Realme is a new smartphone brand that was launched in India back in May this year, with Oppo. Since then the company has launched five smartphones, Realme 1, Realme 2, Realme 2 Pro, Realme C1 and Realme U1. All these smartphones are priced very aggressively and packed with good specifications.
Realme C1 is the company’s budget smartphone priced at Rs 7,999 available in Mirror Black and Navy Blue colour options. The device is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 processor and comes with a notched display and a dual camera module on the back.
Realme C1 specifications: 6.2-inch HD+ 1520 x 720 resolution display | Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 processor | 2GB RAM + 16GB internal storage | expandable memory via dedicated microSD card slot (up to 256GB) | 13MP primary camera | 2MP secondary camera | 4,230mAh battery | ColorOS 5.2 based on Android 8.1 Oreo
Realme C1 price in India: Rs 7,999
Realme C1 review: What’s good?
Realme C1 sports a glass-like design similar to the company’s other smartphones. It sports a plastic frame and back panel. The device brings a fresh look to the regular plastic back smartphones that come under Rs 8,000, thanks to the glass-like finish at the back.
Realme C1 features a 6.2-inch HD+ notched display with a 19:9 aspect ratio. The display is on par with other budget handsets that I have tested so far. Indoors, the display is crisp and vibrant. In the dark, the brightness levels should ideally be turned down a lot as it can make for a jarring experience.
Using the display outdoors in a bright environment is not a problem either. The auto-brightness feature is spot on and doesn’t need any tweaking most of the times.
Realme C1 can handle most daily tasks like multitasking opening multiple tabs on Chrome, watching YouTube, browsing social media and more. I did not encounter any freezing or lag on the device during the review period.
Light games like Temple Run and Mini Militia ran perfectly fine, whereas heavy games like PUBG Mobile, Asphalt 9 ran with minimum lag and frame drops in medium graphics settings. However, at this budget, I don’t expect the smartphone to handle heavy games without any issues. The device did heat up a bit during prolonged gameplay.
In well lit conditions, the rear camera of Realme C1 performed really well. The shots were sharp, colours vibrant and had a good amount of detail in them. As for the front camera, the images taken with it came out with nice sharpness and focus on a single point. However, the colours were not so accurate.
The 4,230mAh battery that will easily last a day and more with heavy usage. I used it for playing games, watching videos, streaming videos and music, making calls, browsing social media, navigation and more. If battery life is what you are looking from a phone this might be the one you want to get. However, you also need to keep in mind that it takes around two hours and 50 minutes to fully charge.
Realme C1 review: What’s bad?
I got the Navy Blue colour option to review, which I did not find appealing. The Mirror Black colour variant might look better in hand.
A major thing that bothered me was that the device does not come with a fingerprint sensor even though smartphones like 10.or G at a similar price offer it. The face unlock did work in most scenarios, but for me, it isn’t a replacement for the fingerprint sensor.
Low light camera performance is an issue smartphones at this price point usually face, and the Realme C1 is no exception. Both the front and back camera of the device struggle to focus on objects when light is not in abundance, and the images clicked come out grainy and dull.
The front camera’s beauty mode smooths the skin rather aggressively, and makes one appear much whiter, thus making the image look unnatural.
Coming to the software, Realme C1 utilises Oppo’s Android 8.1 based ColorOS 5.2 skin, which has a very high learning curve. For a person coming from a non-Oppo smartphone, it will be very hard for them to adapt to this new environment.
Swiping out notifications is a pain as they need to first be swiped once to the left and then the user has to press a delete icon, this becomes more tedious as most notifications don’t group together unlike other smartphones.
Realme C1 Review: Verdict
Realme C1 comes with a decent design, good battery and performance. It is also one of the cheapest smartphones to sport a notched display. I would definitely recommend the smartphone at the price it was introduced and at which it drops at during most sales. However, I wouldn’t recommend getting the device at its current price. As you can get smartphones like Xiaomi Redmi 6, Lenovo K9 and more around the same price point, which, which offer a better cost to specifications ratio.
Source : Indianexpress
