Friday, February 28, 2020

Realme C3 In-Depth Hands-On

Realme recently showcased its latest budget smartphone, the Realme C3. Now, there are two variants of the Realme C3; one, the Indian version which sports two cameras, and the other is the global version that has three. The latter of which is what will be released in the Philippines. Today, we’ll be giving you a tour of the device, a few sample shots, and benchmarks to see how well it performs. Check it out!

The Realme C3 sports a 6.5-inch display with a resolution of 1600 x 720. The side and top bezels are slim, measuring around 3mm and 4mm, respectively. The chin, however, is noticeably thicker, at around 8mm.

The 5MP front camera is housed in a notch that Realme calls the mini-drop with the earpiece speaker right above it.

Located underneath are the speakers, 3.5mm audio jack, microphone for calls, and Micro USB port.

Over at the left, you can find the dual-nano SIM tray with dedicated MicroSD card slot and volume rockers.

The right side is bare, save for the power button.

At the rear, you can find the camera module housing the 12MP primary, 2MP portrait, and 2MP macro shooter. A rear-mounted fingerprint scanner can also be found in the usual location and Realme branding on the lower left side. The plastic cover has a wavy, ridged finish that gives it this ray-like pattern when hit by light.

Under the hood, the Realme C3 is equipped with a MediaTek Helio G70 chipset paired with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. We ran the AnTuTu benchmark and got the following result:

AnTuTu (v8.2.4) – 181,968

The newly released MediaTek G70 performed admirably, able to beat out the Snapdragon 665 used in the Realme 5 in synthetic benchmarks. Animations on the UI were smooth, and we didn’t notice stuttering when using the device for basic tasks. We’ll report more on its performance, and how well it handles games in our full review.

We also took several sample shots with the Realme C3’s cameras. Photos produced by the rear cameras have an ample amount of detail and sharpness when the lighting conditions are good. The colors, however, do seem a little muted. Shots with less than favorable lighting conditions introduce blur and noise, too. Check out the sample shots below:

As for the front camera, the selfies produced were good, considering it only has a resolution of 5MP. Skin tones were neutral, and it was able to capture hair strands too. Like the rear cameras, blur and noise are present when taking selfies in low light. Take a look at the sample photos below:

Powering the Realme C3 is a 5,000mAh battery with 10W charging support. It runs on Realme UI 1.0 based on Android 10 and has Google Mobile Service support. Out of the 32GB storage, users can only take advantage of 19.3GB out of the box. That being said, there are several pre-installed apps you can remove like Webnovel, Agoda, trip.com, and Opera browser.

Stay tuned for our full review, and announcements on price and availability.

Realme C3 specs:

6.5-inch HD+ 720 x 1600 pixel resolution, 20:9 aspect ratio
MediaTek Helio G70 2GHz octa-core CPU
Mali G52 GPU
Realme UI (ColorOS 7 based on Android 10)
3GB RAM
32GB storage
Expandable up to 256GB via microSD (dedicated slot)
12MP f/1.8 main + 2MP portrait + 2MP macro triple-rear cameras
5MP f/2.4 AI Beauty Selfie front camera
Dual nano-SIM
4G VoLTE
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth 5.0
GPS/Beidou/Glonass/A-GPS
3.5mm headphone jack
Reverse charging
Face unlock
Rear-mounted fingerprint scanner
Realme UI 1.0 (Based on Android 10)
5,000mAh battery w/ 10W charging support
micro USB
164,4 x 8.95 x 75mm
195g
Blazing Red, Frozen Blue