For day-to-day use, the Realme 6i is a good deal

Good processors, good screens, smart designs and powerful batteries. That pretty much sums up most of the smartphones out there. Minus this, add that… you can’t really go wrong at a certain price point. Enter Realme. For the past couple of years the company has been making the right noises. Why? It has delivered good specs at reasonable price points. Combine this with an effective online campaign, sensible pricing and move-fast strategy, it has been a good run for Realme. Recently the Realme 6i landed with us and we got a lot of time to work through this. How did it go?

Good display

The feature we like most about the Realme 6i is the 90Hz screen refresh rate. At Rs 12,999 one is surprised to see the feature. It’s a good move. What 90Hz refresh does is make thumbing through feeds easy on the eye and gaming gets smoother. Display panels update its content at regular intervals and how often it gets refreshed matter. Agreed this won’t help you when it comes to emailing but there are so many apps we use that require smooth graphics.

The problem with a higher refresh rate is that it eats into battery life. Realme has tackled this with a MediaTek Helio G90T processor, which goes easy on the battery.  

Staying on with the G90T, it’s powerful enough to handle most games. We played some Fortnite and Real Commando Secret Mission, which were good on the 6.5-inch display. Equally comforting is the position of the selfie shooter which is on the top left and that means it won’t interfere when you stream films. But the position of the speaker is such that the sound may get muffled while gaming. This brings us to the camera.

Focal adjustments

More-cameras-better-photo concept keeps going strong among most users and that is where the problems begin. Daylight photography is good, complete with a reasonable dynamic range while photos taken at full 48MP resolution also came out well, with enough details in the pictures. On the back is a macro shooter (now, almost every other mid-tier phone has it!), which too does wonderful job. And then the problems.

In low-light conditions, details are lost and the shots tend to be grainy. There is a night mode but taking a shot takes around four seconds, which means holding the phone steady for four seconds. But yes, snaps come out clearer with the Night mode on.

On the selfie front, everything is fine but it would be great if Realme has the beauty option switched off by default. And another problem, though this will differ from person to person: selfie portraits. Yes, there is good separation from the background but the colours are warmer than it naturally is.

If taking videos is important, you can capture 4K@30fps but to take advantage of the ultra-steady mode, the captures are at 1080@30fps
The problems on the camera front have a lot to do with software, something that extends to the overall feel of the phone. To me ColorOS comes heavy-handed and it’s difficult to find features from the menu. Also, there is some bloatware which is a bother. If companies like Realme tweak the software a bit, they would ensure customer loyalty, which only two or three brands can handle in the smartphone world.

Is it for you?

Realme is giving users a good opportunity to enjoy something like 90Hz at a low price point and equally good is the battery life. With all the usual activities, it easily lasts a day. We also like the fact that the fingerprint scanner is on the power button and face unlocking is quite quick. But… unless the company changes its software strategy, improvements on the camera front would be tough to come by. In short, for day-to-day use the base variant (4GB+64GB) is a good deal.