The midrange market is the most prominent price band to be competitive, this is usually a platform brands where the can showcase their best offerings while still driving volume sales and profit. With the very aggressive offerings from other brands, realme took a different approach with their realme 11 smartphone and made an experience that is more than just “having everything”, this time they made sure that the overall smartphone use is elevated where its rare to see in the price point.
realme 11 Design & Display
The realme 11 is a huge leap from previous predecessors in looks and feel similar in how different the realme 11 Pro+ is in overall package. Now the realme 11 focused more on level up in overall built by making the whole smartphone footprint smaller and thinner.
At only 7.95mm thin, the realme 11 is one of the thinnest smartphone offerings of the brand which is utterly nice to grip along with your hand thanks as well to the corners / edges of the phone are subtly curved.
Overall built of the phone is made of plastic which we don’t mind, the good part here is that the back panel selection of realme don’t attract fingerprint smudges like before, plus texture on the phone is polished smooth everywhere. It’a very nice phone to hold, grip, and juggle around.
At the back is a large ring inspired by luxury watches with a elegant concentric pattern protected by a transparent laminated layer. But of course housing the large ring is the triple camera system with flash which are the 108MP Camera a 2MP B&W Sensor, Flash and a faux camera module to even out the four circles at the module.
We wished that realme didn’t had to made a fake camera hole, but I think they still did this to follow a sense of symmetry on the phone. But still, once you know it….you’ll keep on remembering it annoyingly.
At the right side is the volume rocker and power / fingerprint combo, which we find a bit weird cause the AMOLED display can already have in-fingerprint sensors. But we think the thinness of the smartphone is responsible for this slight tradeoff, just make sure to register your fingerprint well as we encounter some misreads due to residue issues in our hands which resulted us to re-register our fingerprint again.
At the front is the Super AMOLED display in Full HD+ resolution with noticeably thinner bezels including the chin. We love the selections of settings on the realme 11 that lets you go more than vibrant in color mode, particularly the Brillant mode amplifies the saturation making it more colorful as possible.
While the screen is bouncy colorful with no noticeable air gap on the display, just a heads up that this can fool you to see what you see as is. Just remember that others see things less colorful, who when editing photos you might mistaken things a already satisfactory colorful whereas its really not in reality. But nevertheless, if your main use is to watch content, play games and even scroll in social media then this screen is ready to spoil you.
Outdoor visibility is no problem with its bright display with even a mode to kick in the brightness further if detected that the environment is too bright. This is one display that acts like a flagship smartphone indeed.
realme 11 Performance
Powered by the Helio G99 SOC with 8GB+8GB RAM can run most applications on the device including your beloved Mobile Legends in High Refresh Rate and Super details respectively.
The advantage of the Helio G99 is not really on its punch in performance but stability, this is one of the most power efficient chipsets in the market right now. Plus with good standby battery management, this smartphone is doesn’t have any battery drain issues according to our experience.
From today’s social media needs, casual gaming and even light video editing for tiktok the Helio G99 can surely do it. Best part of them all is that this smartphone doesn’t heat up even if the AMOLED display is cranked up high, so its a plus point for us.
RAM Expansion is default in 4.00GB so be sure to tweak it to 8.00GB to make the most of the virtual RAM. But so far we have no intense use scenario to the point we think this will be that useable, but still till nice to have it there.
The speakers on the realme 11 is loud overall with a mode to amplify sound up to 200% volume, but we don’t recommend to use this unless you’re outdoors are its really unpleasant for the ears plus with the distortion which muffles some background audio. But 90% of the time the speakers of the realme 11 is overall satisfactory for entertainment, gaming and even social.
realme 11 Camera
realme fronts a 108MP sensor into the realme 11 technically this is the only useable camera sensor for all its photography offerings as the B&W Portrait Camera is just for software assistance.
The camera software is pretty much the same as throughout the years, its still easy and intuitive to learn. Overall we just wished that the interface can be more assistive in telling some scenarios like if its too bright or when the camera is dirty and needs a wipe.
The 108MP Main Camera is adaptive in capturing photos, meaning it can really detect if the subject is either scenery which prioritizes overall balance and if its subjects like people or food the priority is the focus + color.
Overall the photos we took are leaning more on the warm side which we think the software of realme tends to be bias on rather than being cool. Photos are overall achieved even during the dark situation of taking photo of the Hamilton Stage, no major noise accumulation is seen for night mode photos.
Though taking zoomed photos tend to result washed out colors as you may see in the stage shot with the host. This is particularly hard as the light is seen as cool temperature while the overall stage is warn in tones which results to bland overall color capturing.
Most of the time you’ll just use the main camera mode to take shots on this phone, should you want to use the other modes then you are very much welcome but we see them with no significant difference compared to same phones in its price point. We just wished that this phone as an ultra-wide camera since it would be really nice to be a companion with the 108MP main sensor.
realme 11 Battery Life
Full charge in just less than an hour using its 67W SUPERVOOC Charge, you won’t complain in battery anxiety. One trip to the bathroom while the phone is charging, give or take that’s around 15mins then the battery is easily around 45%
We still can’t wrap our head that this thin smartphone has a 5000mAh battery, which we really appreciate since 3 years ago this was technically impossible. Even other brands with 5000mAh batteries aren’t this thin in overall footprint as they prioritized saving on the build, but here in the realme 11 we like that this battery is the thinnest among the group.
Overall you’ll last around a day with 15% remaining once you go home, should you not use the SuperVOOC charger the Type-C charger port also supports 18W PD charging so its adequate for powerbanks of today.
realme 11 LTE Concern
The major tradeoff we see in the realme 11 is the LTE modem for its price point, additionally it only supports LTE and not LTE-A which can burts speeds up to 100+ Mbps
In some rare scenarios like doing livestreams this might be a possible concern when using LTE, but overall this is an heads up since there might be a some pulldowns cause of this.
realme 11 Conclusion
Priced at Php13,999 SRP for the 8GB+8GB / 256GB sole variant, the realme 11 is a midrange smartphone that can be easily disregarded by a novice person who solely just looks after specifications alone. Considering this smartphone’s refined ultra-thin profile for portability with a stable and cool processor, plus vivid Super AMOLED display, performing camera and long-lasting / fast charging battery, then realme indeed didn’t sacrificed the major elements to provide the right experience on a mid-range smartphone.
- What we like about the realme 11
- Ultra thin and elegant body construction
- Sharp and color vivid camera with decent night capability
- Bright and vivid AMOLED display
- Long lasting battery life and fast charging
- What needs to improve in the realme 11
- Single firing speaker should be stereo if you compare with other brands
- Side-mounted fingerprint sensor needs improvement
- 4G connectivity is basic, could at least support LTE-A
While the price is a little bit steep overall, realme offers round-the-clock promotions to buy the realme 11 with freebies even offline like having a chance to have an airfryer or portable fan. So its not a bad opportunity to maximize your money and get additional freebies, or discounts online.
