Tech

Realme 9 5G review: A worthy upgrade?


Realme 9 5G and Realme 9 5G Speed ​​Edition are new additions to the 9 series. These launches come as a bit of a surprise as the company has launched three other smartphones in the same series in the past two months. The Realme 9 Series has a wider price range than previous generations, with more options to choose from. This is fine but it can also cause some confusion for prospective buyers. I will mainly focus on the vanilla Realme 9 5G in this review to see how it compares to other smartphones in the same price range.

Realme 9 5G price in India

The Realme 9 5G priced at Rs. 14,999 in India for the base variant with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. The remaining variants with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage are priced at Rs. 17,499. This smartphone comes in two colors, Stargaze White and Meteor Black, and I already have the former for this review.

Design Realme 9 5G

The Realme 9 5G has a familiar design and it reminds me of the Realme phone I have used in the past. The large screen has a camera hole in the upper left corner. It has thin bezels on the top and sides while the chin is larger. It’s not distracting and acceptable on a phone at this price point. Realme has used plastic for the frame and back which helps keep the weight down to 188g.

The power button on the right has a built-in fingerprint scanner while the volume buttons are on the opposite side. All buttons are positioned towards the center of the frame and are easy to reach even when used with one hand. The phone is very thin, with a thickness of 8.55mm.

Realme 9 5Gback360 Dashboard Utilities Realme 9 5G Review

Realme 9 5G is thin and has a 5,000mAh battery

At the bottom, the Realme 9 5G has a 3.5mm headphone jack, the main microphone, a USB Type-C port, and an external speaker. The top of the phone is completely blank. The back of the Realme 9 5G is flat with curved edges that feel comfortable in the hand. It has three cameras housed in a rectangular module that protrudes slightly. This causes the phone to wobble on a flat surface, which I don’t like.

The Stargaze White finish features patterns on the back that change color when viewed in light. The back side has stains but they are not easily visible. Realme includes a clear case in the box.

Realme 9 5G specifications and software

The Realme 9 5G has a 6.5-inch LCD display with full-HD+ resolution and a maximum refresh rate of 90Hz. Realme has opted for the octa-core MediaTek Dimensity 810 5G SoC. This phone packs a 5,000mAh battery and supports 18W fast charging. You also get a compatible charger in the box. The tray on the Realme 9 5G has two nano-SIM slots and a microSD card slot for memory expansion. The phone also supports Bluetooth 5.1, dual-band Wi-Fi and six satellite navigation systems.

In terms of software, it runs Realme UI 2.0 based on Android 11. My unit is running March 2022 Android security patch. The user interface is simple and easy to use which is great especially if you are a first time Realme user. You can switch between the traditional three-button layout or the swipe-to-navigate. It also has features like a smart sidebar, which is a floating carousel of shortcuts to your favorite apps and actions.

Realme 9 5Gholepunch gadgets360 Review of Realme 9 5G

The hole in the screen houses the 16-megapixel selfie camera

Realme UI 2.0 provides personalization options to change icon style, color scheme, font and icon layout. Inside the settings app, the Realme Lab section has experimental features for you to try. One of those features is the Sleep Capsule, which prevents you from using the app after a specific time to help you sleep without distractions.

I found a large amount of bloatware pre-installed on the device. Some apps like FinShell Pay and Theme Store sent spam notifications during the review period. On the other hand, third-party apps can be uninstalled to reclaim storage space.

Realme 9 5G performance and battery life

The Realme 9 5G offers decent performance, and I never noticed any slowdowns with regular use. The display switches between 60Hz and 90Hz depending on what you’re doing. You can also lock it to 90Hz, which makes scrolling very smooth. You can choose between Vivid and Soft color modes, depending on your preference.

Watching videos is fun, but the single speaker doesn’t produce compelling sound. The Redmi Note 11 are a direct competitor at this price point and offer an AMOLED display as well as dual speakers, so the lack of them on the Realme 9 5G is a bit of a letdown. The Realme 9 5G’s side-mounted fingerprint scanner quickly reads fingerprints and never needs to repeatedly unlock the phone. Facial recognition is also quick.

Realme 9 5G, fingerprint scanner utility360 Review of Realme 9 5G

The fingerprint scanner is embedded in the power button and easy to reach

My review unit has 6GB of RAM and allows me to reassign up to 5GB of memory as RAM. Multitasking was easy, and I was able to switch between different apps without reloading apps in the background. App load times are also decent.

The phone performed well in synthetic benchmarks, scoring 372,099 in AnTuTu. In Geekbench 5’s single-core and multi-core tests, it scored 609 and 1,830 respectively. In 3DMark’s Sling Shot test, the phone scored 3,475 points.

Games normally run fine without any problems. Even Call Of Duty: Mobile runs at ‘Medium’ graphics and ‘Medium’ frame rate settings by default and is playable without stuttering. I played the game for 15 minutes, which resulted in a four percent drop in battery and the phone was barely warm to the touch after that.

Realme 9 5G Camera360 Module Gadgets Realme 9 5G Review

Realme 9 5G has a triple camera setup at the back

The Realme 9 5G offers very good battery life and you can easily use it for a day and a half on a full charge. In our HD video loop test, the phone ran for 16 hours and 38 minutes, which is a very good amount of time. The supplied 18W charger is capable of charging about 27 percent in 30 minutes and about 52 percent in an hour. Fully charging the phone takes a little over two hours.

Realme 9 5G Camera

The Realme 9 5G has a 48-megapixel main camera with an f/1.8 aperture, the pixel bin is reduced to 12 megapixels by default. You don’t get the ultra-wide-angle camera on the Realme 9 5G, which I think is a major omission. The other two are a black and white portrait camera and a macro camera. For selfies, it has a 16-megapixel camera. The camera app is heavily loaded and has plenty of shooting modes. It has fast transitions for HDR as well as AI scene recognition. There’s a new Street Mode filter that applies a high-contrast, high-saturation look to the photos you take.

Daylight camera performance is decent. The phone can measure light accurately and enable HDR automatically in bright scenes. I found the AI ​​to be too aggressive with green, making the trees and plants look artificial. The output from the main camera is pretty good that way, but magnifying these photos reveals quite a bit of missing detail. An ultra-wide-angle camera will give this phone more versatility.

Realme 9 5G daylight camera sample (tap to see full-size image)

Close-ups are good, and the phone takes sharp pictures as long as I’m at the right distance. It also manages background opacity well. Portrait shots are sharp and have very good edge detection, along with proper background blur, which can be adjusted before shooting. Macro photos have medium resolution and are limited to 2 megapixels.

Realme 9 5G camera sample; top to bottom: close-up, portrait, macro samples (tap to see full-size samples)

Camera performance in low light is just average when shooting in regular ‘Photo’ mode. Photos appear soft, and distant objects have a watercolor-like effect. Night mode doesn’t make a significant difference to the output. It produces slightly better detail in darker areas of the scene, but the output is slightly yellow and looks like a filter has been applied. The phone also doesn’t stabilize the shot, so shaking causes unwanted blur.

Realme 9 5G low-light camera samples and Night Mode camera (tap to see full-sized image))

Selfies look good in daylight as well as low light. In low light conditions, Realme 9 used the screen flash to help get better results. Portrait selfies were great, but the phone applied a beauty filter by default.

Realme 9 5G selfie portrait samples (tap to see full-sized image)

Video recording feature reaches 1080p for the main camera as well as the selfie camera. The Realme 9 5G does not stabilize the footage by default. It has an ‘Ultra Steady’ mode that cuts the frame a bit to try to stabilize the footage, and this has helped improve the video. Low-light footage has small grain.

Overall, the camera performance of the Realme 9 5G is good in daylight, while low light is a challenge for it.

Identify

Realme has launched a lot of smartphones priced under Rs. 20,000 of late, its models and series overlap, making it hard to choose the right one. In my opinion, the Realme 9 5G has a very simple design and the specifications, although good, will not keep buyers waiting in line. Realme 9 5G shares a lot of hardware with Realme 8S 5G (Review), and it looks like the company downgraded some of that older model’s specs for a lower price point.

The 6GB RAM variant of the Realme 9 5G is priced at Rs. 17,499, while a variant with equivalent specs of the Realme 8s 5G will cost only Rs. 500 more. The latter will offer better value as it has a higher resolution 64-megapixel camera and 33W fast charging.

The base variant of the Realme 9 5G is priced at Rs. 14,999 and better value for money than the one I tested. If you’re a casual user, you might consider this, but I recommend you check it out Redmi Note 11 instead, it has an AMOLED display, stereo speakers, and 33W charging. It lacks 5G, but no network carrier in India even offers the feature right now, so it might not be a huge loss.



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