Oppo RealMe 1 Review

BBK Electronics is the parent company to Oppo, Vivo, and OnePlus. This is something which is known to the limited audience. Adding another segment under Oppo is RealMe which is the budget offering under the main company of Oppo. Oppo has been trying to get hold of the camera-centric smartphone segments but they are failing to do so, now they have got the RealMe 1 which comes from the new brand RealMe. Although there are two brandings on the phone with both Oppo and RealMe. Do you think RealMe 1 is going to do wonders with the sale figure of Oppo? Let us see in the Review.

Design and Build Quality

The device comes with a plastic build which does make it look average and feel out of the world with the current squad of mobile devices. At the back, we have a single camera unit with a single tone flash. The back panel has 15 different tangent which reflects the light which makes it look upmarket. On the front, we get an 18:9 ratio display which is up with the current standards and makes it stand with the current competition. Although we can find a huge amount of bezels around the display which considering the price factor is no worries.

Overall the phone looks good from a distance, but the in-hand feel of the device spoils the overall feel of the handset. Another interesting part which one notices from the design of the handset is about the absence of fingerprint scanner. Talking about the placements we have the power button and volume rocker towards the left of the phone, while on the right we have the Sim tray.

Display

Oppo RealMe 1 features a huge 6 – inches panel on the front with a resolution of 1080 x 2160 pixels. The display owns an aspect ratio of 18:9 which makes the phone look good and upmarket. The quality of the display is not that great and we found the display to be over reflective in outdoors which makes using the phone in extreme sunlight difficult. On the screen, there is no notch game still with the new brand but we can find the bezels both on the top and on the bottom of the display.

Performance

There are two different versions of the phone currently on sale. One comes with 6GB of RAM while another comes with 4 Gigs of RAM. The phone is capable of handling all the basic tasks such as phone calls, pictures, web browsing, media application and much more. Although the MediaTek chip which according to Oppo can outperform the Snapdragon 636 is not much capable of handling the extreme load and we can find lags and stutters during playing heavy games.

The phone rocks the latest Android Oreo on board but with a customized theme overlay on the same. The 3GB variant does stutters and slows the operation of the phone while on the 6GB variant the operating system runs smooth. The phone comes with Facial recognition which works well and in the price segment of around 10,000 INR.

Talking about the benchmarks the phone is much more capable than the much higher priced handset the Redmi Note 5 Pro. The phone scores an impressive score of 138,326 on AnTuTu with our unit while the higher priced offering from Xiaomi sporting the Snapdragon 636 happens to score a maximum of 105,369. Even in other benchmarks, the score of RealMe 1 is better than the competition.

Camera

The phone features a 13 – MP unit on the rear while on the front – end we get an 8 MP unit. The phone comes with 296 facial points which integrated with artificial intelligence makes it possible for facial recognition by the phone. The AI-based selfie feature of the front camera is capable of automatically detecting skin tone, skin type, age, gender, etc. One thing to note is about the camera app which looks much like the copy of one from iOS.

Both the front and the rear camera uses software-based functionality for creating a blurred background. The details on both the images from the front camera and rear camera are sharp, but the dynamic range of the sensor is not so great. The camera is going to lack details, especially in low lighting conditions. Both the front and the rear camera gets 1080p video recording and they also lack details as the photos do. We do not have any type of image stabilization onboard which makes it difficult to get some good shots with the camera. There are a number of different functionality added to the camera like stickers and more.

Battery

On the battery front, the phone gets a 3410 mAh Battery which is good enough to last about a day and a half on paper. In real life conditions, the phone gets warm while using the phone extensively which results in battery loss. If you are a video lover then the phone’s battery last much longer and can easily last for around 12 hours while playing an HD Video of MP4 codec. The battery on a normal working day with 2 hours of calling, half an hour of social media, and around 15 – 20 mins of camera usage lasts around a full working day with around 25 – 30% battery left in the night.

Pro’s

• Affordable
• 6GB RAM
• 6-Inch 18:9 display
• Good Battery Life

Con’s

• Color OS
• Plasticky Build Quality
• Average Camera Performance

Verdict

The design of the phone is unique which does makes it stand out in the competition. The phone ticks all the right places such as dedicated microSD card, good display for normal usage, performance, cellular connectivity. There are some of the wrong boxes filled in the favor of RealMe 1 such as no fingerprint sensor, cluttered software, average cameras, etc. RealMe brand is said to be targeted against Xiaomi and Asus. Both the brands have their handsets priced very competitively. Although if you are on a tight budget and are looking to get an overall performer then RealMe 1 is the phone to go, if you want a better deal in performance or camera then you can have a look at other in the lineup.