The realme 15 Series 5G have officially arrived in the Philippines. The brand has simplified the lineup with the realme 15 Pro 5G becoming the figurehead of the series. It comes packing with a larger battery, higher resolution cameras, and a new chipset, but are these enough to warrant an upgrade?
| Chipset | Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 |
| Screen | 6.8-inch OLED, 2800 x 1280, 144Hz |
| RAM | 8GB, 12GB LPDDR4X |
| OS | Android 15, realme UI 6.0 |
| Rear Camera | 50MP f/1.8 OIS Sony IMX896 Main, 50MP f/2.0 Ultrawide |
| Front Camera | 50MP f/2.4 |
| Storage | 128GB, 256GB, 512GB UFS 3.1 |
| Network | Dual-SIM, 5G |
| Connectivity | WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, USB-C, IR Blaster |
| Battery | 7,000mAh, 80W UltraCharge |
| Others | In-Display Fingerprint Sensor, IP69 Dust and Water Resistance |
| Dimensions | 162.26 x 76.15 x 7.79 – 7.84mm |
| Weight | 187g |
| Colors | Flowing Silver, Velvet Green, Silk Purple |
The realme 15 Pro 5G departs from the color-changing design of the realme 14 Pro series with a conventional, but still stylish exterior. There are three colorways available: Flowing Silver, Velvet Green, and Silk Purple. The Velvet Green model comes with a faux-leather finish while the Silk Purple variant has a glass back panel with a smooth finish. The one we have here for review is the Flowing Silver version that comes with a distinctive Pearl design and smooth glass finish.
Though slightly thicker than its predecessor at 7.79mm, the 15 Pro 5G’s curved rear makes it comfortable to hold. Its glass rear is surprisingly resistant to smudges and dust, which means that you’ll see its design more if you don’t use a case. The chassis is also rated for both IP68/IP69 resistance, which lets it easily survive splashes and high-pressure jets.
Its camera module comes with what they call Pulse Light on the smaller tertiary lens, which acts as a notification light. Its color can be customized through the settings menu, and can be used for customization as well as you can permanently turn it on.
Buttons are placed at the right-hand side and is positioned at the middle to easily reach. All of its buttons are tactile and have good resistance. At the bottom are its speaker, USB-C port, and dual-SIM tray. Unfortunately, the smartphone does not have support for eSIM.
The realme 15 Pro 5G comes with a 6.8-inch 2800 x 1220 OLED display with support for 144Hz and HDR10+. Its screen is curved, which some people may not like, and comes protected by Gorilla Glass 7i. Its high refresh rate allows for general use and gaming to feel smooth, but not all apps will support 120Hz or 144Hz.
realme says that its display can reach up to 6,500nits peak brightness whenever you’re watching HDR content. You’ll be able to reach around 585 cd/m2 with the regular brightness slider, which is strong enough to brute force against sunlight or strong lighting. Activating Extra Brightness mode via the settings menu boosts the maximum manual brightness to an eye-blistering 904.37 cd/m2.
At the other side of the scale, the lowest brightness setting on the slider brings down the screen to 1.89 cd/m2. This should be low enough not to singe your eyes whenever you’re using the device in a dark room.
Its OLED screen doesn’t deviate from its contemporaries in terms of color reproduction as images look vibrant with deep blacks. While not particularly accurate with slightly stronger green hues, it does have 94.50% DCI-P3 for creatives that need the coverage.
The realme 15 Pro 5G uses both its bottom-firing speaker and earpiece for external audio. While the latter is noticeably weaker in volume than the former, it does offer a more open listening experience. Audio clarity is decent and the speakers can get surprisingly loud, but don’t expect audiophile-levels of quality.
The realme 15 Pro 5G runs realme UI 6.0, which is a heavily skinned version of Android 15. They are implementing plenty of multitasking-focused features such as split view, floating windows, Live View, and Smart Sidebar that lets you open chosen apps by swiping at the side.
By default, the smartphone comes with a split quick settings bar that divides the quick settings and notification tab to the upper left and right pull-down tabs, respectively. Those who prefer the classic dual pull-down style quick settings and notifications can revert it back via the quick settings menu.
There are pre-installed and suggested apps pre-installed on the device. Though they are easily removed, they can be annoying as they constantly send notifications for a call-to-action such as new offers and installations.
AI integration includes Google Gemini, which is easily accessed and acts as your own AI assistant. There is a suite of AI-assisted photo editing tools such as AI Edit that lets you remove or add objects, enhance clarity, unblur, remove glare, and recompose your photo.
A new addition in its AI Editing suite is AI Edit Genie. It’s largely the same as AI Edit but instead of manual input, you’ll only need to speak or type in a prompt to edit your photo like “replace background with mars.” It will have unlimited edits for the first month, but will be limited to 20 edits/prompts soon after.
As for updates, the 15 Pro 5G is part of their 3 + 4 policy that ensures 3 Android OS updates with 4 years of Android security patches. It’s a shame that coverage isn’t as long as the competition, but we hope this can be improved in the future.
realme equips the 15 Pro 5G with a 50MP f/1.8 Sony IMX896 main camera, a 50MP f/2.0 ultrawide shooter, and a 50MP f/2.4 front-facing lens. There’s no dedicated telephoto lens here though we did hope for one as we expected for the lens to drop down from last generation’s 14 Pro+.
We get the usual array of modes on its camera app, which includes Photo, Video, Night, Portrait, Long Exposure, and Starry Mode, among many others. There is a dedicated option for AI Landscape, which adjusts your photo to be brighter regardless of weather. You can also choose from Vibrant (for brighter shots) or Crisp (deeper colors) within the UI to fit your taste.
All of its 3 cameras support 4K60fps recording – a pleasant surprise as some ultrawide and selfie shooters in the category only support 4K30fps. Slow motion includes 720p120fps, 720p240fps, and 1080p240fps.
Its 50MP f/1.8 Sony IMX896 main camera is able to capture vibrant photos with plenty of preserved detail in good lighting, but shadows do lose some of their contrast. Low-light performance is largely similar, but it seems it likes boosting the saturation to intensify colors and put focus into the contrast between shadow and light.
Just beside the main camera is the 50MP f/2.0 ultrawide lens. It’s ill-advised to take close-ups with it as it doesn’t have autofocus, but landscapes and wide scenes do well. Photos come out with good color reproduction and shadows though clarity takes a bit of a dip when it comes to low-light scenes.
Selfies are taken with its 50MP f/2.4 front-facing shooter. You access to three zoom levels – 0.6x, 1x, and 2x – which gives you flexibility when taking selfies. Photos look decent with lively colors and proper exposure, and this largely applies to both dim and properly lit conditions. There is an aggressive smoothing filter by default, and you might need to dial it down to take natural-looking shots.
Powering the realme 15 Pro 5G is a Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 chipset paired with up to 12GB of LPDDR4X RAM and up to 512GB of UFS 3.1 storage. Qualcomm claims that the chip has double digit CPU, GPU, and AI performance improvement compared to last year’s Gen 4 chipset.
General performance is pretty smooth from day-to-day tasks, multitasking, or even editing videos using Capcut. Graphically-intensive games like Genshin Impact runs at a steady clip even at its highest settings possible and only dips to 40fps at the most intense moments.
Stock benchmarks like AnTuTu places the 15 Pro 5G’s chipset just above the 1 million mark – nearly 200,000 than the average of its predecessor. Other benchmarks score the chipset at 17,468 for PCMark Work 3.0, 3,472 in Multi-Core in Geekbench 6 CPU, and 4,524 in GPU OpenCL in Geekbench 6 GPU.
The realme 15 Pro 5G runs on a 7,000mAh battery – one of the largest capacities in its category and is a 1,000mAh upgrade over its predecessor. Unless you’re running games or benchmarks the whole day, its battery is plenty enough to get through the day with a lot for doomscrolling at night and the morning after.
It supports 80W SuperVOOC charging to fill up its tanks. Charging takes around just under an hour from empty to completely full. If you want to take preserve its battery for longer, you can limit charging to 80% via the battery menu and it will be as if you have a 5,600mAh battery.
With a starting price of PhP 27,999 the realme 15 Pro 5G picks up where the realme 14 Pro+ 5G left off. There significant upgrades this generation like its triple 50MP cameras, the Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 chipset, and a ridiculously long-lasting 7,000mAh battery.
There are missing features that leave us questioning if it has taken up the mantle of the Plus series. The exclusion of a telephoto camera takes flexibility away from photography and it is nicer to take portraits with a dedicated telephoto lens. There’s also no eSIM support, which is a big deal for its price point. Its relatively short support cycle may also be a point of contention to those who want to keep it for a long time. The realme 15 Pro 5G starts strong as the new head of realme’s mainline numbered series. While there are still improvements to be made
The realme 15 Pro 5G starts at PhP 27,999 in the Philippines. Two storage variants are being offered: 12GB/256GB for PhP 27,999 and 12GB/512GB. For a limited time, you can get both models for only PhP 20,999 and PhP 23,999, respectively, via their official Shopee store.
realme is also running a pre-order promo until September 26, 2025 where you can get a TechLife Smart Band Fit, TechLife Clip-On Earbuds 2, and a 1-Year Screen Damage Protection Plan.
