Realme’s on a roll like a Pro
Realme seems to be on a roll. In April this year, the Chinese smartphone company released the Realme 6 and 6 Pro. Just seven months later, they announced the latest Realme 7 Pro. Since this is the first Realme phone that we are reviewing, let us start with an overview of the entire Realme series lineup.
Realme has its phones broadly classified into three different tiers:
- X series (X50 Pro): the flagship, top-of-the-line tier
- Numeral series (7 Pro, 7): The affordable, mid-range tier
- C series (C15): the low-cost, budget phones
Within Realme’s digit-based series, there are the Pro and the non-Pro variants. The differences between both seem minimal but still substantial, with the Pro having a slightly bumped-up processor and camera specs. Realme’s feature phones across all tiers compete within the entry-level to mid-range space, since the brand does not use flagship-tier processors for its devices.
In Singapore, only the Realme 7 Pro is distributed and sold.
. The Realme 7 Pro sold in Singapore comes with 8GB RAM and 128GB storage, as well as NFC. In fact, the top line specs even match the S$899 Oppo Reno4 Pro. With a short duration in between the launch of 6 Pro and 7 Pro, how different is the S$499 Realme 7 Pro compared to its predecessor and the competition? Let’s find out.
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Design & Handling
When we first unboxed the phone and held it in our hands, the phone felt bulky. With a thickset body (at 160.9 x 74.3 x 8.7mm) and a weight of 182g, it was somewhat hefty, even though this is typical for a mid-range phone. Comparatively, the Google Pixel 4a is slim for a mid-range device at just 8.2mm, while the premium-mid-range Vivo X50 Pro was merely 8.04mm. The Realme 7 Pro features a matte finish on its back. Two colour options are available with the Realme 7 Pro: Mirror Blue and Mirror White. The review unit I got is of the Mirror Blue variant. The volume rocker is on the left side of the phone, while the power button sits to the right. The phone supports Dual SIM and additional external storage, so the dual-SIM and microSD three-card slot can be found beside the volume rocker while the USB-C port and 3.5mm audio jack is located at the bottom.
Display & AudioThe display is a 6.4-inch Super AMOLED display, a step-up from its predecessor's IPS LCD panel, with 2,400 x 1,080 pixels resolution. Just like its predecessor, the display is nearly bezel-less with 90.8% screen-to-body ratio. The change to Super AMOLED seems to come with a sacrifice, however, as it does not come with the smooth 90Hz refresh rate that its predecessor had. The one and only speaker grille is located at the bottom right of the phone. Audio quality, in its raw form, is comparable to that of other mid-range phones, such as the Pixel 4a. While there is Dolby Atmos support, and it seems to work well, it is best not to place the speakers at max volume, as the phone will aggressively soften audio clipping, resulting in audio distortion.
UI & FeaturesRealme 7 Pro runs on Android 10, and running on top of it is Realme’s take on Android, aptly named Realme UI. It sits at Version 1.0, since previous Realme phones ran on ColorOS, which is the Android reskin used by Oppo phones. Despite the UI’s name, Realme UI 1.0 looks almost exactly like ColorOS 7 that I had previously experienced on the Oppo Reno4 Pro. There are exceptions: app icons are circular instead of squares. Our other observations on ColorOS can be applied to Realme UI 1.0. That being said, Realme UI has a major, irritating, and disturbing “feature”. Advertising plagues various system apps and default apps, including the Videos app. While they don't immediately appear, ads start showing up on the second or third usage of the app onwards. Fortunately, this feature can be disabled, though it is well hidden under Additional Settings -> Get Recommendations; the nomenclature used does not directly point the user towards enabling or disabling the display of ads.
The Realme 7 Pro incorporates an in-display fingerprint scanner, which is a step-up from its predecessor that used the power button as a fingerprint reader. We found the in-screen fingerprint scanner to be quite responsive, and it swiftly unlocks the phone. Not bad for an affordable mid-range phone.
Imaging Performance
Similar to the Realme 6 Pro, the Realme 7 Pro’s back camera system consists of four camera modules. It is however laid out in a rectangular block. The housing protrudes much like the Note 20 Ultra’s, so the phone is not able to lie flat on the surface. This is easily resolved by putting the TPU cover provided in the box.
The front camera also sees some changes with the Realme 7 Pro touting a single 32MP camera, located within the tiny punch hole in the top left-hand corner of the display. Here’s a rundown on Realme 7 Pro’s rear camera array:
One notable difference between the 7 Pro and the 6 Pro is that monochrome portraiture lens was used in favour of a telephoto lens. According to Realme, this choice allows for better and creative photos. We shall explore that claim later. Interestingly, we see a trend of phone manufacturers doing away with the telephoto lens in non-flagship phones launched this year. This was done in favour of incorporating other types of lenses or, even reducing the total number of cameras altogether. Presumably, advances in image processing saw improvements in digital zooming, so there’s a lower priority for dedicated telephoto hardware outside of flagship-tier handsets. The main rear camera module uses Quad Bayer pixel-binning technology to process photos. As such, photos output at 12MP resolution by default, with an option to take 64MP photos without pixel-binning.
Day Photos
The image quality offered feels slightly above expectations of what we’d typically expect from a mid-range phone. The photos are clear. However, zooming in will reveal slight over-sharpening near the edges in the photo. There is negligible grain. We deem the photo quality 'good enough' for social media sharing and casual photo printing. Shooting at its native 64MP resolution (click to view this 19MP original image) yields slightly sharper photos at the cost of slightly increased graininess with the Realme 7 Pro. You can see that text is indeed sharper, but the photo in 64MP had more noise. The Realme Pro 7 can take up to 10x digital zoom shots. There’s some fuzziness, but there are also fewer photo artefacts caused by zooming in during photo-taking. Overall, the performance is not bad for digital zooming (at 10x no-less) and it certainly feels usable when needed. Here's the cropped image for reference:-
To add some snazziness to your photos, Realme 7 Pro’s camera offers AI Dazzle Color. You can compare the difference between a normal shot, and a shot taken with AI Dazzle Color on:-
Portraits
The Realme 7 Pro can take beautiful bokeh shots. Perhaps it has something to do with the dedicated black and white lens, which usually helps phone cameras supply depth information. The phone, however, does remind users that such portrait shots work best with only one subject.
Night Mode
Despite being a mid-range phone, the Realme 7 Pro performs better than expected when it comes to night mode. For night shots with some ambient light available, the quality is decent, as long as you don’t zoom in.
At even darker shots though, you must stand really completely still to capture a decent night shot. Even then, the quality is barely good enough for social media consumption.
AI Colour Portrait Videos
The Realme 7 Pro comes with a few surprises for videography, one of which is AI Colour Portrait Video. Simply put, the phone can colourise the subject while rendering everything else black and white. This leaves an artistic effect on your videos and it works on both rear and front camera, though there is obvious lag and loss of quality if you choose to use this effect on the front camera. The one perplexing question arising from this feature is: if it can be implemented for videography, why is this feature not available for photo-taking? It’s an enjoyable shooting option, and we sorely miss it in photography.
Bokeh VideoThe bokeh effect can also be applied to videos. It also works for both front and rear cameras, though the resulting video from using front cameras has a much lower quality, and there was a faint hue surrounding the subject. For both cameras, the bokeh video effect exhibits some stutter and some loss of frames, presumably the processor unable to catch-up with the real-time processing needs. Note that by including both AI Colour Portrait and Bokeh effects into videography, the resulting video’s resolution would be drastically reduced to 1,280 x 720 pixels, regardless of original video selection.
UIS Video (and Max Video) StabilisationUIS Video is Realme’s take on EIS, and there is even a Max Video Stabilization mode in Realme 7 Pro. We took the phone for a brief run in various modes and even attached a Zhiyun Smooth X gimbal as baseline comparison of image stabilisation. With normal stabilisation, the phone struggles to contain longitudinal shifts. In contrast, lateral shifts are somewhat well contained – thus yielding a rather unnatural video of the phone being shifted to and fro sideways. Max Video stabilisation seems to stabilise somewhat better – but at a huge cost of video quality. Conclusion: don’t bother turning on video stabilisation.
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