Realme 5i hands-on, An affordable variant of Realme 5

Last Update 2020-01-09

Realme 5i goes official with a quad-camera setup and looks like a more affordable version of Realme 5, which was announced in August 2019. Currently, Realme has launched this device in Vietnam while it will arrive in India on January 9, 2020. Realme hasn’t confirmed that when this product will come in international markets. The Realme 5i costs 3,690,000 VND ($160) for 4GB RAM and 64GB onboard storage.

Realme 5i design and features

Realme 5i is looking similar to the Realme 5, and it also borrows some features. On the front shell, it has a water-drop notch for the front-facing camera and a Corning Gorilla Glass 3. The right edge of the phone has a power button while you’ll get volume keys and dual SIM-slot on the lift side. The predecessor (Realme 5) has a diamond pattern on the back while Realme 5i has a simple plan back design. The new handset has a vertically shaped quad rear camera setup on the top left corner. There’s a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner, which takes a very short time to unlock the device.

It arrives in Vietnam with a slightly bigger display than the Realme 5. The Realme 5i sports a 6.52 inches IPS LCD with an HD+ resolution of 720 x 1600 pixels. With 269 PPI density and 20:9 aspect ratio, the phone offers an 82.7 percent screen-to-body ratio. Realme has announced this device with Android 9 Pie (planned upgrade to Android 10.0) OS customized with ColorOS 6 layer. Inside, the phone is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 665 Chipset constructed on an 11nm octa-core processor (4x2.0 GHz Kryo 260 Gold & 4x1.8 GHz Kryo 260 Silver). It comes with 4GB RAM, 64GB ROM, and Adreno 610 GPU.

The vertically shaped quad-camera setup on the back houses a 12MP primary sensor with f/1.8 aperture, an 8MP ultra-wide sensor with f/2.2 aperture, a 2MP dedicated macro sensor with f/2.4 aperture, and a 2MP depth with f/2.4 aperture. The primary 12MP sensor has 1.25µm pixels and PDAF for better photography experience. The Realme 5i can record 4k and FHD videos at 30fps and super slow-motion videos at 960fps. The macro shooter can shot as high as up to 2cm. The captured images by the leading sensor are good, but, unfortunately, the ultra-wide sensor can’t provide an excellent job for photography. The predecessor Realme 5 has a 13MP selfie sensor while it comes with a small 8MP lens with f/2.0 aperture. The front-facing camera also can record FHD videos at 30fps. Moreover, the Realme 5i has a 5,000 mAh massive battery capacity that can support up to 10W for fast charging.