Design
The realme C55‘s design uses a brushed metallic finish for its rear panel, complemented by a glossy island that houses the dual rear cameras, providing a good contrast between visual elements.
It uses flat sides with slightly curved edges, which I personally like. They’ve retained the headphone jack, to the delight of wired headphone users like me. At the bottom, you’ll also find a single speaker, microphone, and the USB-C port. It uses a triple slot tray, which means you don’t have to sacrifice one SIM card for your microSD card.
At 6.72-inches, the realme C55’s display is the largest in the brand’s C-series lineup to date. It also boasts a 90Hz refresh rate, which, while not the best you can get, is still acceptable at this price range. As for overall screen quality, colors aren’t as punchy as in AMOLED displays, but it’s still a decent screen to watch movies and play games on. It also helps that it uses a punch hole instead of the outdated notch.
The good news is that it’s got Widevine L1 Security Level, which means you should be able to watch videos on high quality settings on applicable platforms like Netflix.
Performance
realme C55 is powered by the MediaTek Helio G88 processor, which, again, isn’t the best you can get at this price point but is still a well-balanced chip that offers steady day-to-day performance. There’s up to 8GB of RAM, a bit of multi-tasking should not be an issue, and with up to 256GB of storage, same as space.
To give you an idea, Asphalt 9 runs well on its default settings, so you should be able to squeeze a bit more performance if you dial it down, and Genshin Impact is very playable at the lowest preset, though there are a few minor stutters here and there, but nothing game-breaking.
Using 3DMark’s Wild Life stress test, the device got a stability score of 97.2%, which means that that while overall performance leaves a lot to be desired, it should be able to deliver a consistent gaming experience, even if you play for long hours.
Camera
realme C55 has a 64MP main camera accompanied by a 2MP depth sensor. Surprsingly, our sample shots especially selfies, show good amounts of detail and sharpness. You also get pretty accurate colors. I would have loved to see an ultra-wide camera here, but maybe that will jack up the price outside of the brand’s target.
Software
realme C55 runs realme UI 4.0 on top of Android 13. Like many other realme devices with the same skin, it has the features that I’ve gotten used to and personally like – Smart Sidebar and Floating Window. My only issue with it is the amount of pre-loaded apps.
There is, however, something new here. A feature called mini capsule. It’s basically inspired by the Dynamic Island, though the implementation is different. It’s only activated by certain events such as when charging the device, or when you’re about to reach your daily data limit.
Of course, I would’ve like to see more functions like being able to see the song that’s playing on Spotify, or maybe monitoring large file downloads, or basically apps being able to take advantage of it. But right now, it’s uses are a quite limited. Given that, it’s a welcome feature to have, and if realme invests on it, it could open a lot of possibilities in the future.
The brand also says that it’s exclusive to the C55, but I can’t see any reason why it shouldn’t be on other realme devices.
Battery
Using PCMark’s Work 3.0 benchmark which simulates tasks such as basic photo and video editing and data manipulation, the realme C55 managed to score 13.5 hours of uptime, which is a good result. Charging the device using the 33W power brick that came with the box, 13% to full took around an hour which I think is fast enough considering this is a budget device.
Verdict
The realme C55 is a good all-around smartphone that offers surprisingly capable cameras, decent day-to-day performance, and good battery life. If I had a wishlist for this phone though, I would’ve loved to see a better processing package, and less pre-loaded apps.
As for the mini-capsule feature, it’s not as useful to me as I would’ve wanted due to the limited functions, but it opens a lot of possibilities if realme pours in the time and effort in development, and if they allow apps to take advantage of it.
realme C55 is priced at PHP 8,999 for the 6GB+128GB variant, and PHP 10,999 for the 8GB+256GB model.
Emman has been writing technical and feature articles since 2010. Prior to this, he became one of the instructors at Asia Pacific College in 2008, and eventually landed a job as Business Analyst and Technical Writer at Integrated Open Source Solutions for almost 3 years.
