Thursday, May 6, 2021

realme 8 Hands-On

Realme has done it again with the launch of their latest mid-range phone, the realme 8 Pro. It’s got some solid features, like a 108MP camera and even 50W SuperDart Charging. But if those are not on your priority list and you’re still interested in upgrading to the latest realme, a non-pro variant is usually an answer to that. So check out our hands-on of the realme 8.

If you’ve seen our hands on the realme 8 Pro, then this shouldn’t be much of a surprise. But either way, we can’t get over the rear panel’s general design. It’s just a refreshing look to see. Apart from the large camera module, you’ll see a “Dare to Leap” logo on the right side. And just like the realme 8 Pro, it uses a special fluorescent material that absorbs light and emits a magical glow around the camera in low light conditions. It’s available in Cyber Black and Cyber Silver colors, but as you can see, the variant that we have is the former.

Just keep in mind that the back is made up of plastic, although it feels quite sturdy so no problems there. Unlike the Pro, this one comes in a glossy finish, so it can be quite a fingerprint magnet. If you want to keep this device nice and clean, you’re going to want to slap on the included jelly case. With a thin and light design of 8 mm and 177 grams, it also feels really good to hold in the hand, and even with the case on, it still feels quite slim, giving you less hand fatigue when used for long periods like when you’re gaming.

The sides of the phone are clad in a matte metallic-like finish. On the left is nothing but your triple card slot, letting you place two sim cards along with a dedicated MicroSD card slot with up to 1TB of expandable storage.

On the right are your volume rocker keys, along with the power/sleep button.

The top of the phone is your secondary noise-canceling microphone, and finally, at the bottom, we are greeted with your USB Type-C port, single bottom-firing speakers, two holes for the primary mic, and a 3.5mm jack.

The front panel sports a 6.4-inch FHD+ (1080 x 2400) Super AMOLED display, and comes with a screen pre-installed screen protector to minimize getting scuffed up right away. Just like its bigger brother, it’s one of the biggest highlights for this phone, since last year’s realme 7 only came with an IPS panel. It’s also got a very bright screen, peaking up to 1000 nits, so using this under harsh lighting should be easy to do. The realme 8 also has a touch sampling rate of 180Hz for a better touch experience while gaming, and as for the front camera, we’re getting a punch-hole design located at the top left corner.

One of the key aspects of the realme 8 is the mighty Mediatek Helio G95 Gaming processor, consisting of an octa-core chipset with a max clock speed of 2.05GHz for the dual Cortex-A76 cores, and six Cortex-A55 cores clocked at 2.00GHz.

It’s also paired with a Mali-G76 MC4 GPU, so games such as Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, LoL Wildrift, PUBG, and COD Mobile can deliver an exceptional gaming experience, and as well as handle daily tasks without a problem. The realme 8 we have now comes with 8GB of RAM, but there could be other variants. We’ll keep our eyes peeled for that.

Running the software department is realme UI 2.0 based on Android 11. There’s a good amount of bloatware, so from 128GB of storage, 111 GB is available out of the box, which should still be enough to store games and multimedia without a hiccup. Thankfully, unnecessary apps can be deleted for extra space. But, if that’s not enough you can always expand it up to 1TB via a MicroSD Card. As for security, we get an under-display fingerprint scanner, as well as face unlock, both of which work quite well, especially the latter.

The realme 8 comes with a 30W Dart Charger in the box

The realme 8 is also equipped with a 5,000 mAh capacity battery with 30w dart charge support. We’re expecting some great results from this device, so stay tuned for our battery and charging test as we want to find out for ourselves too.

Heading over to the cameras, we’re getting a quad-shooter setup, and if you’re keeping up with the trend, this design should be somewhat familiar to see. That’s a 64MP main sensor, an 8MP for ultrawide, a 2MP macro, and another 2MP sensor for depth sensing, while at the very bottom sits the LED-flash module.

At the front of the phone, you can find a 16MP selfie shooter. Both the front and back seem to have EIS on board, which is gonna be good for getting those stable shots. The realme 8 series is also reportedly the world’s First Tilt-Shift Time-Lapse Video Lens, so there are quite a few features to check out here. We’ll get back to you guys for camera quality in our full review, so stay tuned for that. But for now here are some sample shots for your viewing pleasure.

With a great design, a respectable set of cameras, and a generous battery capacity, this device is a good choice to add to your list if you’re looking for a decent upgrade, but nothing too over the top. Stay tuned for our full review, and if you guys are interested in the realme 8 and 8 Pro, don’t miss out on the livestream launch on May 11, 2021 – 6 PM on realme’s official Facebook Page and YouTube Channel.

realme 8 specs:
6.4-inch FHD+ (1080 x 2400) super AMOLED
180Hz touch sampling rate
MediaTek Helio G95 processor
ARM Mali-G76
4GB, 6GB, 8GB LPDDR4X RAM
128GB UFS 2.1 storage
Quad-rear cameras
• 64MP F1.79 (main)
• 8MP F2.25 (ultrawide)
• 2MP F2.4 (macro)
• 2MP F2.4 (b&w)
16MP front camera
4G LTE
Dual-SIM (nano)
WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
Bluetooth 5.1
Fingerprint scanner (in-display)
realme UI 2.0 (Android 11)
USB Type-C
5,000mAh battery w/ 30W dart charge
160.6 x 73.9 x 7.99mm
177g
Cyber Silver, Cyber Black