Realme is rather a young brand that made a great impression in the smartphone market last year by introducing three best bang for the buck on the entry-to-upper mid-range smartphones, the Realme C1, Realme 2 and Realme 2 Pro.

Last week Realme has unveiled Realme 3, the successor of Realme 2 and it was a huge step up by offering a more premium design and internal hardware upgrade.

Here’s a quick unboxing video of the Realme 3;

Realme 3 specification
• MediaTek Helio P60, Octa-core Processor
• 3GB/4GB of RAM
• 32GB/64GB of Internal Storage with dedicated microSD Card Slot
• 6.2-inch HD+ IPS Display with “Waterdrop” Notch
• Dual Rear Camera; 13MP f/1.8 + 2MP Depth-sensor
• 13MP f/2.0 Aperture Selfie Camera with Face Unlock
• 4,230 mAh Battery
• ColorOS 6.0 Based Android 9.0 Pie

Design

Realme 3 uses a unibody manufacturing process laminated plastic on the back with a glossy finish. It looks very stylish and premium for an upper entry smartphone. Not only glass pick up fingerprint smudges so does this glossy finish on the Realme 3.

It’s light and feels good on hand. The Realme 3 comes in two colour variants; Dynamic Black and Radiant Blue.

The power button is on the right side and the volume button on the left side. Its button placement is just right and tactile which is a good thing.

Next to the volume rocker is the triple card slot that supports dual nanoSIM and a dedicated microSD card.

The bottom is the speaker, microUSB port, microphone and 3.5mm audio jack. Yeap no USB Type-C here, no complaint, after all, it’s an affordable phone.

On the back, you will find the dual rear camera setup and a fingerprint scanner. More on the camera later.

Display & Multimedia

The 6.2-inch has a small notch that houses the 13-megapixels selfie camera allowing it to have an edge-to-edge display. This helps to achieve an 88.3% screen-to-body ratio with a slight chin down the bottom.

The HD+, 1,520 x 720 resolutions display is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3 is pretty bright and a good viewing angle. The 271 ppi is acceptable for a 6-inch display and it’s isn’t that bad especially watching video or gaming.

The ColorOS allows you to tweak your preferred colour temperature and also have a blue light filter to avoid eye strain. The single down-firing speaker pretty decent and I did find it’s distorted at maximum volume.

Camera

The dual rear camera setup is a 13-megapixels f/1.8 aperture and a 2-megapixels depth sensor. The native app has few modes; Nightscape, Pano, Expert (Manual), Time-lapse and Slo-mo. It also has an A.I. scene recognition that assists you to take better photos.

They also have this Nightscape Mode which is the night-mode and Chroma Boost that make photos look more vibrant.

For low light, Nightscape more really helps out a lot where it left the shutter lock for 3-4 seconds to capture more lights and details. The A.I. would kick in to stabilize the image even you are on handheld. But do take note, moving object will be blurry in the photo. The output is pretty good with minimum noise.

Selfie taking is pretty decent and the A.I. mode does what its best without overdoing it.

Here are some photos were taken by Realme 3;

Performance

Powering the Realme 2 was an entry Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 and the Realme 3 get an overhaul upgrade to more powerful MediaTek Helio P60 which is the same with the OPPO F9 that we reviewed last year. It’s powerful and performance are pretty smooth and didn’t face any hiccups while multitasking. It only gets slightly warm during our benchmark tests and gaming which involved high graphics.

As expected, the rear-mounted fingerprint scanner and Face Unlock are responsive and fast.

Benchmark Test Result

AnTuTu – 128,064
GeekBench 4 – 1,417 (Single-core) & 4,757 (Multi-core)
AndroBench – 290.97MB/s (Read) & 202.07 MB/s (Write)

The Realme 3 able to handle most of the new mobile gaming titles like Asphalt 9, PUBG Mobile and Mobile Legends with medium settings.

ColorOS 6.0

Realme 3 runs on the latest ColorOS 6.0 based Android 9.0 Pie. Although it’s the same ColorOS 6.0 with the OPPO F11 Pro, Realme tweaked some of the UI based on feedbacks by Realme’s user. There is app drawer in the ColorOS and the pull-down shortcut menu is bigger.

There are few useful features like Smart Assistant that list you the weather, calendar, quick functions, step tracker and more. It also has a Smart Bar that let you access your most used/recent app with just a swipe.

Battery

The MediaTek Helio P60 has pretty good battery management and with the 4,230 mAh battery capacity, it was able to last me two days before I need to look for the power plug.

It takes about 2 hours 10 minutes to fully charge the battery from 0% with the provided 10W power brick.