Unboxing and First Impressions: Realme 5i

Today, we’re going to take a quick look at the Realme 5i. Released as a more wallet-friendly alternative to the already budget-oriented Realme 5, the Realme 5i shares most of its specifications to its predecessor.

Realme 5i

Unboxing

Like most of their inexpensive smartphones, the Realme 5i comes with a barebones packaging with a few additions inside. The smartphone and its few accessories are encased in the traditional yellow Realme box.

Inside is the Realme 5i itself as well as a MicroUSB cable and a 5V/2A wall adapter, which is pretty much it. Realme has not included any documentation or earphones inside the box to keep costs down. It would have nice though if the brand threw in a silicone case to protect the smartphone.

Realme 5i Overview

The Realme 5i is almost a complete clone of the Relame 5 although there are some minute differences. Although the former has the same 6.5-inch LTPS IPS 1600 x 720 display with Corning Gorilla Glass 3, the notch has been minimized to what Realme calls a mini waterdrop notch. The smaller notch at the top allows the screen to cover more real-estate of up to 89% screen-to-body ratio.

Though the notch has been minimized to increase screen portion, the Realme 5i comes lower 8MP f/2.0 front-facing camera compared to its forerunner’s 13MP f/2.0 selfie camera. Of course, the front-facing camera adds Facial Recognition to the smartphone to add a layer of security.

The diamond-cut design from the Realme 5 series is now gone in lieu of a muted pattern for the back. The new Sunrise Design of the rear mimics a sun ray pattern, which has been polished in a near-mirror finish to add a bit of flair to the smartphone.

Fortunately, it seems that the brand kept the most alluring feature found on the 5 with the Realme 5i: the quad cameras. The camera setup of the 5i remains the same having a 12MP f/1.8 main, an 8MP f/2.25 ultrawide, a 2MP f/2.4 macro, and a 2MP f/2.4 portrait lens.

Of course, long-loved features on Realme smartphone cameras are still present such as HDR, Nightscape, Portrait Mode, and Chroma Boost. Here are some sample photos that we were able to take with the Realme 5i with our short time with it.

It seems that camera performance of the Realme 5i remains largely unchanged from its predecessor. We’ll have to examine more sample photos to see if there’s any difference between the two models.

Inside the chassis of the smartphone is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 665. Local units in the Philippines will have 3GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage, the latter of which can be expanded up to 256GB via a dedicated MicroSD card slot.

Given that the 5i comes with the same chip inside as its precursor, we expect it to largely have the same performance. Though we expect it doesn’t have the same multitasking capabilities since the RAM has been downgraded to 3GB.

Powering the smartphone is a 5,000mAh battery charged via a MicroUSB port at the bottom. The device doesn’t come with any fast charging tech of its own but relegates to the usual 5V/2A charging provided by its wall adapter.

We’re still in the early phases in testing the Realme 5i, we still can’t come up with a concrete verdict with the smartphone. Since it does have almost the same specifications as the Realme 5, we can kind of figure out how powerful this new release from Realme is.

Realme 5i Review: Another Budget Contender?

Its pricing will either make or break the Realme 5i. However, we are still a few days away from its official launch in the Philippines on January 29, 2020. Until then, we’ll be running the smartphone through its paces for our review so stay tuned.