Home Tech Reviews Realme XT Review – Beastly 64MP Camera for Day and Night Shooting

Realme XT Review – Beastly 64MP Camera for Day and Night Shooting

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Coming off the hot release of Realme 5 and Realme 5 Pro, the company is following it up with a better deal for an unbelievable price. Realme XT is packing 64MP quad-camera setup with a better design than Realme 5 Pro, all while costing P16,990 only. Here’s what we have to say about Realme’s best mid-range phone right now.

READ: Realme 5 Pro Review – One of the Best Mid-Range Smartphone Cameras

Design

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It’s very unlikely to see mid-range phones to sport nearly all-glass design. Although XT did cut some corners, using plastic with a metallic finish for the frame, we don’t really mind it when we have Corning Gorilla Glass 5 for the front and back panels. That said, you will need to be extra careful as it’s a slippery device.

With our time with the Pearl White variant, color hue slightly changes from blue-ish to purple-ish. We may not be getting a louder design pattern but we love its low-key profile. One gripe that we only have with the XT is its camera hump. Lay it flat on a table and you’ll be dealing with wobbles. But for most, we’re pretty sure that you’ll be holding the phone 90% of the time.

Display

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At 6.4″, XT is ever-so-slightly bigger than Realme 5 Pro. While there’s a smaller teardrop notch here, we don’t mind as long as we have a beautiful AMOLED panel. This means contrast ratio is high and colors are on the vibrant side. But aside from that, it also means that we get to use the Always-on feature. In this case, XT only provides the date and time. There’s no option to customize this and it even lacks support for notification icons. Hopefully, Always-on is improved on the next software update.

In terms of peak brightness, it’s more than enough to make you see even under broad daylight. We also love the fact that the bezels around the display are thin, except the chin bezel being a tad thicker.

READ: Vivo Nex 3 with 99.6% FullView Display To Launch in the Philippines Today

Camera

Now for the main course — that 64MP Samsung GW1 lens. It’s a Quad-Bayer sensor, meaning, the sensor outputs no more than 16MP. As for the rest, it retains the same 8MP ultrawide, 2MP macro, and 2MP depth lenses of Realme 5 Pro. Video recording supports up to 4K @ 30fps, but electronic image stabilization is present only @ 1080p.

Unless you’re comparing images side-by-side, you’ll most likely not notice the added detail quality of the massive Samsung lens. But when you’re capturing highly-textured subjects, then you’ll start to see the benefits. The image is nearly-always sharper, sometimes, even too sharp. You can zoom in on the images but expect digital cropping instead. With proper exposure, you can get some incredible-looking images. If not, photos look blurry and soft.

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Where we think the 64MP sensor is best is in low-light situations. Detail preservation is incredible. There are times when shadows are crushed but Nightscape easily fixes that.

As for the rest of the sensors, ultrawide is reliably fun in daylight. And while the macro sensor works, we still think you’ll get better macro shots with the main sensor. Portrait mode seems to be better here. While it’s not perfect, you’ll really need to look for the rough bokeh cuts around the subject.

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The 16MP selfie camera is also reliable, provided you have good lighting. While it does love to soften the skin tones and whiten the subject’s face, the resulting images are pleasant to look at.

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READ: 3 Reasons Why 108MP Smartphone Camera Is Worth Getting

Performance

Realme XT is using the same Snapdragon 712 that we’ve reviewed from Realme 5 Pro. It also uses the same 8GB RAM and 128GB internal storage. If you’re planning to shoot 64MP all the way, you’ll definitely find the microSD slot useful. Running ColorOS 6 based on Android Pie, our feelings stays the same — Snapdragon 712 chipset is more than capable of handling day-to-day tasks with some gaming on the side. If this was the 730G version, we’ll be having a different conversation.

Benchmark Scores
Antutu 187,938
Geekbench Single Core 1901
Geekbench Multi-Core 6388

Audio

With the single down-firing speaker, the sound output is loud and clear. Whether you’re watching videos or listening to music, you should have no problem recognizing dialogues, lyrics, and instruments. And if you happen to block the speakers when in landscape mode, you can use a wired earphone for that matter.

Battery

Realme XT is packing a typical 4000mAh battery with support for 20W VOOC 3.0 flash charging. Like the Realme 5 Pro, it can easily last a day in normal use. During our endurance test, it lasted a total of 33 hours. As for the screen time, we usually get 5 to 7 hours. We noticed that screen time is longer when streaming videos consistently via a Wi-Fi connection. The charging rate is also fast, reaching the advertised 50% in 30 mins. A full charge will take not more than 90 mins.

Verdict

Wrapping up the review, Realme XT is for people who want the best camera out of a mid-range phone. At P16,990, it’s surprisingly affordable. You get a premium design, good performance and battery, and great cameras for the price. Expect the package to be even better when ColorOS 7 arrives, as it’s said to be closer to stock android than the overly skinned UI that we have right now.

READ: Realme 5 Review – New Budget Battery King?

Realme XT specs, price, availability in the Philippines

  • Display: 6.4-inch Super AMOLED FHD+, teardrop notch, Corning Gorilla Glass 5
  • Design: plastic frame, front and back glass
  • CPU: Qualcomm SDM712 Snapdragon 712 (10 nm)
  • GPU: Adreno 616
  • RAM: 8GB
  • Memory: 128 GB + dedicated microSD, up to 256GB
  • Camera: 64 MP, f/1.8, (wide), 1/1.7″, 0.8µm, PDAF
    8 MP, f/2.3, 13mm (ultrawide), 1/4″, 1.12µm
    2 MP, f/2.4, 1/5″, 1.75µm (dedicated macro camera)
    2 MP, f/2.4, 1/5″, 1.75µm, depth sensor
  • Selfie Camera: 16 MP, f/2.0, 1/3.1″, 1.0µm
  • Connectivity: 4G LTE A, Wi-Fi ac Bluetooth 5.0, LE, USB Type-C, a headphone jack(Dolby Atmos)
  • Security: under-screen fingerprint scanner
  • Battery: 4000mAh, 20W VOOC fast charging
  • OS: Android 9.0 Pie with ColorOS 6 (Android 10 by Q1 2020)
  • Colors: Pearl White, Pearl Blue
  • Release date: September 2019 in India, October 29 in the Philippines
  • Price: P16,990

1 COMMENT

  1. This is just an upgraded Realme 5 Pro to go up against the Redmi Note 8 Pro, The 8 Pro is much cheaper than P16,990 that realme is asking (12,990 for the 6gb 128gb version.), also Redmi was the first to release a 64mp smartphone. Also at this price range, it is already at striking distance to flagship killers like the Xioami Mi9T (Redmi K20) and the Huawei Nova 5T.

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