Realme XT Review

Exelsior!

Stan Lee’s catchphrase is a fitting word for Realme. Their desire to aim higher has been obvious in their current product offerings, including the Realme XT.

Today, we are going to take a look at their premium midrange product, the Realme XT. It packs all the components found in Realme 5 Pro, but features a more powerful set of cameras. Does its price tag of PhP16,990 have a competitive edge in the competition? Let’s find out.

Premium Midrange Madness

The advent of ‘premium midrange’ category sparked the emergence of products like Realme XT. First impressions last, and Realme took this very seriously with their latest products.

Realme XT looks fantastic. Its Pearl White variant dispels the thought that they make boring-looking products. The thought never crossed my mind to be honest, because, from the very start, Realme gave the impression that they put their best foot forward when it comes to design. From budget up to their premium midrange series of products, the design has been one of Realme’s top priority.

If I were to mix and match specific smartphone designs from various brands, XT is like a combination of Huawei P30 Pro and Samsung Galaxy S10+. There is a bit of weight to it, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing; and its slim bezel design gives it a refined and sleek look.

Display

The display is gorgeous, and it might just be one of its best features – just what more can you ask for when you have a smartphone with FHD+ Super AMOLED display, plus Gorilla Glass 5 protection. Colors burst out from the screen, and the level of color accuracy and contrast is topnotch.

Texts appear very sharp too, so if you use your smartphone to read articles from your favorite sites, then you’ll be happy with Realme XT. I like the fact that you can set screen color temperature, which proved to be very useful when reading during day or night.

Software

Realme XT runs on Android 9 with Color OS 6.0.1. The latter had various iterations, but for your reference, the version I am using already includes Dark Mode, further camera optimization and improved compass accuracy.

The user interface is heavily skinned, so turn way if you’re expecting this to have almost-stock UI at boot. However, there are plenty of launcher alternatives that you can download via Google Play store to at least change a portion, if not all, of its UI.

All the necessary functionalities are readily available on this smartphone. Since this runs on Android 9, all the benefits that go with it are present on XT. Realme added a few features too, which enhances the overall smartphone experience like the following:

• Dark Mode (under realme Lab): OS-wide dark mode that gives some users visual convenience.
• OSIE Vision Effect (works with some apps): enhances color saturation
• Digital Wellbeing & Parental Controls: provides complete usage analytics and functions
• Game Space: Allows users to control notifications or create content while playing mobile games

Biometric Security

There are plenty of ways to secure the smartphone.

For starters, it features .34-second fingerprint unlock with its in-display biometric sensor. It works flawlessly and almost instantaneously. Realme also includes cool-looking effects when unlocking it. You’ll love it you are into fancy-looking stuff. You also have the option to (also) use Face Unlock, which works equally well.

Performance

XT is powered by a 10nm Snapdragon 712, similar to the one found in Realme 5 Pro. This one has Adreno 616 and 8GB RAM. Its performance (185721) – based on our synthetic benchmark – is better by 15-20% than Realme 3 Pro and around 2% than Realme 5 Pro (182080). This means that if you skipped buying Realme 5 Pro from Realme 3 Pro, XT is a worthy upgrade.

We also run several steps using popular synthetic benchmarks. For your reference, here are the results:

This is how it stacks in competition in terms of synthetic benchmarks.

In term of actual gaming performance, we played 3 of the hardware intensive games: Black Desert, Call of Duty Mobile (Battle Royale) and PUBG Mobile (BR). We played a minimum of 20 minutes per game and measure the phone’s performance using Gamebench Pro.

While playing in most instances, XT struggled to maintain 30fps while playing Black Desert. This is understandable because this game is made to work flawlessly on high-end smartphones with flagship level SoCs.

Meanwhile, I managed to win a round of COD Mobile BR Mode, thanks to the phones impressive performance with highly playable frame rate. FPS average was 34 during my 20-minute gameplay.

I also won a Chicken Dinner when I played PUBG Mobile BR. It managed to stick an average of 30fps during gameplay.

Overall, in terms of gaming, XT offers laudable performance. It exceeded my expectations, and I’m just impressed that Snadragon 712 and it’s 8GB RAM held up pretty well. The only issue is that temperature – usually near the camera – heats up pretty high at 42-45 degrees celcius when playing intensive games.

Camera Performance

Being the most celebrated feature of the Realme XT, it packs an impressive list of camera features. It has a larger sensor to accomodate its whopping 64MP wide main camera with f/1.17 aperture.

Apart from having relatively good aperture level, it also has PDAF, which is essential when taking photos of subjects in dark environments. It also has an ultrawide lens that is equivalent to 13mm lens with f/2.3 aperture. It even has dedicated macro camera, which is usually absent even in high-end smartphones. Its 4th camera at the back helps in achieve good amount of bokeh – the 2MP f/24 depth sensor.

Colors are captured accurately, and level of saturation and contrast are well rendered. This works well even more when HDR is enabled.

If you’re a fan of taking selfies, Realme XT borrows the selfie camera specs of Realme 5 Pro – 16MP f/2.0. Expect sharp and clear photos. No slofies here though, but you can take Full HD videos using the front camera.

Note that these cameras are complemented with AI capabilities, which helps the camera achieve its optimum performance when taking photos of subjects and scenes. This feature is usually found in high end smartphones.

Battery Life

You’ll get almost a full day of use with Realme XT’s 4000mAh battery. There’s room for improvement as the battery drain is quite faster compared to its current series of products. XT has lower battery capacity, and it’s probably the reason why it lasted shorted compared to Realme 5 Pro.

Charging from 0-100% takes about around 80 minutes.

Verdict

It is Realme’s best offering yet! There are specific areas where it could have performed better like battery life and sound quality (not a big fan of its mono speakers). Nevertheless, I seriously think that this product is among Realme’s competitive products, and the investment they are asking of PhP16,990 is totally worth it!

Giancarlo Viterbo

Website

Giancarlo Viterbo is a Filipino Technology Journalist, blogger and Editor of gadgetpilipinas.net, He is also a Geek, Dad and a Husband. He knows a lot about washing the dishes, doing some errands and following instructions from his boss on his day job. Follow him on twitter: @gianviterbo and @gadgetpilipinas.