Realme 10 review: the cure for the crisis?

In the yellow packaging of this realme 10 we find a 33W power supply, a USB-A / USB-C cable and a welcome semi-transparent silicone cover.

The design of this smartphone is simple and modern. The back is completely flat, with only the two cameras embossed in their circular block. The profile is also square. The smartphone is also light, thanks to its 179 grams of weight and also quite thin with a thickness of 7.95mm. Of course, it is made entirely of plastic and this is noticeable in everyday use, but it is still a budget smartphone.

Realme 10 is equipped with the latest processor Mediatek Helio G99 at 6 nanometers. It is a good octa core CPU up to 2.2 GHz with Mali G57 MC2 graphics processor and which manages to offer good performance without the risk of thermal throttling. The RAM is 8 GB of LPDDR4X type and we have 128 GB of UFS 2.2 internal memory, expandable via microSD.

Also this year the smartphone is 4G and therefore does not support 5G. A counter-current choice, which however has certainly allowed the company to focus on other aspects and to keep the price low. Considering the current state of the 5G network, for many, the difference would not be perceptible. We have Wi-Fi acBluetooth 5.1 and luckily we also have the 3.5mm audio jack. The fingerprint reader is positioned on the right side and is accurate, but not particularly fast. At times it is even slow. Hopefully a software update will speed it up.

Realme 10 has focused its efforts on just two sensors, although one is a very useless 2 megapixel black and white. The main sensor is instead from 50 megapixel, while the front reaches 16 megapixels. In our tests, the camera turned out to be more than sufficient for the medium-low range of the market, with some particularly positive shots, but overall with normal results.

In strong lights, it struggles a little to maintain a wide dynamic range, darkening the shadow areas a bit, while in low light the definition drops quickly. The night mode, however, definitely improves the sharpness (without doing miracles on the brightness). It is a pity for the absence of a wide-angle camera, which in certain contexts would have allowed for interesting shots. The front camera is discreet overall.

The video part is not very bright where the movies are only in Full HD, at 30 or 60fps. Despite these not particularly exciting data, even the stabilization is not convincing: in motion the clips will be very “agitated” and with some changes in brightness a little too sudden. Surely you can do better with a software update.

Realme 10 is equipped with a large 6.4-inch diagonal display with resolution FullHD+ (1080 x 2400 pixels), in technology SuperAMOLED and with a refresh rate of 90 Hz.

In addition, the display has a peak brightness of 1,000 nits and is protected by Gorilla Glass 5. The 360 ​​Hz touch sampling closes the circle. Net of the numbers, the display of this Realme 10 is one of its strong points. It is appreciated in all conditions and the automatic brightness also works well. Let’s just add that the screen is identical to that of Realme 9, but only six months old.

There are no news in the software of this Realme 10, which mounts the Realme UI 3.0 based on Android 12, updated with the patches of September 2022. The software is responsive and snappy and the features we find are more or less the same as always. We have the side menu with shortcuts, a large customization menu and a mode to maximize in-game performance. Once again we have the possibility to “expand” the RAM up to another 5 GB additional, although we must always be aware that it is a way to take advantage of the internal memory to support RAM and not really more RAM.

In this context there is also a new function that increases the volume to 200%. What it actually does is guarantee you the maximum possible sound pressure for the speaker, while sacrificing quality a bit.

The battery from 5.000 mAh guarantees the samrtphone excellent performance in terms of autonomy, since the not particularly energy-intensive processor never weighs too heavily on it. Getting to two full days of use with average use is by no means impossible. Using it intensively, it is a smartphone that will still take you to the end of the day always with some remaining autonomy. Charging is fast a 33W thanks to OPPO’s SuperVOOC technology.

Realme 10 has an official price of € 279. Sara discounted at launch at € 249. A decidedly appropriate price for the type of product, although not cheap. With the due considerations due to the historical moment of market price rise, we are however happy that the price has dropped slightly.