a new smartphone
that doesn't suck but your budget is tighter
than a haddocks ring piece then one manufacturer you should definitely consider is realme like its massive rival xiaomi realme likes to pump out solid smartphones at a nice price and its freshest budget handset for 2021 is this bad boy here the realme 8 pro and this boasts some very impressive specs indeed including an amoled display
and a 108 megapixel rear camera to take on xiaomi's very own redmi note 10 pro now i've been using the realme 8 pro as my full time smartphone so here
is my in-depth review and for more on the latest and greatest tech including roundups of the best budget smartphones in 2021 please do poke subscribe and ding that notifications bell cheers now the real me 8 pro ain't exactly compact at 6.4 inches but it's
certainly not as big as some other recent budget blowers and it is reasonably light as well at just 176 grams
and the design is fairly typical for a budget smartphone around this price point the realme 8 pro is
wrapped in a plastic frame which stretches from the edges all the way around the back and it's got a lovely
textured finish as well to aid grip and prevent any nasty greasy finger scuffs oh and just in case you didn't notice it
there's also a fairly sizable slogan branded across that arse exactly the kind of thing that you wouldn't shout at someone stood precariously at the edge of a cliff
it's definitely a very bold move by real mean one that could well potentially put off a lot of uh consumers as well but at
the very least it's a conversation piece
when we all start meeting up in pubs again you've
got two main color choices with the real
me 8 pro infinite blue or this here infinite
black model which sounds pretty morbid
for sure but don't worry you shouldn't find
yourself staring into that infinite black surfacing and pondering the very fragile nature of our existence at least i didn't unless i started hitting the
scotch pretty hard and apparently there will also be a
fluorescent yellow version of the real me8 pro available in some regions as well which sounds utterly batch
but it should be a bit brighter and happier at least and yeah because the realme 8 pro is constructed from plastic
you can expect scuffs and scratches to build up over
time although touchwood after a few days it's still looking pretty fresh you do get a condom case bundled in the box
which is always handy and this thing has already slammed down onto a hard bathroom floor and touchwood
emerged absolutely unscathed hazard and
it's more good news when you actually boot the phone up as well because the real me 8 pro sports the latest android
11 os plus that all new and improved real me ui 2.0 this is still effectively color os by a slightly different name
and while it certainly has its foibles like that absolute cluster of a settings menu there's still plenty of stuff to
love here too real me ui is certainly easier to
customize than stock android with a personalization section that gives you full control over the icons fonts menucolors and other bitsand forget that bog standard dark mode
because here you've got three grades of darkness and there's an always on display feature to take advantage of
that oled screen you've got some nifty gesture control in
there including the bit of rays to wake action all the usual
shenanigans and a very much appreciated one-handed mode as well when i can actually
get it to work because our hazard drinks all around and sure real me ui can be a bit janky in places the animations
aren't always super smooth which can give the illusion the performance isn't quite as good as it actually is but
overall i'd say that the benefitsoutweigh the drawbacks
and all of the other features that i expected from a budgetee smartphone were present and correct including dual sim support plus a separate microsd slot to expand that generous 128 gigs of storageand yeah you've got nfc on here with full google peer support for your
contactless payments very very helpful certainly these days you also have an in-display fingerprint sensor to
authorize payments and to unlock the
phone and unfortunately it's not the bestexample of an in- screen scanner that i've used overall it tends to work all right but occasionally it'll just take sort of two
or three attempts to actually recognize your print
and unlock the smartphone which can getquite frustrating i even removed the uh on-screen protector which came
pre-installed just to see if that was you know bulking it in any way doesn't seem to have improved it at all
but fortunately the real me a pro also supports some very dependable face
recognition which works a hell of a lot better combined with raise to wake the as you pick the phone up which
means you can then get on with admiring that pretty
6.4 inch super amoled screen it's still pretty rare to see an oled screen on a budget smartphone around this sort of
price point although last year's real me 7 pro did break that
trend with the oled screen and of course xiaomi's
redmi note 10 pro very impressive budget handset recently came out with an oled display as well the real me 8 pro is certainly a feast for the eyes with its sharp contrast reasonably punchy colours and wide viewing angles it's not the brightest screen around but i didn't struggle to see outdoors and the full hd plus resolution
certainly keeps movies and photos looking super sharp
the xiaomi phone does beat the real me april when it comes to the refresh rate however because the redmi note 10 pro
sported a 120 hertz refresh for us here on the real me it's just a bog standard 60 hertz panel while the real
me8 pro only supports a mono speaker setup as well instead of a stereo speaker setup at least it's pretty
bloody loud once you bump it up to the
maximum volume another absolutely no issues with
bluetooth 5 connectivity as well connected to headphones speakers nice strong stable connection throughout
no issues no judders plus you also get a
headphone jack and if you've got a pair of phones that
support high-res audio well so does the
realme 8 pro so good times all around the like last
year's real me 7 pro you once again have
qualcomm snapdragon 720 g chipset
running the show
and it's a definite shame that the specs
haven't been boosted for this fresher
model still you've got a pretty generous six
or eight gigs of ddr4 ram in backup and neveryday shenanigans were fine and dandy on this 8 gig model i did see some slowdown in the transitions when
zipping through the ui and such forth but i think that's more down to the launcher than the actual performance and certainly no worries if you want to
relax by supplying random online strangers with a dozen new orifices
courtesy of an m15 machine gun games like call of duty mobile play beautifully even on those higher graphic settings helped by the responsive 180 hertz touch
sampling while realme ui's comprehensive
gaming mode also offers up all of the usual tools
including resource management and
notification blocking to give you that
competitive edge you've got a 4 500 milliamp battery
crammed into this plastic chassis and certainly that did the job absolutely fine even on the longer steers with plenty of camera use media stream and all that good stuff with around five to six hours of screen on time i usually still had around sort of 20 25 battery i left at the end of the day i
don't know why i'm speaking like this
you got support for that 50 watt super dart charge tech as well so you get a full charge in
under an hour even from a completely
drained battery and you actually get 65 watt power adapter bundled in the box as well which is exceedingly generous for a budget smartphone especially when some smartphone manufacturers can't be bothered to bundle any charger with their overpriced m blowers so realme is making a big deal about the camera tech here on the 8 pro notably that 108 megapixel samsung h2 sensor and like xiaomi's 108 megapixel optics on the redmi note 10
pro this uses nine in one pixel bin and just to help give you slightly brighter more balanced looking shots so what you end up with is 12 megapixel picks that are still detailed enough to enjoy on a monitor
or a tele you can swap to a 108 megapixel mode if you want more detail but the color reproduction
clearly suffers as a result now most of my test photos on that 12 megapixel auto modescame out well you will see some slight over saturation in bright conditions and
subjects who won't particularly fond of poison do occasionally come out of it blurry just the usual budget foibles for darker scenes you currently switch to night
mode which helps to brighten up the shot
it's not exactly a miracle worker but it
does the job and for a different viewpoint you can always swap to that eight megapixel ultra wide angle lens
this obviously does not come with the benefit of that pixel bin saw you will notice that images can be a
little bit murkier colors don't look quite as natural and
overall it's not quite as great but it's always an option you've also got amacro lens on here which is fine if you
want to shoot something from a distance of a couple of centimeters plus a monochrome portrait lens that helps to
produce some rather tasty results foryour human subjects you've got a variety of effects and filters to choose between including the ability to drain the color from the rest of the photo very funky you'll find a similar selection of filters and fun modes when you swap to shoot and video
including a bokeh feature that works all right but leaves a fuzzy kind of halo around your subject and more color highlighting options as well though bear in mind you'll have to shoot at low resolution to activate these on the other hand your standard 4k footage will look good no problems here with focus although the audio pickup is definitely a little weak unless you're actually right next to the phone
and last up flip it around to the front and you've got a 16 megapixel selfie cam that's your typical basic budget shooter complete with usual portrait smarts and all of that jazz and that right there is my full review of
the realme 8 pro and while it doesn't quite
baste my turkey in the same lovely waythat the xiaomi redmi note 10 pro did it's certainly a solid budget smartphone in every regardi would have liked to have seen an upgrade to that snapdragon platform and
unfortunately the display can't quite
match the redmi note 10 pro either despite the
fact it is all the luscious bit of all that action oh and if you've got the
real me seven pro don't concern yourself
with upgrading because it is just a
minor step up so that's my thoughts anyway on the real me it probably be great to hear what you guys think down in the comments below and please do check out my run-ups on the other uh budget smartphones you can grab right now in the uk in 2021 including that redmi note 10 pro which i can't stop gushing about apologies and for more on the latest greatest tech please do poke subscribe and ding that
notifications bell and have yourselves a fantastic rest of the week cheers everyone
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