Realme 8 - He paves them all !!!
In this period, many smartphones with 5G connectivity at very cheap prices are flocking to the tech market, such as the Realme 8 5G of which many reviewers have brought their impressions in the various blogs and YouTube channels. But always at Realme there is a device that goes against all fashion, in fact it does not offer 5G nor a high refresh rate, but bases its essence on the concreteness of use. I would say not to waste any more time and to leave with the review of Realme 8, in my opinion poco advertised but that deserves your and our attention in addition to that of rival brands, because he has all the credentials to step on the toes of direct giants such as Xiaomi / Redmi.
We can only start from the sales package, which in the case of the Realme device comes with a colorful canary yellow, which recalls the color of the brand logo, which contains the following equipment:
- USB Type-C cable for charging and data transfer;
- Power supply with European wall socket, with maximum output of 5.0V / 6.0A - 30W (DART CHARGE technology);
- Soft TPU cover in smoky color;
- Protective plastic film for the screen (already pre-applied by the company);
- Pin for removing the SIM tray;
- Fast guide;
- Guarantee.
As already mentioned, the company has staked everything on concreteness for this Realme 8, without giving up an aesthetic pleasure, also finding its own iconicity thanks to the huge DARE TO LEAP writing on the right side of the back cover. Touch of style is also the double processing, mirror (on the side of the writing) and opaque, creating beautiful plays of light and rainbow reflections. Body made of plastic, although the feeling in the hand is that of glass. Too bad for an absent oleophobic treatment that will force us to often clean the beautiful back of the smartphone, unless you use the supplied protective cover, which protects the device very well, so much so that the profiles of the cover also wrap the display leaving it therefore below the profile line, in order to safeguard it from any accidental falls.
How long poco original, I also appreciated the camera lock, thanks to the elegance returned by the double color, black and transparent, in which the 4 photographic sensors and the dual tone LED flash are inserted. The bump room is poco protrudes and creates no movement when typing on the phone when placed on a flat surface. Ergonomics are also excellent, although Realme 8 is not a compact smartphone: we are talking about dimensions of 160,6 x 73,9 x 7,99 mm and a weight of only 177 grams. Handling is also guaranteed by a curvature of the back cover profiles that taper around the perimeter of the phone, made of metal with a sandblasted polish.
Here we find on the right profile the power button and the volume rocker while on the left profile there is the SIM cart that can accommodate 2 SIMs in nano format as well as a slot for micro SD for the expansion of the integrated memory, with support for cards up to 256 GB, without giving up the practical Dual SIM Dual Standby function. The upper profile is practically clean apart from the presence of the hole for the second microphone for noise reduction while below the company has equipped the Realme 8 with headphone jack input, main microphone, Type-C input for charging with OTG support. (no video output) and the system speaker, of mono type, but with excellent audio performance and good listening volume, so much so that the device has the Hi Res certification and I can guarantee you that the audio that comes out is of high quality for the price range in which the device is placed, performing at its best with all musical genres due to a good balance of the entire sound spectrum. Moreover, at the software level we have the Real Sound function, which will allow you to automatically equalize the sound based on the scenario of use (movies, games, music).
I mentioned the fact that Realme 8 offers the possibility of using 2 SIMs at the same time without giving up memory expansion, but it offers “only” 4G + connectivity. Personally I appreciate this choice, as the company has been able to save on this aspect by dedicating itself to something more useful, since in many areas of Italy the new 5G standard is not yet present. Indeed I can undoubtedly say that this Realme 8 turned out to be much faster at navigation than other 5G smartphones.
We come to one of the strong points of this terminal, namely the display which specifically expresses itself with a 6,4-inch diagonal, Super AMOLED technology and Full HD + resolution (1080 × 2400 pixels), 409 PPI, peak brightness of 1000 nit and 90,8% screen-to-surface ratio. The panel offers a 60 Hz refresh rate therefore completely out of fashion compared to the competition, but the sampling frequency at the touch is instead 180 Hz, a panacea for all gamers. True, a higher refresh rate would have been the icing on the cake, but overall the Realme 8 screen is sublime, also guaranteeing support for HDR10 and DRM Widevine L1 content, also certified for Amazon Prime. So much better for example than the latest Redmi Note 10. Overall we can enjoy a very high yield of multimedia content in general, thanks to a good calibration of the panel, which returns faithful colors and excellent visibility even in direct sunlight. Moreover, the selfie camera has been inserted in the punch hole, positioned on the left profile, which does not disturb at all and manages to make you forget its presence within a few minutes.
Moreover, always at the software level, we can also adjust the color temperature and enable or disable the OSIE visual effect, which allows you to improve the contrasts of the images. Other software goodies are the ability to wake up or turn off the display with a double tap, or turn it back on by simply lifting the phone and of course the Always On Display function, basic but functional, showing the icons of all the apps that have notified.
The bezels that surround the display are rather contained on 3 sides, while perhaps Realme could have done better for the chin, but nothing so scandalous. On the upper frame we find the ear capsule and the proximity and brightness sensors that work very well, unlike Redmi Note 10 5G, while the absence of a notification LED is taken for granted since we have the AOD available.
The navigation buttons are of course virtual and inserted on the display, but if necessary we can take advantage of the comfortable navigation gestures in full screen, as well as being able to take advantage of a sidebar that allows some quick functions as well as the recall of certain applications and if really we are addicted to gestures, we can exploit them even when the screen is off, by drawing a specific letter to activate or recall functions and applications.
In short, the fact that Realme has not left out anything to chance at the software level is taking shape, basing everything on Android 11 by means of a customized Realme UI 2.0 interface (derived from OPPO's ColorOS), with patches updated in April 2021. The firmware is full of features and not at all annoying in terms of design, indeed the same is very accurate at a graphic level, such as the beautiful animation that appears when we put the selfie camera into operation, for taking a photo or for the function unlocking through face recognition, which occurs quickly and accurately even in unfavorable lighting conditions. Moreover, Realme is one of those brands that constantly updates its devices and among the first to bring the innovations introduced by the Android releases. There are also functions such as the cloning of the system to divide private life from the working one or the cloning of apps to have multiple instances of the same, as well as the game space, in short, a complete software and always updated to the latest requests of the moment.
Realme 8 adopts a MediaTek Helio G95 processor, a 2,05 GHz octacore solution which is accompanied by the ARM Mali-G76 MC4 GPU clocked at up to 900 MHz, all seasoned with 4/6 GB of LPDDR4X and 64/128 RAM GB of internal UFS 2.1 storage. Before you start thinking: "eh oh well, we have a MediaTek on board then shelf" ... you must know that the SoC in question is to be considered a "gaming" solution which offers excellent performance in all conditions of use, even the most complex ones of gaming, allowing you to start applications such as Call of Duty Mobile, Asphalt 9, Genshin Impact etc .. to the best of the gaming experience without ever experiencing frame rate drops and above all overheating, since the company has equipped the Realme 8 with a system liquid cooler in copper.
It is therefore useless to underline that daily operations are carried out in a more than good and always reactive way, also being able to count on excellent general connectivity net of the absence of FM radio. However, we have Bluetooth 5.1, dual band WiFi, GPS / AGPS / Beidou / Glonass, gyroscope and acceleration sensors but also NFC for mobile payments with full support for Google Pay. Everything works wonderfully and overall the optimization of the software towards the hardware also has a positive effect on the battery life, which is expressed through a 5000 mAh unit and its support for fast charging 30W Dart Charge, which allows you to recharge your smartphone by 26% in just 50 minutes, while full energy is obtained in 65 minutes. Of course, the actual yield depends on the use you make of a phone, but in the maximum line I personally have always brought my day to an end, always getting 6 hours of active screen with still 20% of residual charge, nothing really bad !!!
And as usual, I left the photo and video chapter for last, although for many users it is one of the most important aspects in choosing a smartphone. Realme 8 is not a camera phone but in this context it does not disappoint, offering a 16 MP selfie camera on the front, with Sony IMX471 sensor, 5P lenses and f / 2.45 aperture while on the rear the optics used are well 4, whose primary sensor is a 64 MP unit, 6P lenses, f / 1,79 to which an 8 MP ultrawide lens, 5P lenses, FOV 119 °, f / 2,25 and two additional 2 MP elements with f / aperture are added 2.4 which perform bokeh (B / W) and macro activities with 4 cm focus.
In practice we do not have a real revolution compared to the Realme 7, but on the software side we have some more goodies such as support for Dual View, which allows us to record videos using both the front and rear optics, in addition to having a video stabilization UIS can also be enjoyed on the front camera and shoot videos up to 4K at 30 fps. The shots obtained with this terminal enjoy a good collection of details, well-balanced colors and dynamic range that amazes for the price range to which the terminal is proposed.
Even the shots with the wide-angle camera are not "degraded" in terms of color while the side of the sensors is shown more than anything else in night conditions in which the special mode becomes almost fundamental in its use, returning photos that are not of quality but lightened by digital noise which instead would come out in standard mode.
The night mode is also available for the selfie camera as well as the automatic HDR and overall the software is quite complete and full of functions. Compared to the previous generation, I also appreciated the yield of the selfie optics especially in portrait mode. The audio capture by the microphone is also excellent and overall the photographic sector was better than many other rivals, often even with higher costs.
PROJECTED IMPACT
Realme 8 starts from a price base of 199 euros for the Cyber Silver, Cyber Black and Punk Black colors in the 4/64 GB version while we go up to only 206,99 euros for the 6/128 GB version which is the one I recommend. considering the doubling of the internal memory and 2 GB of RAM more in the face of an outlay of only 7 euros more. But apart from that, the smartphone is the perfect balance in terms of quality / price ratio, with excellent performance, truly excellent autonomy, software solidity and guarantee of updates as well as good photos. Realme 8 in my opinion is definitely the best choice among the various Mi 11 Lite and Redmi Note 10 5G etc .. because the user experience I lived with him I have hardly tried with other devices.
