Realme XT Unboxing and First Impressions

It wasn’t too long ago when we posted our reviews of Realme 5 Pro and Realme 5. According to my colleague, Emman Tortoza, “Realme 5 Pro is the most feature-packed and well-rounded smartphone the brand has ever released.” Its 4K video recording and versatile set of cameras make it a worthy camera smartphone.

Grant Soriano, our review specialist, said that Realme 5 “proves to be a worthwhile contender in the sub 10k market.” The arsenal it offers make it a king in its price segment.

Today, as we take a look at Realme XT. In the spectrum of the new Realme products, XT stands above the Realme 5 Pro. In a nutshell, it is relatively faster and has better set of cameras. If Realme 5 Pro wowed you with the sample photos we took, this will even blow you away.

The unboxing experience is pretty straightforward as it only contained the unit, documentations, free silicone case, Type C cable, SIM ejector tool and VOOC 3.0 charger.

Build and Construction

Realme XT looks great with its Pearl White variant. It appears close to Samsung Galaxy S10+ Prism White colorway, which – in a way – how Realme pays close attention to making their smartphones appear premium despite the price category it is in. Premium midrange is the new trend, and Realme is doing a great job so far.

Volume keys are located at the back, while the sleep/wake button is conveniently placed on the left. The 6.4-inch display is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass, and it also features in-display fingerprint sensor and dewdrop or teardrop notch to further maximize the screen-to-body ratio. This allows gamers and media consumers like myself to have bigger and wider screen to play around.

I can confidently say that XT is among the smartphones in its category to have  really impressive quality of saturation, color accuracy and contrast. Photos and videos appear laudable, and responsiveness is on point.

Like the Realme 5 Pro, XT provides full arsenal of authentication modes: face, fingerprint and traditional ones like PIN and Pattern.

Software

Realme’s Color OS 6 features an impressive list of features that are essential for consumers. The UI and UX the OS provides look impeccably clean and smooth. Apart from all the good things that Android Pie offers, Realme put it a few extra features like Digital Wellbeing, Clone Apps, Game Space and site wide Dark Mode (which should rollout pretty soon).

The software experience is pretty much identical with Realme 5 Pro, but since XT packs more RAM than the former, everything felt more fluid.

Performance

For better context and appreciation, it is good to note that Realme XT also packs 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.

I mostly played Call of Duty Mobile on Realme XT and it somehow felt faster than Samsung Galaxy A70 and close to flagship level performance at maximum settings. I was able to play at 60fps at maximum settings without any issues. My only qualm is that connecting to the game took longer compared to flagship smartphones like Huawei Nova 5T, ASUS ROG Phone 2 and Huawei Mate30 Pro. Yes, in case you noticed, I compared it directly to the flagship smartphones because XT gave good impression to be at par with flagship devices despite having lower specifications.

Camera

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.

If you’re a fan of taking selfies, Realme XT borrows the selfie camera specs of Realme 5 Pro – 16MP f/2.0.

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.

We will update this article with more sample photos.

What we still need to cover!

There is just really to much to talk about the Realme XT, and this unboxing and first impressions article won’t be able to cover everything. We still need to further test its camera capabilities and see how it competes with other smartphones in the same price category. We are also itching to play and test other games with this smartphone and perhaps publish a more gaming-centric feature. And lastly, we still need to see how long its 4000mAh battery can stay up within a day.

There’s just too many things, but count us pretty excited to report everything when or before it launches in the Philippines soon.

At this time, we still don’t know how much this costs and when it will be available. Tune in to know more about Realme XT only here at Gadget Pilipinas.

Giancarlo Viterbo

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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.