pattern on the Sapphire Blue review unit that we have looks like an X when light falls on it. Each adjacent line appears to be a different shade of blue, creating a depth effect, and it does look unique compared to the gradient patterns on a wide range of phones out there. On closer inspection, one can see small diamond-shaped blocks across the whole rear panel that shimmer under the light. While the aesthetics are undoubtedly flashy, this does give the Honor 9X an identity of its own. The company also offers the Honor 9X in a more sober Midnight Black finish as well.

Honor 9X’s rear panel is made of plastic with a glossy finish, and it gets smudged quickly

The rear panel is made out of plastic and has a glossy finish. Needless to say, the entire back can get smudged easily, and our unit had fingerprint marks all over it in no time. The sides are curved and meet smoothly with the rim, which also has a glossy finish in a matching colour. Thankfully, the phone is not too slippery. The three camera lenses are housed in a vertical strip, and the entire module protrudes ever so slightly. 

The fingerprint sensor is positioned comfortably within reach, and was pleasantly quick at unlocking the phone. The USB Type-C port, speaker, and 3.5mm jack are at the bottom, while the SIM tray is at the top. The volume buttons have a clicky feel, but the power button is a bit too small in proportion and feels a little mushy. 

Over on the front is the 6.59-inch full-HD display that has a notch-free design. In this price bracket, the Honor 9X is among the only few phones that offer a full-screen experience, and we are definitely not complaining. Honor told Gadgets 360 that the display is protected by a material developed by Huawei and used in its phones, but did not reveal the name. The phone comes with a pre-applied screen protector, but it got scratched and picked up smudges all over really quickly. Also, we found it a bit difficult to reach all parts of the screen with one hand. 

Honor 9X specifications and software

The Honor 9X suffers from an identity crisis of sorts, which can be attributed to the Huawei-Honor relationship and some confusing marketing decisions. As we pointed out in our first impressions of the phone, the Honor 9X is almost identical to the Huawei Y9 Prime (2019) which was launched in India in August last year, the only difference being rear camera resolutions, and even shares the same model number.

Honor 9X comes equipped with a 16-megapixel pop-up selfie camera

It also shares hardware similarities with the Huawei P Smart Z sold in China, and even has the exact same dimensions. To complicate things even more, the Honor 9X sold in India is the phone’s global variant, and has completely different specifications compared to the device of the same name sold in China.

Talking about specifications, the Honor 9X packs a 6.59-inch full-HD (1080 x 2340 pixels) display with a notchless full-screen design. This is an IPS LCD panel certified by TÜV Rheinland for reducing blue light exposure. The phone is powered by Huawei’s in-house Kirin 710F processor, and has up to 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage which is expandable by up to 512GB using a microSD card. The base 4GB 128GB variant is priced at Rs. 13,999 in India, while the 6GB 128GB configuration will set buyers back by Rs. 16,999.

The rear camera setup includes a 48-megapixel main shooter with an f/1.8 aperture. There is also an 8-megapixel wide-angle camera with a 120-degree field of view and a 2-megapixel depth sensor for portrait shots. On the front is a 16-megapixel camera housed in a pop-up module. The juice is provided by a 4,000mAh battery, and there’s 10W charging support. 

On the software side, the Honor 9X runs EMUI 9.1 based on Android Pie. Honor has told Gadgets 360 that an Android 10 update should be released soon, “maybe by next month”. It is interesting to note that this phone doesn’t report the software name as Magic UI, which is the rebranded version of EMUI that Honor models usually run. The UI is similar to what we came across in our Honor 20 review. To start with, there is no app drawer. Swiping left opens the Google feed, while swiping right shows more pages of app icons. 

Honor 9X has a triple rear camera setup with a 48-megapixel primary camera

Some of the preinstalled apps such as Ride Mode, Downloads, and Optimiser for file management are useful. However, there is way too much bloatware. First-party apps such as App Gallery, Honor Club, Honor Store, and iTips are barely useful. As for the third-party apps, the likes of Opera News, Booking.com, Wego Flights & Hotels, and Helo aren’t going to appeal to everyone.  Thankfully, the third-party apps can be uninstalled, but the in-house ones can’t. The navigation gestures worked flawlessly for us, and there’s an App Twin feature for creating two instances of an app.

Honor 9X performance 

Performance is an area in which the Honor 9X proved to be a mixed bag. App-switching was smooth even with 10-15 applications running in the background. Apps loaded quickly as well, but some jitter was were noticeable when games were running in the background. The UI was generally lag-free, but the RAM management proved to be a bit too aggressive on a few occasions.

The Kirin 710F feels underpowered in terms of graphics. PUBG Mobile defaulted to the Medium graphics preset, but the visuals looked choppy, and frame drops and stutters were easily noticeable. Call of Duty: Mobile was set to the low graphics settings by default, and even though the experience was better than PUBG Mobile, we have seen better performance from other phones in this price range. We wish Huawei had gone with a more powerful SoC.

This lack of firepower reflects in synthetic benchmarks as well. The Honor 9X scored 320 and 1,310 in Geekbench 5’s single-core and multi-core tests. This performance is comparable to that of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 and MediaTek Helio P70. However, in the graphics-intensive 3DMark Sling Shot and Sling Shot Extreme tests, the Honor 9X could only muster up scores of 1,111 and 864 respectively, which are significantly lower than those of the two aforementioned chips. Here’s a chart to depict the Kirin 710F’s benchmark performance: 

Honor 9X’s Kirin 710F SoC lags behind when it comes to graphics power

As for display quality, Honor 9X’s LCD display is among the better ones on phones we have seen in this price bracket. The full-HD resolution means that this panel is sufficiently sharp. Colour reproduction is on point, and viewing angles are acceptable as well. The notchless design is great for watching videos and playing games. 

The only shortcoming is sub-par brightness, which hampers outdoor visibility and makes colours look muted under direct sunlight. The display section in the Settings app lets users adjust the colour profile and temperature, but we found that the ‘Vivid’ mode imparts a bluish tinge to whites, and makes colours appear washed-out. 

The Honor 9X comes equipped with a sufficiently long-lasting 4,000mAh battery. With our regular usage, which involved intermittent social media usage and messaging all day, a couple of hours of music streaming, and around an hour of gaming, the Honor 9x lasted a day and a half on average. When paired with a smartwatch with Bluetooth and location tracking enabled throughout the day, the phone’s battery life went down but it still had around 20-25 percent left at the end of the day. 

Your mileage will vary depending upon usage patterns, but even with heavy usage, the Honor 9X will easily sail past a day on each charge. In our HD video battery loop test, the Honor 9x lasted a slightly underwhelming 12 hours and 37 minutes before the battery discharged completely. The phone comes with a 10W charger, which takes over two hours to fully charge the phone. We have seen phones from Xiaomi and Realme offer faster charging in the same price bracket.

Honor 9X cameras 

On paper, the Honor 9X offers fairly impressive cameras for its price, but the actual output is a mixed bag. The main 48-megapixel camera takes 12-megapixel pixel-binned photos by default. These shots looked okay, with decent contrast and dynamic range, but average details at best The camera app’s AI mode tends to boost contrast and saturation, so we had to manually turn it off to capture accurate colours.

In the case of actual 48-megapixel photos, details were better, but at the cost of noise. What we didn’t like was the oversharpening done to the photos, making them appear noticeably soft. We also often got blander colours in photos captured at the full 48-megapixel resolution under direct sunlight. Autofocus was reliable in daylight, but in low-light scenarios, we had to deal with some focusing errors. 

Indoor sample taken with the Honor 9X (tap for full-sized image)

Close-up HDR sample taken with the Honor 9X (tap for full-sized image)

Daylight sample taken with the Honor 9X (tap for full-sized image)

Selfie sample taken with the Honor 9X (tap for full-sized image)

We have seen noticeably better colour reproduction, sharpness, and dynamic range captured by the 48-megapixel cameras on the Redmi Note 8 and the Realme 5 Pro. Honor has not specified the make of the sensor it has used.

The 8-megapixel wide-angle camera comes in handy for bringing more objects into a frame. The images captured are again just average, but there was a noticeable difference between the colour tone of photos captured by the main camera and wide-angle shots of the same scene, particularly when it came to handling greenery and bright colours. Distortion was also an issue. Honor says that the Honor 9X uses distortion correction algorithms, but warping was evident in wide-angle photos. They also turned out less sharp. 

The 2-megapixel depth sensor does a decent job at delivering a depth-of-field effect in photos. There is a dedicated aperture mode in the camera app that lets users adjust the intensity of the blur effect. It does a good job of highlighting an object or person in the foreground, but edge detection is not always accurate. Other camera modes include slo-mo, light painting, moving picture, and stickers.

The biggest surprise to us was the dedicated night mode. Photos captured using the night mode exhibited better details and colours were brought out more, but they look grainy on zooming in, and are soft around the corners. Depending upon the ambient light, the night mode takes up to four seconds to capture multiple exposures at various levels, and delivers a final composited image that is significantly better than what you could capture in the standard photo mode. 

The standard photo mode can also detect low-light scenarios and raise the ISO level, but this blows away the real colours. In fact, the Honor 9X’s night mode is one of the better implementations of this feature in the sub-Rs. 15,000 price bracket. 

Low-light sample taken using the standard photo mode (tap for full-sized image)

Low-light sample taken using the night mode (tap for full-sized image)

Low-light sample taken using the standard photo mode (tap for full-sized image)

Low-light sample taken using the dedicated night mode (tap for full-sized image)

The 16-megapixel pop-up selfie camera is again just average. We noted that the camera module pops up slower than what we have seen on the likes of the Realme X and the Redmi K20, although these models are more expensive. As for image quality, selfies have a healthy amount of detail, but even with beautification and AI deactivated, the Honor 9X does smoothen skin textures. In the case of portrait selfies, the camera sometimes erratically blurred parts of our ears. Portrait shots, despite looking vibrant, lacked depth and often had background elements blown out, especially those shot in sunlight. 

The main camera can capture video at up to 1080p at 60fps, while the wide-angle one is limited to 30fps. Thankfully, the primary camera does not struggle with focus hunting and the AIS (“AI image stabilisation”) does a decent job at negating movements. However, dynamic range could have been better and colours appear slightly warmer than those of the real objects. Yet again, videos shot by the main camera and the wide-angle one showed a discernible difference in colour profiles. 

Verdict

The Honor 9X’s notchless full-HD display is a welcome feature at its asking price, and the phone’s design also stands out. However, it is a bit on the larger side which could make handling a little awkward for some people. The performance of the Honor 9X is good for day-to-day tasks, but a better processor with more graphics prowess would have improved the gaming experience. 

Despite packing three rear cameras, the Honor 9X does not offer anything noteworthy in terms of photo quality or features. Photos turned out just about average in terms of quality, except for those taken in low light. This is where this phone rises above similarly priced competitors. Battery life is good, and users can easily get over a day of regular usage. 

The Honor 9X is a good enough phone and will appeal to those who value style, but it lacks what it takes to decisively edge out its rivals, and even some models priced a bit lower. The likes of the Redmi Note 8 (Review), Realme 5 Pro (Review), Vivo U20 (Review), and Nokia 7.2 (Review) are better all-rounders and offer more value for money. 

[magzoso-tech]

New Post has been published on https://magzoso.com/tech/oppo-f15-review/

Oppo F15 Review

Oppo has kicked off the new year with the launch of the Oppo F15 — its successor to the Oppo F11. Whether or not we’ll get an F15 Pro is yet to be seen, but for now, the F15 offers some necessary updates such as an in-display fingerprint sensor, quad rear cameras, a slim profile, and a new gradient finish for the back.

Priced at Rs. 19,990 for the sole 8GB RAM configuration, the Oppo F15 goes up against phones such as the Realme X2 (Review) and Redmi K20 (Review), both of which are power-packed devices and very good all-rounders for what they cost. Does the Oppo F15 pack enough features to be worth considering at this price? Let’s have a look.

Oppo F15 design

The new packaging for the Oppo F15 looks nice, and in the box you’ll find a silicone case, SIM eject tool, Type-C cable, 20W power adapter and a headset. We have the ‘Unicorn White’ colour trim of the F15, which looks eye-catching. The gradient finish at the back transitions from white at the top to hints of aqua blue and lilac towards the bottom. This is a still a laminated back panel though, not glass, but this colour should help hide fingerprints much better than the ‘Lightning Black’ trim. What immediately grabbed our attention when we picked up this phone was how slim and light it is. At 7.9mm in thickness and weighing 172g, it’s quite comfortable to carry around.

The Oppo F15 is a tall phone though, due to the 20:9 aspect ratio of the 6.4-inch display. You get an AMOLED panel with a full-HD+ (2400×1080) resolution and Corning’s Gorilla Glass 5. The display gets adequately bright and is legible even under sunlight. The colours are good and so is the sharpness of icons and text. There’s a prominent notch on the top for the selfie camera, and a visible chin at the bottom.

The Oppo F15 gets a new eye-catching colour

The glossy sides make the Oppo F15 a little slippery. The power and volume buttons are placed conveniently on the sides. At the bottom, there is a headphone socket, a USB Type-C port, and a speaker grille. This phone has a triple card slot for two Nano-SIMs and a microSD card. The back panel curves a bit on the sides for better ergonomics. The quad camera module on the rear protrudes slightly but not as much as on other phones such as the Realme X2. We also have the Oppo logo, placed vertically in the bottom left corner.

Overall, the Oppo F15 manages to look premium, at least in this colour. We would have liked more premium materials at this price though, such as a glass back. It’s also fairly slim and light for a phone with such a large display, which is something we don��t see too often.

Oppo F15 specifications and software

Oppo’s choice of the SoC in the F15 is a bit of a letdown. The MediaTek Helio P70 SoC was also used in the F11 series last year. While the chip itself offers decent performance, it’s at the level we would now typically expect of phones closer to the Rs. 10,000 mark (such as the Realme 3). The Oppo F15 definitely feels underpowered, considering that the Realme X2 and Redmi K20 offer Qualcomm’s superior Snapdragon 730 series SoCs at the same price.

The Oppo F15 is only available in one configuration, which is 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. The latter uses the UFS 2.1 standard, which is good. Other features include dual 4G with VoLTE, dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.2, Widevine L1 certification, GPS, and the usual suite of sensors. There’s no FM radio in this phone. You also get a 4,000mAh battery with Oppo’s VOOC 3.0 Flash Charge technology.

The Oppo F15 has a triple card tray for two Nano-SIM cards and a microSD card

Oppo only recently began trial runs of ColorOS 7 for some of its phones, so for now, we have to make do with ColorOS 6.1.2 on the Oppo F15, which is still based on Android 9 Pie. The look and feel of the interface is similar to what we’ve seen on recent Realme offerings, since they share the same OS. There are some minor differences, such as the absence of a system-wide dark mode.

Our unit had the January 2020 security patch, along with features such as Google’s Digital Wellbeing, plenty of shortcuts and gestures, and several preinstalled apps. Most of the third-party apps can be uninstalled if you like. There’s not a lot that’s new to talk about here, and you can read all about ColorOS in our recent reviews of the Oppo A9 (2020) (Review) or the Realme 5i (Review).

Oppo F15 performance and battery life

We used the Oppo F15 as our primary device for a few days, and the experience was pretty good. It’s not the easiest phone to fit into a pants pocket, but apart from that, we liked its lightness which made it effortless to use. You can enable one-handed mode through a toggle switch in the notification shade, but sadly, there’s no gesture to trigger it. The phone didn’t overheat when using the cameras extensively or even playing games, which is good.

Games ran fairly well too. PUBG Mobile defaulted to the ‘Medium’ graphics preset and gameplay was smooth. There’s also Oppo’s Game Assistant, which can be accessed within a game and offers options to block notifications, etc. Other stressful titles such as Asphalt 9: Legends also ran well, albeit at slightly reduced graphics quality.

The Oppo F15 offers decent performance, but for the price, it feels a bit underpowered

The Oppo F15 put on a good show in benchmarks too. AnTuTu returned 194,983 points, while GFXbench’s T-Rex test gave us 36fps. While these numbers are decent, this phone is well behind more powerful models powered by the Snapdragon 730 or 730G, such as the Redmi K20 and Realme X2 respectively.

The Oppo F15’s fingerprint and face recognition systems work very well too. Authentication is quick and face unlock even works well in dimly lit places. The phone holds up well for media playback as well. Full-HD videos look sharp, with punchy colours, and the viewing angles are quite wide. The mono speaker gets fairly loud but is lacking in bass.

Battery life is pretty solid. The Oppo F15 ran for 14 hours and 48 minutes in our HD video battery loop test, which is a good time. With regular use, we always managed to use this phone for over a full day, even with lots of gaming and camera usage. The F15 charges pretty quickly too. We were able to get the battery up to 47 percent in half an hour, and about 88 percent in an hour. It took about 20 minutes more after that to fully charge it.

Oppo F15 cameras

Compared to the Oppo F11, the F15 gets a much-needed camera upgrade. There’s a 48-megapixel primary sensor with an f/1.7 aperture; an 8-megapixel wide-angle camera that doubles up as the macro camera; a 2-megapixel depth sensor; and finally a 2-megapixel monochrome sensor. In the front, we have a 16-megapixel selfie camera with an f/2.0 aperture.

The camera app is similar to what we’ve seen on recent Oppo and Realme devices, albeit with a few missing features. The primary camera shoots oversampled 12-megapixel stills by default but there’s no option to shoot at the full 48-megapixel resolution. Other features such as super-steady video and the ability to use Night mode for the selfie camera are also absent.

Landscape shot taken with the Oppo F15 (tap for full-sized image)

An wide-angle shot taken with the Oppo F15 (tap for full-sized image)

A macro shot taken with the Oppo F15 (tap for full-sized image)

In daylight, the main sensor captures fairly detailed landscape shots. Colours are vivid, detail is good, and there’s little to no noise in darker areas. The HDR effect could have been better in some instances but overall, it’s not bad. The wide-angle camera has autofocus, so stills taken with this sensor have good detail — just not as good as what’s possible with the main sensor. Close-ups are sharp and detailed too, and if you get really close to your subject with the wide-angle camera, you’ll be able to get good macros. We like this implementation better than having a dedicated camera for macro photos.

Portrait mode worked decently well with human subjects and you can adjust the level of blur before taking the shot. Edge detection was decent and image quality was good, when shooting under good light.

In low light, we found image quality in landscape shots to be a little lacking. Details were weaker and there was visible noise in the darker regions. The ‘Night’ mode helps brighten up scenes but the details didn’t improve much. Shooting with the wide-angle camera at night, we got comparatively darker images with poorer details and colours. Close-ups fared a bit better, with decent detail and not too much visible noise.

Low-light landscape shot taken with the Oppo F15 (tap for full-sized image)

Low-light close-up shot taken with the Oppo F15 (tap for full-sized image)

Low-light selfie sample taken with the Oppo F15 (tap for full-sized image)

The selfie camera manages some pretty good-looking stills in daylight. Skin textures are smoothened a bit but HDR works well and colours are well represented. With good amounts of artificial light around, we managed to get pleasing enough selfies even at night. Portrait mode doesn’t work too well with the front camera, unfortunately, whether it’s day or night.

The Oppo F15 can only shoot at up to 1080p resolution and not 4K, which most of its competitors support. Video quality is slightly above average and there is stabilisation when shooting using the primary camera. With the wide-angle camera, videos aren’t stabilised. In low-light, video quality was noticeably worse with poor details and a persistent shimmer in the footage even with slight movement. You can shoot at up to 1080p using the selfie camera too, but without any stabilisation.

The camera app feels familiar, and in the viewfinder, you’ll find shortcuts for 2x and 5x digital zoom. The app also has Oppo’s ‘Dazzle Color’ toggle which boosts the saturation level of photos. Other shooting modes include Timelapse, Panorama, Slow-motion, AR stickers, and Expert. There’s a shortcut to activate Google Lens too.

Verdict

The new Oppo F15 is a good-looking smartphone, and a fairly decent upgrade over the Oppo F11. However, the sub-Rs. 20,000 segment has changed quite a bit compared to a year ago, which is why the F15 feels underpowered compared to its main rivals — the Realme X2 (Review) and the Redmi K20 (Review). The new camera setup is a nice upgrade, but overall image and video quality are not quite up to the mark.

What this phone does have going for it are its slimness, low weight, and good display. However, priced at Rs. 19,990, we think you’d be better off with either the Realme X2 or the Redmi K20 —both of which offer much better performance, more premium build quality, and more modern designs.

[magzoso-tech]

New Post has been published on https://magzoso.com/tech/realme-5i-review/

Realme 5i Review

It is well known that Chinese smartphone manufacturers Xiaomi and Realme are racing to outdo each other in the market. Both manufacturers have been launching new smartphone models at an unusually fast pace over the past year.

The latest smartphone to hit the market is the Realme 5i which is the fourth model in the Realme 5 series and the first one from Realme for this year. This new smartphone looks similar to the Realme 5 and the upgraded Realme 5s (which was launched recently) and also boasts of a quad-camera setup.

This new model will replace the Realme 5, which should reduce confusion a little for buyers. Do we really need a Realme 5i, or could we have done without it? We review this new model to find out.

Realme 5i design

The Realme 5i shares the same design as the Realme 5 (Review) and the Realme 5s (Review). The display measures 6.52 inches and has a mini waterdrop notch at the top that is smaller in size now. This helps liberate a little more screen space, resulting in an 89 percent screen-to-body ratio. The Realme 5i’s panel sports an HD+ resolution and has Corning Gorilla Glass 3 for protection.

Just like the Realme 5s, this model also packs in a 5,000mAh battery which makes it a tad bulky at 195g. It measures 8.95mm in thickness. When you turn it around, you will notice that the trademark Realme diamond-cut pattern is missing, and the company has opted for a new sunrise design pattern. The smartphone comes in two colours — Aqua Blue and Forest Green. We have the former for this review. Realme claims that it has added an anti-fingerprint layer at the back which is effective to keep smudges off.

Just like the Realme 5 and the Realme 5s, the 5i is curved at the sides which makes it convenient to hold. The fingerprint scanner is at the back but we found it to be positioned slightly too high, and we needed to stretch a bit to reach it. There is a quad-camera module next to it which protrudes slightly.

The Realme 5i has the power button on the right while the volume buttons are on the left. These buttons are shallow but offer decent feedback when pressed. The SIM card tray is on the left just above the volume buttons and has two Nano-SIM slots along with a microSD card slot.

The Realme 5i sports a dated Micro-USB port

Realme still uses a Micro-USB port at the bottom, which we wish had been swapped out for a USB Type-C port. It also has a 3.5mm audio jack and the loudspeaker at the bottom. The top of the smartphone is bare.

Realme 5i specifications and software

The Realme 5i shares most of its internals with the outgoing Realme 5 and the 5s as well. This phone is also powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 SoC, which has four Cortex-A73 cores clocked at 2.2GHz and four Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 1.8GHz. Realme only offers the 5i with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of EMMC 5.1 storage, for Rs. 8,999.

You do have the option to expand storage by up to 256GB using the dedicated microSD card slot. There is support for Bluetooth 5, Wi-Fi 802.11 ac, and dual 4G as well as VoLTE. This phone also packs in a 5,000mAh battery.

Compared to the Realme 5, the 5i offers more RAM and storage for the same price. The display and the quad-camera setup at the back are identical but the Realme 5i has to do with an 8-megapixel selfie shooter compared to the 13-megapixel one. The Realme 5 commands a Rs. 1,000 premium for the better selfie camera which isn’t worth the price if you aren’t keen on using it.

The Realme 5i runs ColorOS on top of Android 9 Pie

The 5i runs ColorOS 6.0.1 on top of Android 9 Pie. Our review unit had the November security patch which is now relatively dated. The smartphone has a fair amount of bloatware such as Dailyhunt, Opera News, UC Browser, and Helo preinstalled. These push spammy notifications throughout the day after they are first launched. The Realme 5i has also has the company’s own Game Center and App Market which are alternatives to the Google Play Store for games and apps respectively. Realme does offer Android’s Digital Wellbeing feature along with a system-wide dark mode.

Since the software is identical to what we have used in the past, you can take a look at our Realme 5 review for more details. Realme has stated that the Realme 5i will receive Realme UI updates which will make it look and feel more like stock Android very soon but there is no word on an update to Android 10 yet.

Realme 5i performance and battery life

The Realme 5i is a good-looking smartphone and it has the hardware to back that up. The Snapdragon 665 SoC manages to deliver good performance without breaking a sweat. With 4GB of RAM on board, the device could multitask easily without having to kill apps in the background.

We found the display to have decent viewing angles, and it was bright enough when outdoors. The bottom-firing speaker is quite loud, which adds to the content viewing experience. We also found the fingerprint scanner, as well as the face recognition feature to be quick to unlock the smartphone.

The new sunrise design on the Realme 5i looks good

We ran our standard set of benchmarks to gauge the performance of the Realme 5i. In AnTuTu v8, it managed to clock 1,70,480 points. In Geekbench 5’s single-core and multi-core tests, the device managed 309 and 1,345 respectively. As for the graphics benchmark GFXBench, the Realme 5i managed to score 12fps in the Car Chase scene and 49fps in the T-Rex scene.

We played PUBG Mobile on the 5i and the phone defaulted to the ‘Low’ preset with the graphics set to Smooth and frame rate set to ‘Medium.’ It was playable at these settings without any issues. We played the game for 20 minutes and noticed that the phone was barely warm to the touch.

The Realme 5 and Realme 5s offer excellent battery life, and the Realme 5i isn’t any different. With our usage which consisted of an active WhatsApp account, using Google Maps and taking camera samples, the Realme 5i easily lasted over a day and a half. In our HD video loop test, the Realme 5i lasted as long as the Realme 5s. Charging the smartphone with the included 10W charger took us over two hours. Fast charging is not supported.

Realme 5i camera

The Realme 5i sports a quad-camera setup at the back, similar to the Realme 5. It has a 12-megapixel primary sensor, an 8-megapixel wide-angle-camera, a 2-megapixel macro camera, and a 2-megapixel depth sensor. The primary sensor has 1.25-micron pixels and an f/1.8 aperture. The wide-angle-camera has an f/2.25 aperture, while the macro and depth sensors have f/2.4 apertures. For selfies, this phone has an 8-megapixel front shooter with an f/2.0 aperture.

Quad-camera arrangement is similar to the Realme 5

Realme’s camera app remains unchanged and is similar to what we saw on the Realme 5s. It has quick toggles for HDR, the flash, and to switch to the wide-angle-camera. It also has Nightscape and Portrait shooting modes.

The Realme 5i is quick to lock focus when shooting. In daylight, the Realme 5i metered light correctly and photos had decent dynamic range. The photos we took had good levels of detail, which was evident even after zooming in. The wide-angle camera offers a wider field of view but does not deliver the same level of detail. The edges of frames appeared to be slightly stretched. For close-ups, the Realme 5i managed good details and the results were good for a budget smartphone.

Shot using the primary camera on the Realme 5i (tap for full-sized image)

Shot using the wide-angle camera on the Realme 5i (tap for full-sized image)

Close-up shot from the Realme 5i (tap for full-sized image)

Ultra macro sample from Realme 5i (tap for full-sized image)

The macro camera lets you get very close to a subject and manages to produce sharp shots. However, the macro camera resolution is just 2 megapixels. While shooting portraits, we noticed that the Realme 5i does not offer the option to set the level of blur before taking a shot. Portrait shots were slightly hazy, and portraits shot against the light were not metered correctly.

Shot using Portrait mode on the Realme 5i (tap for full-sized image)

Lowlight close-up shot from the Realme 5i (tap for full-sized image)

Lowlight shot (above) and Nightscape mode shot (below) from Realme 5i (tap for full-sized image)

Low-light camera performance was below average, and photos didn’t come out looking sharp at all. We used Nightscape mode and did get brighter images, however, they were still very grainy.

Selfies taken with the Realme 5i had beautification applied to them by default, which can be disabled. The photos were strictly average and backgrounds were often overexposed when shooting outdoors. The Realme 5i also offers portrait mode for the selfie camera, which fared okay, but edge detection wasn’t up to the mark.

Selfie sample from the Realme 5i(tap for full-sized image)

Video recording maxes out at 4K for the primary camera, but stabilisation is only available when shooting at 1080p. Videos shot in the day were well stabilised. The wide-angle-camera also has stabilisation, but a mild shimmer effect is visible in the output. In low-light, the output was quite grainy and we found the stabilisation to be below average.

Verdict

The Realme 5i is a watered-down Realme 5 at a more aggressive price. For Rs. 8,999 the 5i does pack quite a punch thanks to the Snapdragon 665 SoC and 4GB of RAM. The 5,000mAh battery also delivers very good battery life. However, camera performance is a bit of a letdown.

The main purpose of the Realme 5i aims at offering powerful hardware at a more affordable price, and it succeeds at that to an extent. If you want a phone primarily for gaming, the Realme 5i should keep you happy. However, if you are willing to stretch your budget, the Realme 5s (Review) and the Redmi Note 8 (Review) are better all-rounders.