Realme C1 Review

It’s only been a few days since Realme arrived here in the country, and it’s seems like they’re off to a good start by launching their entry-level battery king device, the Realme C1. We were able to take to take a quick look at this phone, together with its bigger siblings, the Realme 2 and 2 Pro, during its launch in Jakarta. We can’t help but think of its uncanny resemblance with the OPPO A3s. If you want to find out if this phone is worth getting, then just read on.

Design and Construction

The C1 definitely looks like the OPPO A3s no matter what angle you look at it. It makes a lot of sense since Realme was once a sub-brand of OPPO, so it may as well be a re-branded chassis. It has a solid build with metallic side finish which gives a better grip, making it comfortable to hold even when you have small hands. What this phone has that the A3s lacks, is Corning Gorilla Glass protection, so if you’re a klutz, this might be a good news.

Up front, we have a 6.2-inch 19:9 HD+ display with a notch that holds the 5MP front camera, the sensor, and the call speaker.

On the right we find the power/lock button, while the volume keys and the triple card slot can be found on the left.

Down below, there’s the audio grille, the 3.5mm audio port, the microphone, and the micro-USB port. Can’t complain about the micro-USB, though, as this is a budget phone.

Now onto the back, we get this this glossy black polycarbonate surface, which I think looks really nice. The body is made up of plastic, but despite that, this phone actually looks premium and doesn’t look ‘cheap’ nor fragile. Here we will also find 13MP + 2MP rear cameras and the Realme Logo at the bottom. The phone has no fingerprint scanner at all. 

Display and Multimedia

This phone is pretty huge with a 6.2-inch display with HD+ resolution. If you’re not too fussy about displays, this phone is actually decent. Colors are accurate and viewing angles are good. It’s also bright enough to be used outside. There’s an option in settings that you can use to adjust screen temperature, which is nice. There’s also Night Shield that allows you to avoid eye strain by reducing blue light from the screen. As for the notch, there’s no option to fully hide it, but there’s this Notch Area Display Control in the display settings that allows you to toggle the notch for specific apps.

Audio quality is average and will suffice for casual listening. The speaker can get pretty loud, but like most smartphones, bass is lacking. But hey, at this price point, I’m not exactly complaining.

Camera

For shooters, this phone comes with 13MP + 2MP dual rear cameras, and a 5MP AI front camera. The A3s comes with an 8MP one, so that’s just one of the differences the two phones have with each other. The C1 is also carrying the same camera features like the depth effect, stickers, panorama, etc.

We were able to take some snapshots and I can say, quality is not amazing, but it’s pretty decent for an entry level phone. Colors are good and it can take relatively sharp photos in good lighting. But the same can’t be said when it comes to low light. Photos came out muddy and noisy, and lights are pretty overblown. 

As for selfies, they’re pretty average. It’s not a selfie smartphone though, right? We also tried taking selfies with the AI mode on and I think they’re okay as it doesn’t entirely blurs out your face, but I would prefer taking selfies with it turned off.

Video-wise, this phone can shoot up to 1080p at 30fps. It also has a Timelapse feature which is nice. Quality is fairly good for its class– it’s sharp and has good contrast.

OS, UI, and Apps

Now onto the software kind of things, this phone is running on ColorOS 5.1 based on Android 8.1 Oreo which is the same as the A3’s. If there’s any difference with the UI, it would be the style of the icons and that’s just it.

You’re also getting the floating windows feature which lets you access screen recording, screenshot, and open apps like Message when in full-view mode. Overall, you’re just getting the same treatment.  

Pre-installed Google apps are present, as well as few third party Vietnamese apps (tried setting the region to Philippines, but the apps still remain), including Zalo, Bao Moi, and what not, but I’m glad that they can be uninstalled as they consumed nearly 2GB out of the 16GB internal storage.

Performance and Benchmarks

What really matters for a lot of people, of course, is the performance. This phone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 chipset, 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of internal storage. Due to its meager RAM, we encountered a bit of lags whenever we tried to run multiple apps at the same time. But for basic productivity tasks like browsing the web, and basically just navigating, then it’s no problem. Since this phone doesn’t have a fingerprint scanner, so we are left with the Face Unlock feature for security. So far, it’s pretty fast and responsive even dim conditions and is way faster than the Samsung A7 (2018)’s face unlock. 

Now for gaming, heavy games like PUBG Mobile and Tekken Mobile are playable in low-medium settings but don’t expect a smooth gaming experience as frame drops are frequent. It also comes with Realme Game Space, which basically helps optimize games and blocks out notifications while you’re playing. For thermals, the phone gets pretty warm after long usage, but not too much to be alarming.

You can check out our benchmarks scores below. 

• AnTuTu – 72,601
• Geekbench – 775 (Single-core), 3,571 (Multi-core)
• PCMark – 5,035 (Work 2.0)
• AndroBench – 297.91 MB/s (Read), 51.47 MB/s (Write)
• 3DMark – 448 (SSE – OpenGL ES 3.1), 390 (SSE – Vulkan)

Connectivity and Battery Life

The C1 is packed with your usual connectivity suite such as WiFi, Bluetooth, 4G LTE, and GPS. So far, call quality is clear and besides, this is highly dependent on how good the reception is in your area. GPS locks in quick and can accurately pin your location when using navigation apps like Google Maps, Waze, or Grab.

And of course, one of the most selling points of this phone, is its large battery capacity. This phone is rocking a 4,230mAh battery and I kid you not when I tell that this phone lasted me a day or two. That included doing activities like surfing the web, streaming videos, taking pictures and a bit of gaming. Our PCMark battery test yielded 17 hours and 30 minutes while our video loop test lasted for 24 hours/1 day. Crazy!

Charging from 0% to 100% took around 2 to 3 hours at most.

Conclusion

With the Realme C1, I think a lot of people’s perception of entry-level smartphones will change. Realme wasn’t kidding around when they claim that this phone is the “entry-level king”, and honestly, it just might be. I mean at Php5,990, you’re getting a phone, an entry-level one for that matter, that feels solid, has decent cameras, and a battery life that can last for more than a day. It’s even cheaper than the OPPO A3s, so there’s that. So would I recommend it? Definitely! You get exactly what you pay for, nothing less. If you’re looking for a daily driver that can deliver, then the C1 is your buddy.

The Realme C1 is priced at PHP 5,990. The Realme official store in Lazada is having its first flash sale on today, December 5, 2018, where you can get the device for PHP 5,490. If you want to find out how to get the phone at a lower price, then click here.

What we liked:

• Solid build
• Decent cameras
• Large battery capacity
• THE PRICE!

What we didn’t:

• Subpar front camera