realme launched the realme 12 Pro+, the company’s top-end smartphone in the number series, in India this week. This has the same display, vegan leather design and the same 5000mAh battery from the realme 11 Pro+, but comes with a slightly faster SoC, upgraded cameras, and the price has also increased. Is this the best smartphone to buy in the Rs. 30,000 range? Let us dive into the review to find out.
| Box Contents |
| Camera |
| Battery Life |
| Conclusion |
Box Contents
- realme 12 Pro+ 12GB + 256GB version in Submarine Blue color
- 2-pin 67W SuperVOOC fast charger
- USB Type C Cable
- SIM Ejector tool
- Protective case
- User Guide and Warranty information
Display, Hardware and Design
The realme 12 Pro+ sports a 6.7-inch (1080 x 2412 pixels) Full HD+ curved AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate, 240Hz touch sampling rate and 394 PPI, same as the 11 Pro+ and the 10 Pro+. The display is bright since it has up to 950 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, Natural and Pro screen colour modes.
The phone has a 2160Hz high-frequency dimming technology. In dark environments (brightness below 90 nits) where DC dimming can’t work, the phone will automatically switch to 2160Hz PWM dimming mode to maintain accurate colors on display with a more comfortable eye experience, said the company. realme says that the phone has 0.55mm secondary tempered high-strength glass for protection.
The phone also has HDR 10 support, which works for YouTube, but it doesn’t work with Netflix. You can enable vivo color boost from display settings.
The phone doesn’t have a notification LED, but this has an always-on-display that shows contextual info and notifications all day or as per schedule. There is also music playback option in the always-on-display with the Spotify integration, and there is also Zomato and Swiggy integration to show order details on your lock screen.
The phone has ultra narrow bezels side bezels, making it compact to hold. It has X-axis linear vibration motor.
The phone has a tiny punch-hole that houses a 32-megapixel camera. Above the display, there is an earpiece on the top edge that doubles up as a secondary speaker. It has an in-display fingerprint scanner.
Coming to the button placements and ports, the power button is present on the right side along with the volume rockers. There is nothing on the left. The Dual SIM slot, primary microphone, USB Type-C port and the loudspeaker grill are present on the bottom. The secondary microphone is on the top, along with a speaker vent.
All the models have a vegan leather finish that uses premium silicone material with 30% increased softness compared to the previous generation used in the realme 11 Pro series, said the company.
There is a 3D Jubilee bracelet with diamond patterns running through the centre part of the back, and the Golden Fluted bezel around the camera module has 300 precision-crafted triangular grooves. Around the cameras there is a polished sunburst dial with 500 gradient patterns.
We have the Submarine Blue, and the phone also comes in Navigator Beige and there is also an Explorer Red colorway which will be available from February 9th, just in time for the Valentine’s Day. The phone also has IP65 ratings for dust and splash resistance.
Camera
- 50MP 1/1.56″ Sony IMX890 sensor, f/1.8 aperture, OIS
- 8MP ultra-wide camera with f/2.2 aperture
- 64MP Omnivision OV64B 3X periscope telephoto lens, 6X in-sensor zoom, up to 120x zoom, f/2.6 aperture, LED flash
- 32MP front-facing camera with Sony sensor, f/2.45 aperture
The camera UI in the realme UI 5 is familiar. There is Pro mode, Panorma, Macro, Flim, Slo-mo, Time-Lapse, Dual-View video, text scanner, starry mode and tilt-shift. The rear camera offers 12.5MP output after pixel binning, and the front camera images are 32MP in size.
Oscar Winner for Best Cinematography, Claudio Miranda, has curated three movie filters inspired by his award-winning movies exclusively for
this model: Journey Filter – “Life of Pi” Inspiration, Memory Filter – “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” Style and Maverick Filter – “Top Gun: Maverick” Influence.
Daylight shots came out well, thanks to the 50MP 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.
Thanks to the dedicated 64MP periscope telephoto portrait camera offering 3X optical zoom and 6X in-sensor zoom that you rarely see in phones in the price range. Even though you can zoom up to 120X, the quality of the image might not be the best when you zoom in.
The portrait mode is good with good edge detection, and the 8MP ultra-wide camera is decent. Low light shots are good with a lot of details and less noise. The night mode is useful, but it takes a few seconds to process, and you can also shoot the moon even though there is no dedicated moon mode. There is also a tripod mode. The 32MP front camera does a good job. The bokeh shots are good with decent edge detection.
Check out the camera samples
It can record videos in up to 4K 30 fps, slow motion 1080p at 120fps. Portrait video mode is limited to 1080p. There is also ultra-steady video shooting, but it is limited to 1080p 60fps. OIS does a good job for the rear camera.
Software, UI and Apps
It runs Android 14 based realme UI 5.0 out of the box. It has Android security patch for December 2023. The phone should get 2 Android updates and 3 years of security updates, similar to other phones. realme UI 5.0 offers improved self-developed technology for smooth performance, and enhanced safety and privacy tools. There is a new GO Green feature, promoting climate change awareness.
The File Dock feature enables collection, analysis, and sharing of global information through the Dock or other applications simply by making gestures. Flash Capsule provides convenient access to popular third-party services such as Grab, Swiggy, and Zomato directly from the device. Smart image matting lets you easily isolate and share subjects from your photos. It can separate subjects from similar backgrounds and recognize multiple subjects (up to 3).
Apart from the usual set of realme apps and Google apps, it comes with several pre-loaded apps. These apps can be uninstalled, but come back once the phone is reset. There are also Hot Apps and Hot Games.
Out of 12GB LPDD4X RAM, you get 11.14GB of usable RAM, and about 7GB 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 12GB of additional RAM expansion. Out of 256GB UFS 3.1, you get about 221GB of free storage.
Fingerprint sensor and Face unlock
It has an in-display fingerprint sensor that unlocks the phone quickly, but it is not as fast as a physical fingerprint sensor. You can add up to 5 fingerprints. You can also use the fingerprint for app local and payments in apps. Furthermore, you can change the fingerprint animation and also disable it, and also enable quick launch option to launch apps directly from the lockscreen by holding the fingerprint. The phone also has face unlock feature.
Music and Multimedia
YouTube Music is the default Music Player. It has have Dolby Atmos which works with headset and has 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. 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 supports HDR content on YouTube, but this doesn’t work on Netflix.
Dual SIM and Connectivity
The realme 12 Pro+ has support for n1/3/5/8/28B/40/41/77/78 Network Bands in India. 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), 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 12 Pro+’s body SAR is 0.718W/Kg and head SAR is at 1.125/Kg, which is well under the limit of 1.6 W/kg (over 1 g) in India.
Performance and Benchmarks
This is one of the first phones to be powered by Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 4nmMobile Platform. This has Octa-Core Qualcomm Kryo CPUs that has 4 x Cortex A78 core clocked at 2.4GHz and 4 x Cortex A55 cores clocked at 1.96GHz. There is Adreno 710 GPU that decent gaming performance. The phone gets a bit warm on intensive gaming.
The phone has a 3394mm² large vapor chamber cooling area to help keep the phone cool. We did not face any issues in the graphic-intensive games like COD, BGMI and Genshin Impact. That said, check out some synthetic benchmark scores below.
This clearly shows almost improved performance compared to the realme 11 Pro+ powered by Dimensity 7050, but MediaTek’s Dimensity 7200 offers better performance, and the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 is even better.
Battery life
Coming to the battery life, the phone packs a 5000mAh (typical) built-in battery, same as the predecessor. It lasts for a whole day with Wi-Fi, but with 4G or 5G and dual SIMs. I got about 5 and half hours of screen on time with over a day of use on Wi-Fi and in 120Hz. This has 67WSuperVOOC Charge, a downgrade compared to 100W in the 11 Pro+. It can charge up to 50% in about 20 minutes and up to 100% in less than 50 minutes with the bundled 67W charger, which is still good.
There is smart charging and an option to stop charging at 80% to improve the battery health. However, this doesn’t show the battery health.
Conclusion
At a starting price of Rs. 29,999 for the 8GB + 128GB, the realme 12 Pro+ scores when it comes to the camera, offering a good upgrade to the 11. Even though the design looks good, the phone still has bloatware, and it doesn’t see a huge boost when it comes to the performance compared to the previous generations.
Alternatives
The Redmi Note 13 Pro+ doesn’t come with a periscope telephoto camera, but it has a better screen, offers better performance and even has IP68 ratings. The OnePlus Nord 3 that comes with the same Sony IMX890 sensor is now available at a similar price rang, and offers better performance.
Pricing and availability
The realme 12 Pro+ is priced at Rs. 29,999 for the 8GB + 128GB model, Rs. 31,999 for the 8GB + 256GB model and the top-end 12GB + 256GB model costs Rs. 33,999. The phone will be available from realme.com, Flipkart and offline stores from February 6th.
Pros
- Smooth performance
- Brilliant cameras
- Attractive design
- Good battery life
Cons
- Same old display
- Bloatware
- Not a huge performance improvement from 11 Pro+
Siva Bharani contributed to this review