The 4G version of the Realme 9 has been announced by Realme with a starting price of Rs 17,999, which marks the company’s eighth smartphone unveiling of the year. The brand has not shied away from crowding the Rs 20,000 market with a range of products and Realme 9 is competing with a long list of devices from the Chinese smartphone maker’s stable. The 5G variant of Realme 9 was already revealed a while ago, and it is currently priced lower than the new 4G version. The main difference is that the latter forgoes 5G capabilities to make way for an AMOLED display, 108MP primary camera sensor, and a new Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 SoC. Let’s find out in this full review if Realme’s latest offering has made an impact in the competitive budget space.
to rule
Except for the performance of the device, Realme 9 is a good companion. It lacks 5G and adding a stereo speaker setup would have added to the device’s charm. However, the 108MP camera performs very well in daytime conditions, the 33W charging is fast and the AMOLED panel adds to the visual experience. Accidental stutters on the 90Hz panel have undermined the phone’s capabilities, although I hope a software update can fix that.
Inside information
Realme has kept the design simple, clean and minimalistic, making it quite similar to previous devices in its budget range. The monocoque is made of polycarbonate with a tapered finish on the back panel while the triple camera setup is positioned at the top right. The phone can’t boast a stereo speaker setup, unfortunately, but I like Realme’s use of the fingerprint sensor as opposed to the usual side-mounted fingerprint and power-button array prevalent in this price range. There is a headphone jack on the bottom next to the USB C port and the volume switch is on the other side of the power button. The device is very light at 178g and the back panel curves smoothly for a pleasant feel in the hand. Overall, Realme 9 doesn’t show a very flashy allure which might suit some users’ taste, but I personally feel that the matte finish would have gone well with the device.
Ditching the LCD screen, the Realme 9 has an AMOLED panel that I appreciate for its good contrast ratios, deeper blacks, and overall better color accuracy. It doesn’t hurt that the panel also refreshes at 90Hz although there were major issues I ran into with palpable jitters while swiping to the home screen. Regardless, while switching between apps, I saw a noticeable drop in the refresh rate for a second before it adjusted back to 90Hz. There’s a small punch-hole camera in the upper right that doesn’t fret about the screen real estate which is more than I can say about the thicker bezels surrounding the panel. As far as display customizations go, Realme has a standard three-coil setup along with a slider for adjusting the color temperature. Brightness levels are more than acceptable, and I was particularly pleased with how well the auto brightness adjustments made the screen’s brightness. WideVine L1 certification is available for viewing HD content on OTT platforms and although the screen is HDR10 compatible, neither Netflix nor Amazon Prime supports it. Except for the occasional stutter in the refresh rate, Realme 9 provides a decent viewing experience.
As far as cameras go, Realme uses a 108MP Samsung ISOCELL GM6 sensor along with an 8MP ultra-wide sensor and a 2MP macro sensor. An ultra-high-resolution sensor doesn’t necessarily translate to better images and that’s a lesson both OPPO and Realme have learned over time. However, in the case of Realme 9, with a starting price of Rs 17,999, the GM6 is actually a great option for users and it shows in the photos taken. Daylight shots are rich in color and have plenty of dynamic range to play with. The exposure levels are handled well while the background highlights are not over-extended. The sensor uses 9-in-1 pixel-binning to produce very sharp 12MP photos although you can take a 108MP photo as well. Another advantage of the basic shooter is that its superior accuracy allows you to take pictures with 3X optical zoom. Portrait mode images turned out to be fairly good which further underscores the unnecessary stuffing of depth sensors by OEMs in their devices when AI-based methods became so good. The ultra-wide sensor, absent from the 5G version of the device, has the most benefit with a 119-degree field of view. While the details are a bit soft across the frame, I’m glad the color temperatures match the primary shooter. As for the macro capabilities, the somewhat low-resolution shots may not show up on your social media channels, but under the right lighting, I was decently satisfied with the color accuracy.
For low light shots, the photos clicked were mostly successful or missing depending on how firmly I held the phone while taking the photo. The lack of stability, which is understandable at this price point, causes a lot of vibration while the custom night mode is on. However, I was able to take some pretty decent shots that have true color similarity, good detail, and measured exposure even with not enough external lighting. The post-processing work done by the sensor is decent but I did find some excessive use of noise attenuation in the night sky. There are a few ways to improve when it comes to low-light photography, but the overall job being done is much better than what the 5G variant of the device can do. As for the selfie camera, it’s a 16MP sensor with good facial detail, skin tone that tends to match, and a portrait mode that works well in good lighting.
The Realme 9 runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 680 platform, and while these new chipsets were impressive just a few years ago, the standards for budget phones have skyrocketed. In terms of benchmarks, Geekbench 5 appears rather multi-core A modest score of 1,523 while in Antutu V9.3.5 the overall score is shy of 285,796. I have to stress that budget phones don’t miss a thing while doing the usual daily tasks of turning on the phone. Switching the app is lag-free and scrolling in heavy social media apps is not a problem. However, as I mentioned before, the 90Hz refresh rate tends to get flickering from time to time and I wonder if a better SoC would help with the problem. In any case, the 6GB of LPDDR4x RAM in the starting variant should be enough to keep a bunch of apps running in the background. The virtual RAM extension found in the settings menu up to 5 GB should also help. The 128GB UFS 2.1 storage can be expanded with a microSD card up to 1TB. BGMI Games on the phone weren’t particularly fun with the maximum frame rate set to High (30fps) and graphics quality set to Smooth. I also ran a CPU Throttle benchmark and it showed that the device was running at 83 percent of its peak performance which is decent enough but not great.
Other features on the device included a single speaker on the bottom which makes an amazingly loud but muffled sound when the phone is running in landscape mode. There is a 3.5mm headphone jack for your reference, but it doesn’t have HD support like a few Redmi phones in the same price category. The in-screen fingerprint sensor works surprisingly well and the registration process is fast too. Of course, there is no 5G capabilities on the device but I used Jio’s 4G LTE network which worked well for my use. The device runs on RealmUI 3.0 running Android 12. You can read more about it in our Realme 9 5G review here.
The battery in the Realme 9 is a 5000mAh cell with a 33W fast charging solution. Since the Snapdragon 680 does not consume much power, expect the device to last for a long time in medium to light use. On the PCMark battery test, the Realme 9 managed to score a very good 16 hours and 42 minutes. My personal use requires charging the phone almost at the end of the day and sometimes the next afternoon. You can always charge the phone in about an hour at 33W charging speeds.
Final verdict
I really think the Realme 9 would have made more sense if the 5G version’s Dimensity 810 SoC could have made its way to the former and completely remove the need for the latter. Everything the Realme 9 5G lacks is achieved by the regular Realme 9 specifications. There is a much better camera, which is an AMOLED panel with a fluctuating refresh rate of 90Hz but much better color reproduction. Charging speeds are faster and authentication is done with an in-display fingerprint sensor. Even in terms of software, Realme 9 comes with Android 12 out of the box while the 5G model is still in the previous version. If only Realme 9 had performed better, the device would definitely have been the best recommendation in my book. Users who are looking for a good gaming experience on a budget can definitely do with better devices in the same price range as the Samsung Galaxy F23 (Review) or the iQOO Z6 (Review). However, the new Realme 9 comes as a compelling option that corrects a lot of things.
Editor’s Rating: 3.5 / 5
Positives:
- clean design
- Accurate color screen
- Good daylight photography
- Decent battery life
Negatives:
- The user interface gets stuck sometimes
- Performance could be better
- Stereo speakers can be used