Realme 6i First Impressions: Most Feature-Packed Sub-15K Smartphone?

Design- Same Old Design With Some Subtle Colors

Realme is well-known for experimenting with colors and different finishes for its smartphones. The company has explored almost all possibilities to differentiate its mid-range and premium smartphones from the lot and the strategy has worked most of the times. For the new Realme 6i, the company has decided to go with a more subtle uniform color options.

The new Realme 6i comes in two color variants- Lunar White and Eclipse Black. Both the variants have plastic back panels with glossy finishes making them smudge magnet. The Realme 6i offer dedicated microSD card slots, 3.5mm headphone jack, Type-C charging port and a side-mounted fingerprint scanner. Realme claims that all of the phone's ports are sealed with silicone protection to offer protection from water splashes.

90Hz Refresh Rate IPS LCD Display

It is exciting to see that smartphone manufacturers have started to offer higher refresh rate displays in the budget price-point. The Realme 6i is the first handset to offer a 90Hz refresh rate panel at such a low price-point. The 6.5-inch 90Hz IPS LCD screen has a touch sampling rate of 120Hz. Resultant, the UI navigation, scrolling on Facebook and Twitter timeline and other screen interactions feel butter smooth. The display offers a 90.5% screen-to-body ratio and has 480 nits peak brightness.

Quad-Lens Rear Camera Array

The Realme 6i flaunts a 48MP AI Quad Camera. The 48MP main camera is paired with an 8MP wide-angle lens, a 2MP macro lens and a 2MP B&W portrait lens. The primary sensor can capture pictures in native 48MP resolution and the 8MP wide-angle sensor covers 119° field-of-view. The 2MP macro lens has the traditional 4cm shooting distance. The newly added 2MP color filter to create bokeh seems like an interesting addition to the four-lens camera array. We will soon share camera samples to give you a better understanding of the Realme 6i's camera performance. For selfies, the Realme 6i boasts a 16MP In-display selfie camera.

Hardware And Software

The Realme 6 drives on the octa-core MediaTek Helio G90T processor with a peak clock speed of 2.05Ghz. The chipset is paired with 4GB and 6GB RAM with 64GB internal memory. You can expand the internal storage to up to 256GB via a dedicated microSD card slot. The handset can take in two nano-SIM cards at the same time, thanks to the 2+1 card slot. For software, the Realme 6i runs on Realme UI V.1 based on Android 10.

4,300mAh Battery With 30W Flash Charge Support (20W in Box)

The Realme 6i should last a day with moderate usage as the smartphone draws power from a modest 4,300 mAh battery unit. It is not the biggest battery cell in its price-point. The Galaxy M21 is powered by a massive 6,000mAh battery, whereas the Redmi Note 9 is fuelled by a big 5,020 mAh battery unit. The Realme 6i offers support for 30W fast-charging but the company ships the device with a 20W charger in the box. We will test the phone's battery life and the fast-charging performance in our detailed review.

Should You Buy The Realme 6i?

The Realme 6i's ace feature is its 90Hz refresh rate display as no other smartphone offers a higher refresh rate panel at such an affordable price-point. The quad-camera, fast-charging and the capable gaming-focused chipset are other features that make it a solid proposition in the budget price segment. We will talk more about the phone's display, camera, gaming and multitasking performance in our detailed review soon.