Realme C1 Review: Is it the real budget phone for youngsters or…?

OPPO has had a great impact on the smartphone market with its highly innovative devices. The success of OPPO smartphones can be estimated by the introduction of its sub-brand, REALME. REALME has been responsible for producing low-end phones that are cost effective, yet efficient smartphones that get the everyday job done. A fine example of it is the REALME C1, now in its 2019 edition.

Realme, a Shenzhen-based Chinese smartphone maker is expanding its reach in Pakistani market by providing affordable handsets.Realme is on a mission, the mission is to be competitive with other mid range companies and they do this by offering consumers a very good offer. Their most recent creation, the Realme 2 Pro smartphone offered customers a great performance and some good features to go along with that performance. The Realme C1 the phone which we will discuss today is out in the market to compete with phones such as the XiaomiRedmi 6A, the Honor 7S and the Asus Zenfone Lite. Moreover, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 chipset will attract many consumers in to buying the phone, considering the PKR 18,999 price tag the phone goes for. It also has big display and a decent battery life.

Unboxing

Unboxing the phone is a pretty standard procedure with no real surprises. Opening the box, there is the sim card ejection tool, a clear case, along with some start up guides. After getting rid of that is when the phone finally appears in all its glory. This is followed by a standard charger and USB cable, with no headphones in the box. It might be disappointing for some but at this price point REALME can be forgiven.

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Design& Display

So the device has an plastic body, which makes the phone seem very light and somewhat easy to carry around. The sides are quite thick and offer a comfortable grip without making the phone look too fat. The power and the volume buttons are placed on opposite sides of the device and users can easily reach these.

There is also a single sim tray on the side of the phone. The phone does not have a fingerprint scanner but you do have the option of face unlock to somewhat make up for that. Moreover, the display of the phone is a Corning Gorilla Glass and offers good protection against hard surfaces. The phone has a particularly large 6.2 inch HD+ screen display which produces some really good colors for the user to enjoy. This is also one of the few low-priced devices which have a notch coming along with the phone. The display cutout is wide. All in all the design of the phone is eye-catching and at the price a lot of people will love the design of this phone.

Hardware and Software

So the new phone is powered by a Qualcomm 450 chipset which is currently the top chipset among the 400 series launched by the company. The phone comes packed with an Octa-core Kryo 260 CPU which can run at speeds of up to 1.8 Ghz, along with an Adreno 506 GPU. The performance of the device is particularly good and when compared with other devices of the same price segment, this device has the upper hand.

The device is available in 2GB Ram and 16GB internal memory, but we know that users will feel that the internal storage will run out very quickly and it does as users only get about 8.67 GB of usable place. The C1 does not have the option to merge the Micro-SD card with the storage, so users will have to move around their data themselves. Most applications cannot be moved either, at least not Facebook, Instagram or even some games, been there- done that.

Other features in the device’s hardware include, A Bluetooth 4.2, Wifi 802.11 b/g/n, dual 4G VolTe, a compass, proximity sensor and ambient light sensor. In terms of the device’s OS the device runs the Colour OS 5.1, which is based out on the Android 8.1 Oreo. The custom UI offers the users with plenty of gestures and shortcuts, which we may have seen before on the Realme and Oppo cellphone devices.

Performance

The phone is not the fastest device available at the quoted device but still gives the user an average experience, this is to do mainly due to the fact that the system of the device uses about 1GB of the RAM which leaves you with more or less 500MBs of RAM to carry out tasks on your phone and the other 500 is dedicated to the apps running in the background of the phone. Multitasking on the device is still manageable and the

phone runs fairly well. Heavy games such as the now famous game, The “PUBG” do run on the device. The display’s touch response also feels a bit iffy now and then when you are gaming.

Camera

The Realme C1 comes loaded with a 13MP main camera which is at the back of the phone with a 2MP depth sensor. That sensor is mainly used to gauge in depth when users are shooting with the camera in the portrait mode. With regular shots in daylight, the C1 captures a decent amount of detail in distant objects but we also noticed some chromatic aberration. Auto HDR is present but the end result isn’t always very good looking. We have the common panorama and time-lapse shooting modes, as well as a stickers mode, which is fun to play around with.

Noise is handled well in low light but details and focusing speeds take a hit. Under sufficient artificial lighting, we did end up with some very usable macros, but landscapes in general look soft. The front 5-megapixel sensor captures good colors in selfies when lighting is favorable, but at night, we encountered a lot of Chroma noise in our images. Video recording tops out at 1080p but the output isn’t very sharp, and there’s no electronic stabilization.

Aperture Mode

Beauty Mode

Normal Mode

Front Camera

Battery

The battery life of the Realme C1 is not that good in all honesty, this is where the phone lacks some efficiency. The non-removable 4230mAh battery lasted about a day and half easily and more at time when usage of the device was limited. The Realme C1 does not support a fast charging, but with a 10W adapter we were able to charge the phone in about two or three hours. With a 5W adapter it takes at least 4 hours to do so.

Conclusion

Now the considering the price of the phone to be only 18999/- we conclude that at that price the phone offers some good features and essentials. All in all the Realme C1 won’t disappoint you but it will also not amaze you.

Pros & Cons