realme 12+ 5G review

Realme Philippines just launched their latest smartphone series with the realme 12 5G lineup. We’ll take a deep dive into what the realme 12+ 5G can do. For the realme 12 Pro+ 5G, you can check that out on our website right here 158.

So, without further ado, let us get right into it.

Design and Construction

The realme 12+ 5G was co-designed with luxury watch designer Ollivier Savéo. For context (if you’re like me who doesn’t know who he is), Ollivier has worked with Swiss watch brands Rolex. So, you can expect to get a sweet-looking phone, and I must say, it is a beauty.

The first thing that will catch your eye is the camera island. It’s positioned right at the middle instead of your usual side cameras on most phones. Here, you can see the sensors and the flash on top of them. At first glance, you may mistake it to pack a quad-camera setup, but in reality, we only get three sensors.

You also get a premium vegan leather back design. Our unit is the Pioneer Green colorway, but there’s also the Navigator Beige option. So, if you want a splash of color on your phone, you cannot go wrong with this guy.

We get a USB Type-C port for charging and data transfers, a dual nano-SIM card tray, and one of the dual stereo speakers at the bottom.

Situated on the right side are its volume rocker and power button, and up top, we have another speaker and a 3.5mm audio jack. That is not a common sight these days.

The phone’s not too heavy and is quite thin too. It’s able to slide right in your pockets well and I had no trouble using it with just one hand.

Display, Audio and Biometrics

Moving on, the realme 12+ 5G sports a 6.67-inch FHD+ AMOLED display with up to 120Hz refresh rate and a 92.65% screen-to-body ratio.

It has a peak brightness of 2,000 nits and supports up to 4,096 levels of brightness so you can be sure that you can view whatever is on your screen with this device no matter how bright it is outside.

Watching videos and going through social media is a treat for the eyes with the 12+. Colors are vibrant and not too saturated, showing true blacks and almost true to life hues.

For speakers, we get dual stereo speakers. They’re loud with a punchy bass and I didn’t have the need to set it at max volume at all. If you prefer traditional earphones though, you can use its 3.5mm audio jack for wired listening. It’s not something you see on most phones nowadays, so it’s nice that realme included this.

You also get an in-display fingerprint scanner for biometrics and a security layer. It responds to your finger really fast too.

Camera

For cameras, we have a triple rear camera setup at the back comprised of a 50MP SonyLYT600 main sensor with an aperture of f/1.88, an 8MP 112 degree Wide Angle camera with an aperture of f/2.2 and lastly we have a 2MP macro sensor.

Up front, we get a 16MP selfie camera.

The cameras perform well in bright settings, producing clear and detailed images with accurate colors. However, they don’t do as well in low light situations, losing some detail.

Portrait shots are captured effectively, with the option to blur the background using Portrait Mode but it takes less than 2 seconds before you can check out the image you took.

You can be the judge of it though. Here are our sample shots!

As you will notice, the sample video we got here is wobbly due to the lack of video stabilization on the camera.

OS, Apps and UI

On the software front, out of the box, we get realme UI 50 based on Android 14. It feels like your usual Android device, so adjusting from Android 13 to this should not give you trouble.

There is a lot of bloatware here that has its own folders. They can be uninstalled, yes, but you have to take note of that when you boot up the realme 12+ for the first time.

You have your usual features like split screen, smart sidebar, and floating windows.

Performance and Benchmarks

The realme 12+ 5G is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 7050 chipset that is coupled with its octa-core CPU clocking up to 2.6GHz and an ARM Mali-G68 MC4 GPU.

You also have 12GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage, but there is an 8GB variant. RAM can be extended up to 12GB, giving you 24GB of total RAM thanks to Dynamic RAM Extension. A microSD card of up to 2TB can be inserted for more storage.

This makes multitasking run smoothly as you swap from app to app. Gaming, however, is not the best here, but it CAN run most casual games.

More performance-intensive titles such as Honkai Star Rail and Genshin Impact will not shine here as you can only run the game with little lag if (and only IF) the settings are on Very Low quality. However, matches from ML and Pokemon Unite are definitely still winnable here. I did not feel the need to adjust the settings with the latter games.

For those interested in benchmark scores, our AnTuTu v10.2.1 scores yielded a result of 603,307 while the Storage Test garnered 66,045 with a 22,487 Sequence Read, 18,838 Sequence Write, and 24,720 for Random Access.

We also took 3DMark tests with the realme 12+. For Sling Shot Extreme, it got 5,110 while Wild Life got 2,287 with 2,299 for their best loop score and 2,292 for lowest loop score. Meanwhile, Sling Shot Extreme got a result of 4,084 and Wild Life Extreme has a score of 636 with 636 as its best loop score while 634 was its lowest loop score.

With GeekBench 6, it got a single-core score of 953 while having a 2,384 for multi-core. Their GPU OpenCL score yielded 2,401 while its Vulkan score resulted in 2,406. Finally, it got a performance score of 13,796 in PCMark.

Connectivity and Battery Life

The realme 12+ 5G features a 5,000mAh battery with 67W SUPERVOOC Charge support. Charging the device is actually pretty quick, taking less than an hour to charge the device from 20% to a full charge.

The device was able to last almost the whole day and I’ve used this for taking photos and videos, playing video games, and watching movies.

In our PCMark’s Work 3.0 battery test, our review unit lasted 16 hours and 22 minutes. While in our proprietary battery loop test, which involves the unit being in airplane mode, muted, and 50% brightness, the realme 12+ got a result of 20 hours and 6 minutes.

For connectivity, the realme 12+ 5G has Bluetooth 5.2, NFC, GPS, and WiFi 2.4GHz and 5GHz.

Conclusion

Before we conclude, I may have to address what everyone who made it this far is probably thinking, how much is it?

With a suggested retail price of Php17,999 for the 12GB+128GB variant and Php19,999 for the 12GB+256GB variant. However, realme Philippines is offering this at an introductory price of Php14,999 (via Lazada, Shopee and Tiktok Shop) and Php16,599 (Shopee-exclusive), respectively.

At its core, the realme 12+ 5G is well rounded. Users can find themselves subject to a decent viewing experience, great cameras, and an even better battery performance.

If you want a gaming device, however, this may not be the ideal smartphone for you. The realme 12+ 5G’s strength lies mostly on the camera capabilities, battery life and unique design.

What we liked about it
* Bright and display
* Great camera quality
* Elegant design

What we did not like:
* Processor is underwhelming
* Tons of bloatware

realme 12+ 5G specs:
6.67-inch FHD+ AMOLED E4 panel @ 2400×1080 pixels, 394ppi
120Hz refresh rate, 2000 nits (peak brightness)
Secondary Tempered High Strength Glass
MediaTek Dimensity 7050 chipset @ 2.6GHz
ARM Mali-G68 MC4 GPU
8GB, 12GB RAM
256GB internal storage
Up to 2TB via microSD card
50MP SonyLYT600 OIS, f/1.88 main camera
8MP 112° Wide Angle camera f/2.2
2MP macro sensor
16MP in-display selfie camera
5G, dual nano-SIM
WiFi 2.4GHz, 5GHz
Bluetooth 5.2
NFC
GPS
IP54 Rating for Dust and Water Resistance
realme UI 5.0 (based on Android 14)
5,000mAh Li-Ion battery, 67W SUPERVOOC Charge wired charging
Pioneer Green, Navigator Beige [colors]
162.95mm x 75.45mm x 7.87mm [dimensions]
190 grams [weight]