realme launched the realme 10 Pro, the company’s latest mid-range smartphone in the number series, in India last week. This is a minor upgrade with a main change being the display. Is this the best smartphone to buy in the Rs. 20,000 price range? Let us dive into the review to find out.
| Box Contents |
| Camera |
| Battery Life |
| Conclusion |
Box Contents
- realme 10 Pro+ 8GB + 128GB version in Nebula Blue color
- 2-pin 33W SuperVOOC fast charger
- USB Type C Cable
- SIM Ejector tool
- Protective case
- User Guide and Warranty information
Display, Hardware and Design
The main highlight of the phone is the display. This sports a 6.7-inch (1080 x 2400 pixels) Full HD+ LCD screen with 120Hz refresh rate, 240Hz touch sampling rate and 391 PPI pixel density. The display is bright since it has up to 680 nits peak brightness. It offers good colour output since it has 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, and the sunlight legibility is good as well.
You can select from vivid and Natural screen colour modes. The phone has a software-based dimming technology. The phone also has HDR 10 support, but it doesn’t work for YouTube or Netflix. There is video color boost option.
It as variable refresh rate, so the display can switch between 30Hz / 48Hz / 50Hz / 60Hz / 90Hz / 120Hz depending on the content, so it is pretty smooth to use.
The phone has 1mm ultra narrow size bezels and 1.15mm top bezel, thanks to the new RAZR technology and InSeal Technology. The phone has a tiny punch-hole on the left that houses a 16-megapixel camera. Above the display, there is an earpiece on the top edge that doubles up as a secondary speaker.
Coming to the button placements and ports, the power button with a built-in fingerprint scanner is present on the right side along with the volume rockers. The hybrid dual SIM slot is present on the left. The 3.5mm audio jack, primary microphone, USB Type-C port and the loudspeaker grill are present on the bottom. The secondary microphone is on the top.
The phone has a polycarbonate frame and back which might feel cheap, but the matte finish models look good and doesn’t attract fingerprints. The phone is 8.1mm thick and weighs 190 grams.
The design is inspired by the concept of hyperspace tunnels. The refracted light of the design appears as if light is being stretched to the limit at ultra-high speeds, and creates a dynamic three-dimensional effect. The classic shape of the twin-lens reflex camera is combined with modern digital images across time and space, bringing a new street photography trend in image expression, said the company. The phone doesn’t have IP ratings.
Camera
Camera setup
- 108MP rear camera with 1/1.67″ Samsung HM6 sensor, f/1.75 aperture
- 2MP portrait camera with Geco Micro GC02M1 sensor, f/2.4 aperture
- 16MP front-facing camera with Samsung S5K3P9 sensor, f/2.45 aperture
The camera UI in the realme UI 4.0 is also the same as the 3.0. It has QuickShot Acceleration Engine, One Take that uses AI algorithm in which multiple photos with different perspectives generated in one shot and new Group portrait. The is Pro mode, Panorma, Flim, Slo-mo, Time-Lapse, Dual-View video, text scanner, starry mode and tilt-shift.
There is Dynamic bokeh and Bokeh Flare portrait option for photos. The rear camera offers 12MP output after pixel binning, and the front camera images are 16MP in size.
Daylight shots came out well, thanks to the 108MP sensor, and the dynamic range is better with auto HDR. There is AI mode which recognizes different photo scenes and automatically adjusts camera settings to make boost the colours. 2X is good, but once you zoom after that the quality degrades since it is digital zoom. The portrait mode is decent and the 2MP macro camera is useless, so it is recommended to use 2X zoom with the normal camera.
Low light shots are good as well. The night mode is useful, but it takes a few seconds to process. There is also a pro mode in night mode for manual tuning. The front camera is decent daylight, but it could have been better. The bokeh shots were decent.
Check out the camera samples
The main restriction with the Snapdragon 695 is that it can only record videos at up to 1080p resolution at 30 fps, and doesn’t support 4K video recording even though it has a 108MP camera. It also has slow motion recording at 720p. It uses EIS for videos.
Software, UI and Apps
This is one of the first realme phones to run Android 13 based realme UI 4.0 out of the box. It has Android security patch for November 2022. It should get 2 Android updates. relame UI 4.0 adds intuitive iconography, new card-style layout for the UI, 79 new face traits for Omoji, Smart AOD, Large Folders, dynamic homescreen widgets, Auto Pixelate, Private Safe, and the Quantum Animation Engine 4.0 improves the overall fluidity.
Apart from the usual set of realme apps and Google apps, it comes with Amazon Shopping, Snapchat, ShareChat, Dailyhunt, Josh, PhonePe, Moj, Public, Spotify, LinkedIN, Moj Lite+ and Paytm. These apps can be uninstalled, but come back once the phone is reset. There are also Hot Apps and Hot Games. The company said that it is taking steps to remove unsuitable app recommendations.
Out of 8GB LPDD4X RAM, you get 7.4GB of usable RAM, and about 4GB of RAM is free when default apps are running in the background. It also has DRE or dynamic RAM expansion feature, which uses the built-in storage as RAM. This has up to 8GB of additional RAM expansion. Out of 128GB, you get about 105GB of free storage. The phone uses UFS 2.2 storage, and we got sequential read speeds of about, 517.4 MB/s which is almost half of what we got in the 10 Pro+.
Fingerprint sensor and Face unlock
The phone has a fingerprint sensor on the ride side, embedded into the power button. It immediately unlocks the phone just by keeping your finger on the power button so that you don’t have to press it. You can add up to 5 fingerprints. The phone also has face unlock, but it is not as secure as fingerprint.
Music and Multimedia
YouTube Music is the default Music Player. It doesn’t have Dolby Atmos, but has realme Sound Technology with customizable Smart, Movie, Game and Music modes. It doesn’t have FM Radio support. Audio through the stereo speakers is good without any distortion even in full volume. The company said that it is capable of bringing up the volume to 200% through software. Audio through earphones is good as well.
This has Widevine L1, so that you can play HD content on Netflix and other streaming apps. It doesn’t support HDR content on YouTube or Netflix.
Dual SIM and Connectivity
The realme 10 Pro has support for n1/n5/n8/n28A/n41/n78 SA and n41/n77/n78 NSA Network Bands in India. You can also choose between NSA mode, NSA + SA mode or let it select automatically. It has 4G Wi-Fi and VoLTE, with support for Carrier Aggregation on 4G. Other connectivity options include Wi-Fi 6 802.11 ax (2.4GHz + 5GHz), VoWiFi / Wi-Fi calling support, Bluetooth 5.2, GPS / GLONASS / Beidou. It has OTG support, doesn’t have NFC support. Moving on, the call quality is good, and we did not face any call drops and the earpiece volume was loud.
The realme 10 Pro’s body SAR is 0.465W/Kg and head SAR is at 1.165/Kg, which is well under the limit of 1.6 W/kg (over 1 g) in India.
Performance and Benchmarks
The phone is powered by the Snapragon 695 6nm SoC, same as the realme 9 Pro. It has 2.2 x A78 CPUs clocked at up to 2.2GHz, 6x A55 CPUs clocked at up to 1.8GHz. It has Adreno 618 GPU that promises up to 30% GPU performance increase compared to the predecessor.
The phone has up to 8GB LPDDR4X RAM. We did not face any issues or frame drops in the graphic-intensive games. The company didn’t mention if it has any cooling. It reached up to 41°C indoors with Wi-Fi, with about half an hour of intensive gaming.
That said, check out some synthetic benchmark scores below.
Battery life
Coming to the battery life, the phone packs a 5000mAh (typical) built-in battery with 33W SuperVOOC fast charging, same as the predecessor. It lasts for a whole day with Wi-Fi, but with 4G or 5G and dual SIMs. I got over 6 and half hours of screen on time with over a day of use on Wi-Fi and in 120Hz. Since the phone has support for 33W SuperVOOC Charge, it can charge up to 50% in 30 minutes and up to 100% in over an hour with the bundled charger.
Conclusion
At a starting price of Rs. 18,999, the realme 10 Pro is a decent upgrade to the 9 Pro since there are not many changes except for the display. It runs Android 13 out of the box, but the ultra-wide camera has been removed. The company could have reduced bloatware that get installed automatically.
Pricing and availability
The realme 10 Pro is priced at Rs. 18,999 for the 6GB + 128GB and the 8GB + 128GB model is priced at Rs. 19,999. It is available from realme.com, Flipkart and offline stores starting from today December 16th.
Alternatives
The OnePlus Nord CE 2 Lite is a good competition since it offers similar specifications. The moto G71 5G comes with an AMOLED screen and also has an ultra-wide camera.
Pros
- 120Hz screen with sleek bezels
- Smooth performance
- Good camera
- Android 13 out of the box
Cons
- No ultra-wide camera
- Bloatware