realme 10 – Full Review

The realme 10 may be the default mid-range Android phone to buy for Christmas this 2022. The combination of the cool design together with a respectable spec-sheet is commendable enough that the vast majority of Christmas shoppers who are just looking for a fast and reliable Android device to hold on to for the next few years as a daily driver need to look no further than the realme 10. You can read our post about its unboxing and initial impressions here but stick to this for the full review.

realme 10 – Specifications

realme 10 review – Body and Display

The realme 10 offers a flat display with modest bezels and slightly curved rails. The panel at the back has a cool effect which the company dubbed as a “light-particle” pattern. The whole device feels solid, understated, and somewhat fancy. The gray color variant that we have in this review has a toned-down approach that we appreciate. There’s also a white color option if you want to go for a more eye-catching device.

The realme 10 has a big 6.4-inch screen with 1080p Super AMOLED screen with up to 90Hz refresh rate. The screen is bright enough to use comfortably in direct sunlight and we didn’t have any issues with readability in different lighting conditions. The fast refresh rate makes the experience of using the phone to browse social media and navigate through menus smooth and polished. The Super AMOLED is well implemented, with rich blacks and vivid colors, which makes binge-watching more pleasant.

The device only has single down firing speaker but the realme 10 compensates this by tuning it to produce louder audio with more clarity both on treble and bass giving that surreal audio experience when gaming, binge-watching or listening to music. It’s a bit of a downside since having stereo sound is still the better option but the listening experience itself is still decent enough that you wouldn’t mind it at all.

realme 10 review – Battery

Battery life on the realme 10 is also great. When we tested the device, the 5,000 mAh battery didn’t drain faster than we expected. We were able to get through a day of heavy use — even more so that we only felt the need to charge the device the next day. We started the day fully charged around 8AM and by the end of the day, with medium to heavy usage, we capped the night at 35%. We didn’t charge the device that night and saw that it only took 5% during sleep. We then had the low battery notification of 10% around 1PM.

If you’re a frequent mobile gamer or you really like to consume video content through your smartphone, you may have a lesser battery experience than ours. Generally speaking, the realme 10 will get through a day of use, but heavy gaming and binge-watching might take a big toll on the device’s battery life, making an early night or a powerbank a necessity.

The better news is that the realme 10 supports fast charging: 33W with the included Super VOOC charger in the box that charges the device 0% – 50% in only 28 minutes. It doesn’t support wireless charging which is a downside but with the fast charging is still the better option nonetheless.

realme 10 review – Performance

The realme 10 uses a MediaTek Helio G99 Processor built with a 6nm architecture along with an Arm Mali-G57 MC2 GPU paired with an octa-core setup. It comes with 8GB of RAM, and performance overall is excellent. If you really push it, you see some slight stutter occasionally jumping quickly between apps. But in daily use, we didn’t see any lag that would bother us.

We didn’t notice any heating issues on moderate tasks. During gaming sessions, the device will definitely get warm but we couldn’t see any throttling which is good. The realme 10 runs Genshin Impact well, with some slight stuttering here and there. After playing for 20 minutes, the phone was warm, though not uncomfortable to hold, and we couldn’t see any difference in performance that you have the need to restart or stop playing.

The realme 10 ships with realme UI 3.0, which adds some nice customization options to the interface while still maintaining the feel of stock android. It’s still not quite as personal as the Pixel 6, but you can choose a color palette based on your current wallpaper and apply it to system controls and app icons. The suggested colors are nice and the overall effect does make it more personal to the user.

realme 10 review – Camera

The realme 10 features a Color AI 50-megapixel camera with stabilization, and a 2-megapixel black and white secondary camera for focusing and detail capturing. Video specs are only up to 1080p / 60 fps recording from the main camera and 1080p / 30 fps from the front-facing camera. There’s not a whole lot that’s new and exciting about the hardware — camera improvements are mostly software-based, subtle but worthwhile.

Portrait mode is natural, subject detection is pretty accurate most of the time and it can even isolate fine details like strands of hair when you get a somewhat ample lighting. It’s not something to go out and buy this phone for, but it’s a nice feature that you’ll be confident enough to use regularly when you want to. Night mode is nice for night landscape photos — a bit better detail and color compared if you’d shot it without the mode enabled, it’s a relatively niche feature.

The Color AI that’s built-in the camera application detects the scene pretty accurately and it will do some color enhancement based on it. If you’re taking a food photo, a prompt labeled as food will appear — it’s useful if your subject is very still. Overall, the realme 10 produced quality photos that we’re happy to put on social media.

realme 10 review – Is it worth it?

The realme 10 will more than satisfy the needs of a regular user who wants a mid-range Android phone that will get them through their daily tasks reliably. It’s fast, well-built, and includes premium features like an AMOLED 90hz display and a reliable 50 megapixel AI camera. Battery life is commendable, we can comfortably recommend the device if you like to stream videos and play games.

The realme 10 occupies a good spot in the mid-range smartphone space, one that will surely please a lot of people. The company’s support policy will see them through many years of use, day-to-day performance is commendable, and the camera system handles most photographic needs well. As long as you don’t ask too much of the phone’s performance capacity, the realme 10 is a solid smartphone for you.

The realme 10 is now available in two different colors: Clash White and Rush Black and will be available in two storage variants: 8GB + 128GB and 8GB + 256GB. Price starts at PHP 12,999 but you can get sweet offers for the holiday season here.