Friends+Design
- Dazzling design, with a beautiful gradient color finish - the sort of design that you can really brag about
- Fast, effective fingerprint sensor
- Fast, effective face unlock
- The Realme 3's glossy back, of course, attracts plenty of smudges very easily
Display
- Large, modern, bright, 6.22 inch, dewdrop notch screen, with good viewing angles
- Screen resolution is on the low side
- Sunlight legibility also could have been better
Software
- The new and improved ColorOS 6.0 is now lighter and more refined
- Isn't strewn with ads like Redmi phones (which are going to be the main competition here) now tend to be
Performance
- Excellent, unmatched performance for this price bracket with a powerful Helio P70 chipset at the core (similar to the Snapdragon 660) - it will steamroll through anything you throw at it, including high-end games like PUBG (which easily runs at 30fps)
Camera
- Decent dual camera setup on the rear, with AI features (can recognize 16 independent scenes and 100 scene combinations)
- Does reasonably well in good lighting conditions with decent resolved detail, decent contrast, and accurate colors
- New modes like Chroma Boost and Night mode, can be handy at times
- Decent portrait mode too - subject separation works well, there aren't many abrupt transitions from sharp to blurred, and the bokeh is nice
- Decent selfie camera too - with good detail, nice colors and sharp enough images
- The selfie cam also offers simulated bokeh, and it does a ok job
- Average video recording performance - there's no stabilisation, so footage is shaky if you move about too much
- Low-light photography is nothing to write home about
Battery
- Impressive battery backup with a large 4230mAh battery - you will end a full use day with a comfortable 35-40% left in the tank
Verdict
- Realme 3 is very likely another big hit from the Realme brand, especially for the exceptional (and unmatched) performance it brings to this price bracket
- There are some very good competitors in a slightly higher bracket though - like the Redmi Note 7, and Realme U1 - which have similar hardware but higher resolution displays - so you might want to look at these especially if display quality is key for you
