Recently, Realme launched its new Realme 3 Pro smartphone. What makes the budget phone worth your money is the fluid performance, thanks to its Snapdragon 710 SoC and a really long-lasting 4,045mAh battery.
Here’s the pricing of the two variants of the Realme 3 Pro:
- 4 GB RAM + 64 GB storage – Rs. 13,999 (~$200)
- 6 GB RAM + 128 GB storage – Rs. 16,999 (~$244)
VIDEO REVIEW
On April 22nd, OPPO’s independent sub-brand Realme officially released the Realme 3 Pro in India, which directly targets the Xiaomi sub-brand Redmi’s latest model Redmi Note 7 Pro.
For those who are living on a tight budget, value for money always comes first when they consider buying a smartphone. In case of the Realme 3 Pro, it has significant upgrades compared to its predecessor and monster-like hardware among its peers, which includes the Redmi Note 7 Pro. But still, is it really worth your hard-earned money? Let’s find out.
DESIGN
Compared to the Realme 3, the newest ‘Pro’ version continues to use a plastic shell. However, thanks to the special color edition, the body has a unique glass finish. Speaking of colors, the Pro keeps surprising us—the previous model had a horizontal gradient. But the new model changes the color gradient in an ‘S’ shaped design.
Sadly we find it is rather slippery when holding with one hand and easily attracts fingerprints. So a protective case is highly recommended.
DISPLAY
The screen is made up of a 6.3 inch LCD with a 19 by 9 aspect ratio and, as expected, 1080p resolution. Still, the Pro version adopts a water drop style notch. The front camera, light sensor, distance sensor, and earpiece are all embedded in it.
Also, the ‘Pro’ version upgrades the PPI to 410, which means you hardly notice any pixelization or blurriness in the screen while reading texts.
Sadly we cannot adjust the color space to sRGB or P3 but we do have a choice between cooler or warmer color temperature.
Thanks to the 90.8% screen-to-body ratio, the phone provides an immersive experience while viewing images and watching videos.
SPEAKER
As for the audio, the Realme 3 Pro comes with a single speaker on the bottom right side. And we can find a 3.5mm headphone jack on the left. This is a really friendly feature for gamers who are constantly hooked in playing games even when the phone is being charged.
You can’t complain much about a budget device’s speaker quality, however, the Realme 3 Pro actually does a decent job when playing music. The performance on the high and low frequency is average but far from ideal. However, the vocals are surprisingly clear and satisfying.
UNLOCK SYSTEM
Still no in-screen fingerprint sensor, but let’s try the fingerprint scanner mounted on the back. You hardly feel any delay and the accuracy is also great. Besides, the face ID is also available on this Pro model. But due to the lack of 3D face unlock system, I can simply unlock it by using one of my selfies.
OPERATING SYSTEM
There are not many visible upgrades in this department as compared to the Realme 3. They are both powered by the latest ColorOS 6.0 system over Android 9. Compared to the Redmi Note 7 Pro, Realme’s UI adds space in between different aspects of the UI, instead of dividing lines. This gives the UI a cleaner look.
Moreover, you will notice that all your apps have been stored in a drawer, which reminds me of a very vintage style. It is like the interface that used to exist in ancient Nokia phones.
What is worth mentioning is that we found a specially designed mode for motorcyclists. During the ride, all notifications are muted and auto-replied with SMS. The incoming calls are displayed in larger fonts. Considering motorcycles play an important role in India, this kind of localization can efficiently avoid accidents.
HARDWARE DEPARTMENTS
Finally, we have got a Qualcomm chip in a budget phone. Equipped with Snapdragon 710 processor, the Realme 3 Pro performs quite impressively both in CPU and GPU departments.
All the apps respond immediately. Instead of closing the background apps, Realme 3 Pro freezes them. So you hardly notice stutters or lags when switching apps.
What makes the phone worth your money? My answer is its outstanding GPU. The Adreno 616 GPU guarantees real visual sense and more efficient and advanced 3D image rendering, which gives me a very fluent and pleasant gaming experience the whole time.
BATTERY LIFE
This is where I find the Realme 3 Pro comes in really handy. Featuring a 4045 mAh battery, there will be no battery anxiety even before you go to bed.
And with the help of the VOOC flash charge technology and the 20W charging brick, the phone charges from 0% to 10% in just 5 minutes, nearly 50% after half an hour, and fully charged in 80 minutes.
CAMERAS
The Realme 3 Pro has a 16MP primary camera with AI scene recognition and auto face detection. The aperture of the lens is larger than before—from 1.8 in the realme 3 to 1.7 in the Pro version. There is also a secondary 5MP camera as a depth sensor that completes the dual camera setup. But no zoom or wide-angle lens are to be found.
In good lighting conditions, photos turn out to be impressive—great balance between bright parts and dark parts. The color is accurate enough with good contrast. But once you zoom in a bit, the amount of details in the picture go down.
The dynamic range is just about average but luckily I found a solution to this, the chroma boost mode makes it up. You can enable it from the viewfinder, it efficiently improves the dynamic range by stacking multiple images and AI algorithm. Certain colors now are richer and brighter but the saturation sometimes is so strong that the pictures don’t look very real.
When shooting at night, we can still notice the overexposed highlights and high noise level. Images get better when we enable the HDR or the chroma boost mode but it’s far from perfect.
The upgraded nightscape mode does better than the last generation. You can definitely notice the improvements when you enable it. Thanks to the anti-shake and multi-frame synergy, the images here have more details, a balance of optimum exposure and well-controlled noise.
The biggest improvement in the camera department of the Realme 3 pro is its amazing selfie camera. A huge jump from 13MP to 25MP and f/2.0. I really like it for its pleasant soft colors and enough sharpness at the same time.
Turning on the portrait mode, we find some issues around the shoulder area of the person, as it often gets mixed with the background. It seems that the algorithm needs some improvements.
Other Samples of Realme 3 Pro:
CONCLUSION
Overall, if you are looking for a budget phone which comes with a fantastic industry design, decent display, and great CPU and GPU performances, this is definitely your primary choice. Especially if you spend most of your leisure time on your cell phone, the large 4000mAh+ battery gets rid of many of your possible worries.
However, I feel the camera department could use some improvement. This doesn’t mean it’s not good, as for the given price the Realme 3 Pro does have some impressive features like chroma boost mode and nightscape mode.
It’s worth mentioning that the Realme series has made a lot of efforts in introducing features relevant to its target markets like India. This proves that the company is determined to win a larger market share as well as provide better services, especially in the Asian region.
