Let me give you a recap: last year Realme 6 is more gaming-capable than Realme 6 Pro, then 6 months later, Realme 7 series came out. Values have changed, the vanilla version now has overall specs rather than a gaming-centric device, and those devices have a higher refresh rate and IPS LCD screens.
Today, Realme 8 is still with a gaming-focused chipset however they sacrificed the high refresh rate for a more power-saving Super AMOLED display. Although there’s still no 5G here if that’s what you’re looking for, however, if you’re eyeing for a phone with long-lasting battery life, read along.
Pros
- Large battery
- sAmoled display
- Unique design
- Impressive gaming performance
Cons
- Exposure balance
- Camera optimization
- Noticeable chin bezels
READ: realme 6 Revisit: Should You Buy It in 2021?
Design
The back of the Realme 8 is made out of plastic, and unlike the pro version, the texture is smoother with 30% of its back being reflective and shiny while the rest is glossy. It comes with two color variants, Cyber Black–and our review unit–Cyber Silver. We could say that the design of the Realme 8 is better than the Pro version.
The reflective glossy finish and the reflective chromatic pattern on the “Dare to Leap” catchphrase are quite amusing. However, we still feel the superiority and the premium built on the bigger brother as it has a more solid built even the weight of both devices are nearly equal. Being less premium doesn’t mean it’s cheap, Realme 8 is still solid and the protruding camera module doesn’t seem to wobble a lot on a flat surface.
Around the frame, the power and volume rocker are placed on the right side, while on the left is the simtray with dual nano sim slot and expandable storage slot that can expand up to 1TB. At the top is a secondary microphone and nothing more, while at the bottom, Realme 8 has a single down-firing speaker, USB Type-C port, main microphone, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
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Display
Now heading to the front, the Realme 8 boasts a 6.4-inch Super AMOLED FHD+ display with HDR 10 certification. It has slim bezels and a slightly thicker chin. Comparing it to its predecessor, the Realme 7 has thinner bezels. Realme 8 also has an in-display fingerprint scanner that is very responsive and fast. On the top left corner is a hole-punch cutout housing a 16MP selfie camera.
The quality of the display is comparable to higher midrange devices with the same panel. The Super AMOLED gives a very bright display outdoors at 1000nits and a punchy color on the display. The contrast is good and sharpness is on point thanks to high resolution with 411PPI.
The display quality is outstanding but due to the thick bezels, it eliminates the seamless aesthetic look. It also has a downgrade on the refresh rate but it still has a 180Hz sampling rate to keep the screen responsive to touch. Overall, even without a higher refresh rate, the power-saving screen is what most users want in their phone, and Realme 8 sacrifices smoothness over efficiency.
Camera
Heading to its camera, Realme 8 consists of a quad-camera, 64MP f/1.8 main cam, 8MP ultrawide, and 2MP on both macro and depth sensor. The setup is pretty much the basics on all midrange devices. But the design where the camera sits is quite refreshing. Square-shaped camera modules used to be the industry’s standard today, Realme added the LED flash below making it a rectangular-shape module with a chromatic effect whenever it hit by light. For me, it’s a standout and it has a unique personality.
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Going to its camera quality the main cam is just at the right spot with a little bit of imperfection on exposure balance and sharpness. The output feels over-processed and saturated. However, white balance detection is fine and acceptable. The macro lens feels a bit gimmicky that it is just there to take the 4th slot of the quad-camera setup.
Subject to background separation, however, using the portrait mode is accurate and clean but again the exposure balance is a downer. Overall, the main cam is the lens you will use for day-to-day photography stuff. Quality is acceptable, with a few tweaks needed to optimize the overall output.
Switching to Ultrawide, it outputs better quality images than its predecessor, there are no visible color fringing, the sharpness is on point. It does get blurry on the edges but it tends to be less distracting. Sharpness is crisp too and compared to the main camera the exposure is more balanced.
For the 16MP selfie, it outputs good skin tone color and it is sharp and crisp. However, the blacks are deep that it removes details, and the highlights are pretty much blown out. The exposure balance is what I noticed at first glance. It can be fixed through third-party editing software, but I hope that they’ll push an update for camera optimization later on. What I like about the selfie cam is it always prioritizes the subject’s exposure.
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Now heading to its camera features, unlike the bigger brother we knew that the features are quite limited here. But the sought-after aspects on a smartphone are here, [email protected], EIS, Dual View Mode, and what’s my favorite is the Pro mode on photo and video. Starry mode is also present if you’re not that into manual photography.
Performance
Unto the power of this midrange device, Realme 8 is equipped with Mediatek Helio G95 (12nm) with 8GB of ram and 128GB of internal storage within the past year the configuration hasn’t changed but the chipset is a budget midrange gaming processor which makes the Realme 8 very affordable.
Gaming in Realme 8 somehow has its ups and downs. If we compare it to the pro version, some games are better in Realme 8 like Honkai Impact 3 which offers higher stability and default settings. Yet playing League of Legends Wildrift, the Realme 8 Pro wins on stability at maximum settings. All I can see are the optimization differ in each game. Realme 8 offers more stability than most games we tested.
Moving on to its software, Realme 8 is running on Android 11 with Realme UI 2.0 out of the box. The UI feels more seamless and fluid, they put the personalization option in one place and it is very interactive and informative than the last versions of Realme UI. It offers a clean and neat user navigation while giving a lighter feel to the browsing experience. It still has face unlock and an in-display fingerprint scanner which is as fast as the blink of an eye.
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Battery
We don’t see any upgrades on the Realme 8’s battery, it’s still the same as its predecessor—5000mAh with 30W fast charging. That’s still a good thing even there are no increments on the hardware.
The 5000mAh battery still provides long-lasting performance, on our gaming test we showed on our youtube channel, Realme 8 consumes 30% of its fully charged juice in just 2 hours and 30 minutes. Also, the 30W fast charging still has sufficient charging time. The super dart charging took about one hour to fully charge the device From 0-100%. It’s like you bought an upper midrange device from last year.
Verdict
Realme 8 is not the best vanilla version in the realme number series for me. I still like the Helio G90T on the Realme 6 because it offers higher refresh rate compatibility and higher settings available when playing games. However, power-wise, the Realme 8 does give beneficial growth among all of its predecessors.
Unlike the Realme 7, the super AMOLED of the Realme 8 does offer a great impact in gaming. And if you add the battery capacity and charging speed, it will really give you what you pay for even the chipset only has 12nm architecture. To make it short, Realme 8–for the price of P13,990(8GB/128GB)–gives you more time and a worry-free user/gaming experience. What more it can give if you add a higher refresh rate on an AMOLED display.
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realme 8 specs, price, availability in the Philippines
- Display: 6.4″ FHD+ Super AMOLED 60Hz, 1000nits peak
- Design: all-polycarbonate
- Dimensions: 160.6 x 73.9 x 8 mm, 177g
- CPU/Chipset: Mediatek Helio G95 (12 nm)
- GPU: Mali-G76 MC4
- RAM: 8GB
- Storage: 128 UFS 2.1, expandable up to 1TB
- Main Camera: 64MP, f/1.8 Main, 8MP Ultrawide, 2MP macro, 2MP depth | up to [email protected] video recording with EIS
- Selfie Camera: 16MP, f/2.5 | video up to FHD @ 30fps
- Connectivity & Ports: 4G LTE, Bluetooth 5.1, WiFi ac, GPS, USB-C, audio jack
- Security: face unlock, in-display fingerprint scanner
- Battery: 5000mAh battery (30W)
- Audio: loudspeaker
- OS: Android 11, Realme UI 2.0
- Colors: Cyber Silver, Cyber Black
- Price: ₱13,990
- Release date: May 2021 (Philippines)
Realme 9/9 Pro will still have the same chipset hehehe