Realme 3 Pro First Impressions: Heating up competition in sub 20k price segment

Design- Polycarbonate design with colorful gradient patterns

Starting with the design, Realme 3 Pro reminds me of Samsung's recent Galaxy M and A Series budget and mid-range handsets. The overall appearance and in-hand feel of Realme 3 Pro is quite similar to Galaxy M30 and Galaxy A50; however, the realme handset is slightly more appealing and

The gentle curves at the back panel and the rounded edges make Realme 3 Pro easy to hold and use with one hand. Unlike the Redmi Note 7 Pro that offers glass on both front and back, Realme 3 Pro comes in a polycarbonate body which makes it look slightly less premium than the Xiaomi's handset.

The non-removable back panel houses a massive 4,045 mAh battery unit and the smartphone also offers a dedicated microSD card slot and 3.5mm headphone jack. What seems missing here is the Type-C port; instead, you get the dated microUSB 2.0 port. Thankfully the company has provided the VOOC 3.0 fast charging support with the smartphone.

Realme 3 Pro will be available in three color variants- Carbon Gray, Nitro Blue, and Lightning Purple. The phone you see in pictures is the Nitro Blue.

Display- 6.3-inch Full HD+ display with Gorilla Glass 5 coating

The front of the Realme 3 Pro boasts a 6.3-inches Full HD+ IPS LCD screen with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection. The LCD display offers a resolution of 2340 x 1080 pixels, 90.8% screen-to-body ratio and a pixel density of 408 PPI. The screen is quite vivid and works well for video streaming and gameplay. Realme 3 Pro is also widevine L2 certified to stream videos in HD resolution on popular streaming apps. Overall, the dot notch is one of the major highlights of the Realme 3 Pro.

Rear Camera Performance- Portrait shots

Realme 3 Pro has already impressed me with its overall camera performance. The smartphone sports a 16MP+5MP dual-lens camera setup (powered by Sony IMX519 sensor) and a massive 25MP selfie camera. The 5MP depth sensor f/2.4) creates impressive bokeh effect while taking portrait shots. Check out the above images to have a better understanding of the image output. The contrast is at the point, colors look vivid and shadows are perfect on the face. The bokeh effect created by Realme 3 Pro is one of the best in its respective price-bracket.

Impressive daylight camera

The standard shots captured in daylight also show good detailing and impressive dynamic range. Colors also look punchy on the IPS LCD panel of Realme 3 Pro. The camera app also offers Chroma boost mode that when enabled makes images more contrasty and appealing to eyes. Overall, Sony's IMX519 sensor based rear camera on Realme 3 Pro will impress shutterbugs.

The smartphone also supports Super slow motion- 960fps at 720p, first in its class. The output is decent when might conditions are favorable.

Promising Low-light results- Nightscape mode

We also took some shots in low-light and the camera showed promising results. The sensor is tuned very well to understand and act on available lighting to create the final image. There were no unwanted light leaks and unnatural image processing to bring in more details in the darker areas of the frame that often result in increased noise levels. With Nightscape mode turned on, the camera captures brighter shots as the long exposure algorithm brings in more details. But at the same time, the night mode also tends to enhance noise levels and make the overall image output slightly grainy. The color balance also varies in Nightscape mode and shows cooler hues when compared to standard mode.

25MP Selfie camera

Realme 3 Pro also boasts a massive 25MP front-facing shooter. The selfie camera works on f/2.0 aperture and has a 1/2.8 inch sensor. The selfie camera captures detailed shots and there are ample software tweaks to play around with selfies. You can apply various beautify effects, for Instance, the camera AI allows you to smoothen your skin, increase the size of your eyes, chin, slim your face, etc. to tweak the output as per your preference. You can turn off the AI beautify mode for more natural image output.

Hardware- Snapdragon 710, Adreno 616, 4 & 6GB RAM

Coming onto hardware, Realme 3 Pro features the snappiest chipset in its respective price-point. The smartphone is backed by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 chipset, an octa-core CPU build on a 10nm process. The handset's direct rival Redmi Note 7 Pro is backed by SD675 chipset which is also a very capable chipset but is slightly underpowered when compared to 7th gen. SD710. However, Snapdragon 675 SoC has one advantage over SD710. It houses two 14-bit Spectra 250L ISPs which enable support to up to 48MP sensor, whereas SD710's 14-bit Spectra 250 ISPs offers support for up to 32MP single camera. If you don't dig deep into numbers, Realme 3 Pro's camera performance is super impressive for its price-point.

In general use case, the SD710 is more than capable to run multiple apps simultaneously and can also run high-end games without major performance slowdowns. The CPU is aided by Adreno 616 GPU. We played Asphalt 9 and PUBG to test the gaming performance of the handset. The gameplay experience was smooth and fairly immersive. For multitasking, Realme 3 Pro offers two RAM variants- 4GB and 6GB.

Software- Latest ColorOS based on Android Pie

Realme 3 runs the company's latest ColorOS 6.0 which now brings an app drawer and some notable visual changes in the form of newly designed notification and quick settings panel. You also get a variety of useful features such as Clone apps, Gamespace, Smart driving, quick sidebar and a lot more. The UI is smooth for most of the part and also looks visually intuitive. We will get to know more about the real-life software performance of this handset in the coming days.

Battery Life and Connectivity

Coming onto battery life and connectivity, Realme 3 Pro draws power from a big 4,045 mAh battery unit. The big battery unit lasted for a full day on one single charge within my usage scenario which includes lots of phone calls, 20-30 minute of gameplay (PUBG), video streaming on 4G and Wi-Fi, social media and camera usage on a stretch. If you have similar or moderate usage, Realme 3 Pro will manage to last for more than a day.

Realme 3 Pro supports VOOC 3.0 fast charging and the company is offering a 20W fast charger in the box. I discharged the phone's battery to absolute zero to evaluate the charging speed. The bundled charger refueled the battery from zero to 23% in the first 15 minutes.

For connectivity, the handset offers 3.5 mm headphone jack, dated microUSB 2.0 port, Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi and GPS.

Pricing and Competition

Realme 3 Pro is available in two variants- 4GB RAM + 64GB ROM at Rs. 13,999. The 6GB RAM + 128GB ROM variant of the handset will sell at Rs. 16,999. The smartphone will fight the likes of Redmi Note 7 Pro, Galaxy M30, Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2 and other sub 18k handsets in the Indian market.

Verdict

The launch of Realme 3 Pro has further heated up the competition in the budget and mid-range smartphone market in India. The new Realme smartphone takes up on the widely popular Redmi Note 7 Pro and Samsung Galaxy A50. The phone is heavily loaded with the latest hardware and software features and has impressed us with its overall camera performance. We will soon compare it with the closest rivals to better evaluate the overall performance. Stay tuned on GizBot.com.