Realme is sticking to its core strategy of flooding the budget segment with hundreds of different smartphones. Of course, this gives the potential buyer a lot of options to choose from, but, of course, creates additional confusion. Actually, this is the case with the Realme 9 series, which in just a couple of months since the release has already acquired six models (all sold at a fairly close price), including the recently released Realme 9 – a variant of a colleague with 5G, only for 4G networks. Given the lack of 5G, the company could improve a few other aspects of the smartphone, be it the display or the charging speed. However, even with these upgrades, the new smartphone will not necessarily stand up to competition from Xiaomi, Samsung, or even Realme itself.
Characteristics
- Processor: Qualcomm SM6225 Snapdragon 680, 8 cores (4×2.4 GHz Kryo 265 Gold, 4×1.9 GHz Kryo 265 Silver), Adreno 610.
- Memory: 6/128 GB, 8/128 GB.
- Display: 6.4 inches, Super AMOLED, 90 Hz, 1080×2400 pixels, 20:9 aspect ratio, 411 ppi.
- Main camera: 108 MP (f/1.8, 26 mm, 1/1.67″, 0.64 µm), 8 MP (f/2.2, 1/1.4″, 1.12 µm, 120°), 2 MP (f/ 2.4).
- Front camera: 16 MP, f/2.5.
- 5000mAh battery, 33W fast charging.
- OS: Android 12, Realme UI 3.0.
- Dimensions: 160.2 × 73.3 × 8 mm, 178 grams.
Design, hardware, equipment
The Realme 9 4G smartphone shares the same body design as the Realme 9 Pro, right down to the port layout and camera panel. However, there are still some differences. For example, this smartphone has a plastic back panel instead of glass. But I’m not overly concerned about the choice of this particular material, as the smartphone feels solid enough, it feels great in the hand and the finish looks decent, plus, even more importantly, the plastic helps to control the weight of the device even with a large battery.
I would also like to note that the really attractive OLED display takes up most of the front of the smartphone, but the very noticeable “chin” at the bottom of the frame is still there and it is quite noticeable. The screen boasts a standard 1080p resolution with support for a 90Hz refresh rate. It’s just as good as the more expensive Realme 9 Pro+, with nice color reproduction and wide viewing angles, so there’s nothing to complain about. And another advantage of the OLED screen is that the user gets a fingerprint scanner built into the display – it is optical and works flawlessly.
Of course, I would really like Realme to opt for a pair of stereo speakers to enhance the entertainment content experience, but instead, the smartphone provides a lone speaker at the bottom of the case. He, by the way, starts to wheeze a little if you play music at maximum volume. On the other hand, if anyone needs it, the smartphone has acquired a 3.5 mm headphone jack and a dedicated microSD card slot – both elements are very rare today.
Another minor oddity of the device is that you have to hold down the power key and volume up key to see the power menu, similar to recent iPhones and Samsung devices. And while it doesn’t really matter for random smartphone reboots, it does negate the shortcut if you regularly use this menu to control your smart home devices.
In a typical Realme bright yellow box, the user will find the smartphone itself, a USB Type-A to USB Type-C cable, a 33W charger, a transparent case and some waste paper.
Software, performance and battery life
Most smartphones in this price range often launch with older versions of the Android operating system, but Realme is thankfully breaking that trend. Right out of the box, this smartphone runs Realme UI 3.0 firmware, which is based on the Android 12 operating system (Realme 9 5G runs on Android 11), and the company released the April security patch in advance. It’s great to see how Google apps pick accent colors for their wallpaper-based interface as part of Material You’s dynamic engine.
And while it’s very interesting to see brands using one of the best Android 12 for the good of their interface, all this flamboyant atmosphere hardly masks the problems of the smartphone’s software. To begin with, the smartphone comes with unnecessary programs like Moj and Josh (these are Indian clones of TikTok), which take up your time, since you need to disable and delete them manually. Also, Realme 9 had a lot of performance issues at the time of release, most of which, fortunately, were fixed with the release of the April patch, but some are still present. For example, the smartphone still freezes for a few seconds when making any system changes, such as activating dark mode or Focus mode.
Performance issues are most likely directly related to the Snapdragon 680 processor, which we already saw in the Realme 9i smartphone – its capabilities in this regard were also disappointing. However, thanks to better software optimizations in Realme 9, the system-on-a-chip now seems livable. The processor handles social networks, entertainment services and switching between applications – all this works without failure.
Problems only arise when you push the CPU and GPU to their limits in games like Call of Duty: Mobile and Asphalt 9. The frame rates vary a lot in these games, and Asphalt 9 doesn’t even show frame rates above 30 FPS. And while it didn’t ruin the gaming experience, the Realme 9 is clearly not a gaming smartphone – it’s only suitable for occasional entertainment sessions. But after an hour-long stress test, Realme 9 did not overheat, which says a lot about the device’s ability to carry heavy loads.
The battery management on this smartphone is a bit aggressive with app notifications. For example, in some cases, non-essential notifications (alerts or promotions) arrived a couple of minutes after they were directly sent by applications. True, there were no problems with more urgent notifications, such as messages, emails or reminders.
What’s more, the Realme 9 smartphone can afford to make battery management much easier, as the 5000mAh battery provides excellent battery life. I found it quite difficult to drain this battery in a whole day in my standard smartphone usage scenarios and had to use dedicated battery drain apps to run the charging tests. I usually ended my day with 40% battery – after a day of heavy use of the device with 4-5 hours of screen time. It is also worth noting that the 33W charger that comes with the kit takes only 1 hour and 20 minutes to charge the gadget’s battery. This is the fastest indicator in this price category.
cameras
The situation with the camera in Realme 9 turned out to be very peculiar – the main sensor has a resolution of 108 megapixels, but the Snapdragon 680 processor has a maximum supported resolution of 64 megapixels. Realme doesn’t explain how it did it. What’s more, the camera app has a 108MP shooting mode, but the shots don’t look more detailed than when the regular 12MP mode is activated. Accordingly, in the review, we focused on the final images and their quality.
As is the case with any other budget smartphone, the Realme 9’s main camera takes quite beautiful daylight photos with a color palette that is very close to what a person actually sees. The resulting images do not look overly bright or oversaturated, which some users will definitely like. The smartphone correctly conveys skin tone and boasts a decent dynamic range, capturing quite a lot of detail in dark areas. But sometimes getting the right white balance in difficult lighting is very difficult.
Also, images from the main camera look a bit washed out around the edges when viewed in close detail – no matter how good the ambient light is. This problem is noticeably exacerbated when shooting indoors in low light, when the smartphone struggles to find and lock focus. If you’re used to just pulling out your smartphone, pressing the camera shutter, and walking away, you’ll need to check your finished photo before moving on. And if you take a little longer to focus when using night mode, the camera will focus correctly, but it can still result in blurry shots.
Unfortunately, the secondary 8-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera makes photos unusable. The resulting images are characterized by a watercolor effect, the details in the frame are practically not preserved, although this is quite normal for shooting distant landscapes. As for the 16 MP front camera, the photos taken with it have slightly muted tones. But at least they don’t look terrible – until you turn on the various frame enhancement features, of course.
Review
Is this smartphone worth buying? Maybe. Compared to its 5G sibling, the Realme 9 4G gives the user a nice OLED panel, an in-display fingerprint scanner, Android 12, and a faster 33W charger. Those are some really good reasons to buy a 4G model, especially since it only costs $7 more and 5G connectivity hasn’t been implemented in most countries. However, all other aspects of the smartphone slightly constrain its capabilities. The lack of a pair of stereo speakers already leaves it behind the competition, and Realme’s decision to go with a mid-range processor (when its own 9 Pro is equipped with a more powerful chip at the same price) doesn’t seem entirely logical.
While it does make a lot of sense to provide customers with a wide range of smartphones, Realme needs to draw the line somewhere. The company currently has several smartphones in the same price range, and the Realme 9 4G is probably the most controversial of the bunch. It’s not suitable for entertainment (no stereo speakers) or video games (because of the processor), and the quality of pictures on the main camera in low light is the worst of any smartphone at this price.
So for whom then was this gadget created? If you want a serious smartphone with the latest software that can run all your social networks and work apps, then you can take the Realme 9 4G without hesitation. But if you often listen to music through the speaker or play heavy games, you have plenty of better options from Xiaomi, Samsung, or even Realme.
✅ Advantages
- OLED display with 90Hz refresh rate.
- Pre-installed Android 12.
- Decent performance.
- The fingerprint scanner works great.
- Impressive battery life.
- Decent shots in daylight.
❌ disadvantages
- Lots of preinstalled software.
- Terrible picture quality in low light.
- No stereo speakers.
- No NFC.
This is a translation of the Android Police review.
Source: Trash Box
Donald-43Westbrook, a distinguished contributor at worldstockmarket, is celebrated for his exceptional prowess in article writing. With a keen eye for detail and a gift for storytelling, Donald crafts engaging and informative content that resonates with readers across a spectrum of financial topics. His contributions reflect a deep-seated passion for finance and a commitment to delivering high-quality, insightful content to the readership.
