Review of Realme C3

2019 proved to be a great year for Chinese smartphone company Realme. The company launched several smartphones every quarter, which proved to be very successful for the company in the Indian market. On the strength of these smartphones, the company also increased the competition in the budget and mid-range market in India. Realme started 2020 with the budget smartphone Realme 5i and now in the first quarter of the year, the company has also launched its new budget smartphone Realme C3. The company has introduced this third avatar of the C-series with many upgraded features and it is equipped with some good hardware at an affordable price. The budget smartphone segment is very hot in India at this time. In such a situation, will Realme C3 be able to prove itself in this segment? We have tested this new smartphone to find out. Let’s start the review of Realme C3.

Realme C3 Design

Realme has opted for a new design for 2020, which the company calls the Sunrise Design. We have seen it on the Realme 5i as well and now the company has tried it on the Realme C3. The Realme C3 is offered in two colour options, including Frozen Blue and Blazing Red. For this review, we have the Frozen Blue colour variant. This colour is definitely attractive. The back of the phone has a texture, which you can feel in your fingers.

Realme has given a bigger display in the C3 than the previous model. The display size is 6.5-inches and it has an aspect ratio of 20:9. This aspect ratio makes the smartphone tall and slim, so it is relatively easy to hold and use. There are thin bezels around the display, but there is a thick chin at the bottom. Like most Realme smartphones in the market, the Realme C3 also comes with a waterdrop notch.

The frame of the phone is made of plastic. The power button is on the right and the volume buttons are on the left. The buttons are well-placed, making them easy to reach with your fingers. However, they lack a raised surface, which makes them a bit difficult to reach with precision.

The SIM tray is provided just above the volume buttons in Realme C3. The good thing is that a separate microSD card can also be installed along with two SIMs. The phone has a micro-USB port, 3.5mm audio jack and a loudspeaker at the bottom. It is a bit disappointing that USB Type-C has not been used in this phone in 2020. Nothing has been provided in the upper part of the frame.

Coming to the back, here you will find the design of the phone quite similar to Realme 5i. Its camera module also matches that of Realme 5i. Realme C3 has a dual back camera. The company has provided a metal rim around the camera, which protects the lens from scratches. Realme C3 has a 5,000 mAh battery, which is rarely seen in phones of this price. However, the large battery also increases the weight of this phone. The weight of the phone is 195 grams.

Realme C3 specifications and software

In Realme C2, the company gave MediaTek’s Helio P22 chipset, but here the company has made the biggest change. Realme has made a big jump in C3 and given MediaTek’s new Helio G70 chipset focused on gaming. It is an octa-core processor with a maximum clock speed of 2.0 GHz. There are two variants in C3. Its base variant comes with 3 GB RAM and 32 GB storage and its second variant has 4 GB RAM and 64 GB storage. The company has also set the price of both these variants correctly. The base variant is priced at Rs 6,999 and the high-end variant is priced at Rs 7,999. As we told that its storage can also be increased through microSD card.

The Realme C3 is a dual SIM smartphone that comes with support for 4G as well as VoLTE. Connectivity options include Bluetooth 5, Wi-Fi, five positioning systems and all the other usual sensors. Like the Realme C2, the Realme C3 also does not include a fingerprint scanner.

The software on the phone is one area where Realme has made improvements. The Realme C3 now runs on ColorOS like its predecessor, instead of which the company has given it RealmeUI V1.0 which is based on Android 10. This is the first smartphone from the company that comes preloaded with Android 10.

The new RealmeUI is similar to Oppo’s ColorOS and comes with a lot of changes over ColorOS 6. It is quite similar to stock Android and we liked its layout. However, the phone still includes some bloatware (unwanted apps) including Facebook, Helo, Dailyhunt, Gaana, Opera News, UC Browser and some Realme apps. The smartphone also has an App Market store, which is an alternative to the Google Play Store.

Swiping right from the home screen does not bring up the Smart Assistant or Google Assistant screen. Yes, universal search is still available in the phone, which has to be accessed by swiping down on the home screen. Dark mode also included in RealmeUI. The phone also has a focus mode, which can be turned on from the notification shade.

Like other Realme smartphones, this phone also comes with Game Space, which helps you block calls and notifications while gaming. Realme also claims to have a Personal Information Protection feature in this phone, which sends blank or dummy information to apps requesting access to your call history, contacts and messages.

Realme C3 performance and battery life

Being a budget device, we were expecting average performance from Realme C3. However, the device performs well. We did not notice any lag in this phone while scrolling through the menus and while multitasking. Let us tell you that we have tested the 4 GB RAM variant of this device and it can multitask quite easily without killing apps.

We set up face recognition on the device and found that the phone easily recognises your face in all lighting conditions and unlocks the phone. The display is bright even in bright sunlight, but it would have been nice if the viewing angles were a little better.

We also played PUBG Mobile game on Realme C3. The graphics are set to HD from the beginning and the settings are also set to high, which is a good thing. However, after playing for a while, we found slight lag in the game on these settings. By changing the settings from high to medium, the performance improved a lot and the game ran smoothly without any problem. If you play the game on high settings for 15 minutes, you will also feel a slight heat in the display.

The phone comes with a large 5,000mAh battery, which gives excellent battery life. In our test, this phone lasted almost two days on a single charge. During this time we played some games on the phone, used an active WhatsApp account and used Google Chrome for web browsing. In our HD video loop test, the smartphone gave an incredible 28 hours and 20 minutes of battery backup, which is more than any smartphone has given in this test so far. However, there was one place where we were very disappointed. With a large battery, the company should have definitely provided fast charging support, but Realme provides a charger with 10 watt output with this phone, which takes two hours to fully charge the battery.

Realme C3 cameras

Realme C3 has a 12-megapixel primary camera, which comes with f/1.8 aperture. Its second camera is a 2-megapixel depth sensor. There is a 5-megapixel selfie camera on the front. The camera app has been changed a lot compared to the previous Realme phone. Now it includes portrait, time-lapse, slow-mo, expert and pano modes in addition to photo and video modes. It also has quick toggles for HDR and chroma boost.

When taking pictures in daylight, the Realme C3 locks focus quickly. The camera measured the light correctly, which resulted in good pictures. However, if you zoom in on the camera to take pictures, you will notice a lack of detail in the pictures. The camera quality can be said to be better as per the price of the phone. Talking about close-up shots, we noticed that the Realme C3 struggled to lock focus when the subject was very close. However, the picture comes out good when the focus is locked.

There is a depth sensor for portrait mode. The good thing is that the camera app gives you the option to set the level of blur before clicking a picture in this mode. Realme C3 detects the edges of the subject well, but we found the picture to be a bit flat.

In low light, the Realme C3 produces pretty average photos. The lack of detail and sharpness is clearly visible in these. Realme’s official website initially claimed that the phone includes a Super Nightscape mode feature, but we did not find it in the camera app. When we inquired about this, a Realme representative confirmed to Gadgets 360 that it was a mistake and this model does not come with such a mode. The company later removed it from the website.

Talking about selfies, the color tone is a bit wrong in selfies taken outdoors in daylight. The picture also lacked sharpness and detail. Both the back and front cameras can record videos in the phone at a maximum resolution of 1080 pixels. There is no video stabilization in the camera. Realme C3 detects light even in low light while recording videos. This is a good feature for a phone in this segment.

Verdict

Realme C3 definitely brings more features than Realme C2 and strengthens the company’s budget series. Realme has provided a powerful chipset in the phone, which gives a good competition to its competitors in terms of performance. Battery life is more powerful than expected and the impressive thing is that all Realme smartphones have been successfully surviving our battery test. Of course, the camera performance of Realme C3 cannot be called excellent, but it cannot be called bad as per the price.

At a starting price of just Rs 6,999, the Realme C3 is easily a must-have. However, Realme could have included a fingerprint scanner in this phone like most of its competitors. Also, we would have liked to see USB Type-C become a standard feature.