Realme 7 Review

Realme has launched its new 7 series, in which the company has currently included Realme 7 and Realme 7 Pro. Today in our review, we are going to test the Realme 7, which is an upgrade to the existing Realme 6 (Review) smartphone. Today we will not only see whether the Realme 7 gives us good value for its price or not, but we will also have to see how different it is compared to the Realme 6. We should not forget that Realme was launched in March and at that time the phone brought some features in its segment which were commendable, such as hole-punch display and 90Hz refresh rate panel. Now it remains to be seen how the Realme 7, launched with these features, sets itself apart in the sub-15,000 segment. Let’s see the answers to all these questions.

Realme 7 design

The Realme 7 features a mirror-split design that creates interesting patterns when light falls on it. We had the Mist Blue colour option, but the phone also comes in White. Overall, the Realme 7 looks a little different from the back than the previous model, which is something the company desperately needed as the rest of the phone hasn’t seen many changes.

The rest of the design of the Realme 7 is quite similar to the Realme 6. The fingerprint sensor, SIM tray and all the ports are placed at the bottom on both phones. The Realme 7 is actually thicker (9.4 mm) and heavier (196.5 grams) than the 6. This is thanks to its bigger battery. One-handed texting or photography isn’t as easy due to the extra weight.

The Realme 7 feels sturdy. It still comes with plastic in the frame and back panel. The SIM tray has three slots for two Nano-SIMs and a microSD card. It comes with a 6.5-inch full-HD+ LCD panel with a hole-punch cutout and Gorilla Glass 3 protection for protection against scratches. Like the Realme 6, it gets a 90Hz refresh rate. The display can get very bright and colours appear well saturated. We noticed off-axis vignetting at the edges of the screen when there is a light background, but it is not a noticeable issue.

Overall, the Realme 7 feels solidly built for a budget phone. However, we aren’t too happy about the increase in weight, which definitely makes it feel heavier in everyday use.

Realme 7 performance and software

The Realme 7 is the first phone to come with the MediaTek Helio G95 processor. This is an updated version of the Helio G90T that was seen in the Realme 6, but it is not a major upgrade. The only change is that the clock speed of the Mali-G76 GPU included in it has been increased from 800MHz to 900MHz. The rest of the specifications of the chipset seem to be the same. It is still a 12nm octa-core chip.

The base variant of Realme 7 with 6GB RAM and 64GB storage is priced at Rs 14,999 and its 8GB RAM and 128GB storage variant is priced at Rs 16,999. As before, it comes with LPDDR4X RAM and UFS 2.1 flash storage.

The performance of the phone is good. The Realme 7 runs Realme UI based on Android 10. It recognises faces quickly and accurately and the side-mounted fingerprint sensor is also fast. The interface is simple, which feels fast considering you have 8GB of RAM. Apps generally load quickly and the 90Hz refresh rate makes scrolling through menus feel smooth. Features like live wallpapers and smart sidebar, built-in screen recorder and a number of gestures and shortcuts are nice add-ons.

The Realme 7 is also good at gaming. Battle Prime looked great at the highest graphics settings and gameplay was smooth. Racing games like CarX Drift Racing 2 also offer a good experience. The Game Space app helps organize all your games in one place and gives you easy access to things like screen recording and WhatsApp messages while playing.

Battery life

The Realme 7 gets a 5,000mAh battery, which is much bigger than the 4,300mAh capacity of the Realme 6. Even with normal to heavy usage I easily got a full day and a half of backup on a single charge. The Realme 7 lasted a little over 24 hours in our HD video battery loop test, which is excellent performance.

The Realme 7 comes with 30W Dart Charge fast charging support, which charges it from zero to 100 in about 65 minutes. If the Realme charger you have doesn’t work, you can also use 15W USB-C Power Delivery fast charging.

Realme 7 camera

The third big change in the Realme 7 compared to the Realme 6 is the primary rear camera. It’s still 64-megapixel resolution, but Realme has opted for the Sony IMX682 sensor instead of the Samsung GW1 sensor. Realme also says that the company is using a new “Ultra High Definition” algorithm for the 64-megapixels, which will deliver better clarity and detail than the sensor on the Realme 6. –

Here is a comparison of the cameras of the Realme 7 and Realme 6, which will give you a clear idea of ​​how much the camera setup has changed. If we zoom into a section of the buildings, we see that the Realme 6 captured a cleaner picture with less grain, but the textures were quite smooth. The Realme 7 captures better textures, but there is some grain in the photo.

However, when shooting in the default photo mode, there is a noticeable improvement in the pixel-binned images captured by the Realme 7. It comes with better dynamic range and exposure, with better details than the Realme. Low light photos look very clean. Shots captured using the Night mode look good. Overall, the new sensor is slightly better than the old one and that’s not bad.

The Realme 7 also does a good job with close-ups. Detail and colours are very good and the autofocus works well. However, the rest of the camera is very similar to what we have already seen on the Realme 6. You will get a largely similar experience in both phones.

The ultra wide-angle camera captures a large area, but details and colours appear weaker than the primary camera sensor. This problem is more visible after cropping the photo. Portrait shots generally looked good and you get the option to adjust the background blur before shooting. The 2-megapixel macro camera is nothing special and even photos taken in good light look quite poor.

We found the 16-megapixel selfie camera to be okay. Selfies taken during the day look decent, but we would have liked HDR to work better. Portrait mode is useful, as it crops out the background correctly. In the evening or night you can get usable selfies, provided there is good lighting around. Night mode is available, but in our experience selfies look sharp.

Verdict

The Realme 7 doesn’t bring any major upgrades over the existing Realme 6, but it’s a decent enough improvement with its bigger battery and better primary camera sensor. Overall performance is very good, battery life is great, and the 90Hz panel performance makes general usage easy and smooth. The Realme 7 looks great, but it’s heavier and thicker than the Realme 6 and video recording quality in general could be better. At a starting price of Rs 14,999, it offers good value.

We think that Realme 6 users don’t have to worry about upgrading as they won’t notice much difference in the Realme 7 compared to their existing smartphone. The base variant of the Realme 7 is however a good pick for those who want a high refresh rate screen but are on a tight budget.