Realme 7: Affordability that doesn't cut corners

REALME 7 has arrived in the Philippine market and it’s a good smartphone that will get all your basics covered at a lovely price point. It doesn't cut corners, packed with hardware features that is sure to disrupt it’s intended market, directly competing with notable big-name brands.

The phone has a 6.5-inch screen with a 90-hertz (Hz) refresh rate for fluid screen experience. The difference compared to a regular 60-Hz screen is night and day. Though the screen itself can get washed out at certain angles, it's not that big of a deal as the asking price has made this phone what it needs to disrupt the mid-range market pushing the 90hz screen accessible to more people.

Built-in the heart of realme 7 is the MediaTek Helio G95, a great performer, and proves how far this Qualcomm competitor has improved its products in terms of feature set and performance.

Gaming on this phone with some of the latest and most intensive mobile games — like “Call of Duty: Mobile,”“PUBG” and “Genshin Impact” — didn't have noticeable frame drops. The overall gaming experience is more than satisfactory.

Camera performance is no slouch either. The realme 7 has the 64-megapixel (MP) Sony IMX682 sensor with an aperture of f/1.8 on the primary camera, an 8-MP ultrawide camera and a 2-MP camera. This kind of configuration makes the camera a flexible all-rounder for mobile photography.

Thanks to realme's artificial intelligence photo boosting, it makes the colors pop out and have a more comprehensive dynamic range. However, this kind of processing can become a double- edged sword as it sometimes makes the photos look unnatural.

Low-light photography performance is also excellent as the camera's software enables it to come out with decent shots thanks to its f/1.8 aperture. Capturing photos using the night mode, which uses three- to four-second-long exposure, didn't have much sensor noise either, and most of the shots were useable.

The 2-MP camera is excessive here, as it only works well in situations with ideal lighting, and we can't think of any conditions that you would find a use for it unless you're really into macrophotography. It's one of those things that I guess is nice to have, but I'm not going to use if often.

The 16-MP front camera is very sharp and takes excellent selfies in optimal lighting conditions.

Video recording is smooth and can capture footage up to 4K resolution at 30 frames per second (fps). For my use case, I find the 1080p resolution at 60 fps more than enough for daily content, and the Ultra Steady capture feature is capped at 1080p resolution.

One of the strong points of the realme 7 is its battery life. Packing a 5,000-milliamp hour battery, we could last a whole day without having to scour for a charging brick (the phone comes with a 30-watt fast charger), and we believe you can stretch the battery life for at least two to three days if used sparingly with power-saving mode enabled.

Overall, the realme 7 is an excellent choice for people looking for a phone with excellent performance, a decent camera, and a 90- Hz display without paying for the price premium of higher- tier brands. The 8 gigabytes of random access memory and 128 gigabytes of storage also makes it a top choice for those who are crazy about multitasking and those who need massive internal storage.

Pros:

– Powerful processor — the Helio G95 is a great performer for gaming and multitasking

– 90 Hz refresh rate on display without having to pay the price premium – Long battery life

– Stylish Phone design

– Massive internal storage

Cons:

– The screen gets washed out in certain angles

– Camera software’s photo processing sometimes make the images look unnatural