realme launched the realme 12 Pro, the company’s latest mid-range smartphone in the number series, in India earlier this week. Even though the display, and the battery are same as the realme 11 Pro, the camera has been upgraded, so is the rear design. Is this the best smartphone in the price range? Let us dive into the review to find out.
Box Contents
- realme 12 Pro 8GB + 256GB version in Navigator Beige 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
Since it shares the same 6.7-inch (1080 x 2412 pixels) Full HD+ curved AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate, up to 950 nits peak brightness, vegan leather finish and a body with IP65 ratings, I won’t go much into the display and design part.
You can check out the realme 12 Pro+ review to know more about those details. The Red version is available only in the 12 Pro+, and the 12 Pro gets only the Submarine Blue and Navigator Beige options.
Camera
- 50MP main camera with 1/2″ Sony IMX882, OIS, f/1.8 aperture
- 8MP ultra-wide camera with f/2.2 aperture
- 32MP Sony IMX709 2X telephoto lens, 4x optical zoom, f/2.0 aperture
- 16MP front-facing camera with f/2.45 aperture
The camera UI in the realme UI 5 is familiar. There is Pro mode, Panorama, 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 16MP 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 new 50MP sensor, and the dynamic range is better with auto HDR. There is a dedicated 2x telephoto camera, and the phone has up to 4x in-sensor zoom, so zoom up to 4x is good. Compared to 120X zoom in the realme 12 Pro+, this only has 20X zoom in the realme 12 Pro, so you can notice the images losing details once you zoom.
The portrait mode is good with good edge detection, and the 8MP ultra-wide camera is decent. Low-light shots are good, but it is better in realme 12 Pro+ since the IMX890 is better than the IMX882.
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. The 16MP front camera does a decent job if there is enough light. The portrait shots are good as well.
Check out the camera samples
It can record videos in up to 4K 30 fps, slow motion 1080p at 120fps. It doesn’t have portrait video mode, which is present in the 12 Pro+. 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, Apps and Connectivity
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. 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 8GB LPDD4X RAM, you get 7.4GB of usable RAM, and about 3GB 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 256GB UFS 3.1, you get about 221GB of free storage.
It has 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. The phone 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.
The realme 12 Pro has support for n1/3/5/8/28B/40/41/77/78 Network Bands in India, same as the 12 Pro+, and comes 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, same as the 12 Pro+, which is well under the limit of 1.6 W/kg (over 1 g) in India.
Performance and Benchmarks
This is the first phones to be powered by Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 4nmMobile Platform. This has Octa-Core Qualcomm Kryo CPUs that has 4 x Cortex A78 core clocked at 2.2GHz and 4 x Cortex A55 cores clocked at 1.8GHz. There is Adreno 619 GPU that offers decent gaming performance. The phone gets a bit warm on intensive gaming.
The phone has a large vapor chamber cooling area to help keep the phone cool, said the company. We did not face any issues in the graphic-intensive games like COD, BGMI and Genshin Impact. Even though the CPU clock speed is less, the GPU is good, and sometime even better than the Adreno 710 GPU in the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2. That said, check out some synthetic benchmark scores below.
As you can see, this gives a tough competition to some phones, but the realme 11 Pro with MediaTek Dimensity 7050 has a slightly better score in AnTuTu, and Geekbench 6 single-core benchmarks.
Battery life
Coming to the battery life, the phone packs a 5000mAh (typical) built-in battery, same as the 11 Pro. It lasts for a whole day, even with heavy use.
The 12 Pro retains the same 67W SuperVOOC fast charging. 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. 25,999 for the 8GB + 128GB, the realme 12 Pro is just a minor upgrade to the realme 11 Pro since this has the same display, battery, charging, and it also doesn’t see a huge performance improvement compared to the last year’s model.
You can clearly see the camera improvement in the new model, thanks to the new IMX882 sensor. The ultra-wide camera which was missing is now back, and there is a new 2x telephoto camera replacing the macro camera. However, this misses the portrait video option that is present in the realme 12 Pro+.
Alternatives
The POCO X6 is a good alternative with a faster SoC, better display and a slightly bigger battery at a cheaper rate. There is also OnePlus Nord CE 3 at a cheaper rate.
If you spend more, you can get the realme 12 Pro+ that has a better camera including a periscope lens, and a slightly faster SoC. This also has a 12GB RAM version.
Pricing and availability
The realme 12 Pro is priced at Rs. 25,999 for the 8GB + 128GB model and the 8GB + 256GB costs Rs. 26,999. It will be available from realme.com, Flipkart and offline stores from February 6th.
Pros
- Smooth performance
- Good cameras
- Attractive design
- Good battery life
Cons
- Same old display
- Bloatware
- Not a huge performance improvement compared to realme 11 Pro