Friends+Design
- Great design - like all Realme phones recently, the Realme 5 has both a good build quality, and striking looks
- The phone still uses a polycarbonate body with a laminated plastic back, but the design of the diamond pattern on the back has been updated to a more crystalline pattern, which looks equally nice and helps the phone stand out
- The front is modern and sharp too with a 6.5-inch display, with a small dewdrop notch and fairly slim bezels all around
- Both the rear fingerprint sensor, and face unlock work accurately and fast
- This is a fairly large phone though - the size does make one-handed use cumbersome, and even with large hands, you will struggle to tap anywhere near the top of the display (thankfully, ColorOS offers a one-handed mode to help tackle this issue)
- The Realme 5 is a bit heavy too, at nearly 200g - and it's also a little top heavy - which again hinders long-time one handed use
Display
- Nice, large 6.5inch IPS display, well suited to media consumption - with good color saturation, and good sunlight legibility
- Screen resolution is on the low side, so long text reading is not the most ideal experience
Software
- ColorOS is now more streamlined, and cleaner than before, and of course packs a bunch of additional functionality over stock Android
- There is, as always, a plethora of preinstalled apps - though thankfully these can be uninstalled
Performance
- Very good performance for the price bracket, with the excellent Snapdragon 665 at the core - everything from day-to-day use to high-end games is fairly smooth
- Thermal control is good too - the phone doesn't get more than a little warm, even with long sessions of gaming
Camera
- The cameras are of course the highlight feature of the Realme 5, being the first phone with four cameras at this price point in India - there is a 12MP primary camera + 2MP depth sensor + 8MP wide-angle camera + 2MP macro camera for closeup shots
- Overall image quality is decent from the both the primary and wide-angle camera, especially in daylight
- Shots of people have good-looking skin tones, and edge detection is handled well when shooting in Portrait mode
- The macro camera activated by switching to the ‘Ultra macro' mode yields some good results too - there's no autofocus, but when positioned correctly over a subject, you will manage to get some stunning details which aren't possible with a regular lens
- Video recording is decent too - you can shoot at up to 4K (though stabilisation is only there till 1080p) - detail levels in videos are good
- The 13-megapixel selfie camera captures fairly good-looking selfies in daylight - there's HDR for this camera too, and it works well even when shooting against bright light - you can also shoot selfie videos at up to 1080p, and the footage is stabilised, which is very handy and not something you see too often in this segment
- Overall, this is amongst the best cameraphones for the price bracket, especially for day-time images
- Low light performance is, as expected, average however, both for images, and video - there is some noise, and less detail in low light images - the Nightscape mode helps a bit, but not a lot
Audio
- Decent bottom loudspeaker
Battery
- Outstanding battery life with a gigantic 5000mAh battery - you will get a cool 2 days of moderate use
- No fast charging support - with the supplied charger, you will get around 24 percent charge in half an hour, around 43 percent in an hour, and 100 percent in about 3 hours
Verdict
- Overall, the Realme 5 is another fantastic device from Realme, armed with a fast processor, nearly two-day long battery life, and versatile cameras
- The main caveat to keep in mind is the size and weight of the phone - if you like your phones compact, and your routine involves a lot of one-handed use, then this might not be for you
- At a slightly higher price, you could also grab some other very good phones in the under 15k price segment that offers higher resolution displays, fast charging and equal or better processors such as the the Redmi Note 7S and the Realme 3 Pro
