We check out Realme’s budget offering!

After launching in India and gaining independence from its sub-brand status, Realme has expanded its presence to the Southeast Asia region. The company is looking to make a splash with the youth via smartphones with solid designs, compelling hardware, and competitive prices.

Their Realme C1 will definitely draw attention thanks to its very competitive price and feature set, and will certainly give established local and international brands in the Philippines headaches when it finally launches in the next few weeks.

It looks a little plain..

That’s by design. Realme made the C1 look as plain as possible to keep manufacturing costs down. There’s no fancy gradients or special treatments on the rear, and instead, you get a metallic Realme logo plus a single color scheme. While the body is made out of polycarbonate, the build quality looks solid enough.

Fancy features like a fingerprint scanner have been omitted to save on cost, though you do get a dual rear camera module consisting of a 13-megapixel f/2.2 + 2-megapixel f/2.4 cameras. The camera module has chrome plating to give it a bit of style.

Despite being roughly the same size as the A3s, the Realme C1 can easily be held in one hand, even by people with dainty fingers.

Port layout is the usual: volume controls and SIM card tray on the left, power button on the right, and MicroUSB, speaker, and headphone jack at the bottom.

The Realme C1’s rather large notch houses the earpiece, necessary sensors, and a 5-megapixel f2.2 camera.

Overall the phone feels a little light because of its plastic construction, but like we mentioned it’s easy to grip and hold one-handed. One thing we appreciated with the phone was the fact that it’s not a smudge magnet, which should keep people who are OC happy.

Inside the Realme C1 are modest internals consisting of 2GB RAM, 16GB internal storage which thankfully can be expanded to up to 256GB via micro SD, and a Snapdragon 450 processor. You get Android 8.1 out of the box, along with ColorOS 5.1. While it is a budget phone, the Realme C1 comes with a large 4230mAh battery.

How much does it cost?

The Realme C1 will have a RP 1,499,000(~Php 5.4k). Its price is very competitive, especially since we can’t think of any other Snapdragon 450-sporting phone having a sub-Php 5.5k price. Locally, the Realme C1’s closest rival is Xiaomi’s Redmi 5 at Php 5,799 for the 2GB/16GB model. While the Redmi 5 has a fingerprint scanner, it only has a single rear camera, a smaller battery, and a smaller display, making the Realme C1’s price pretty compelling in comparison.

Realme C1 Specs

• Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 octa-core processor
• Adreno 506 GPU
• 2GB RAM
• 6.2-inch HD+ LTPS IPS display, Gorilla Glass protection
• 16GB of expandable storage
• 13-megapixel f/2.2 + 2-megapixel f/2.4 rear cameras with LED flash and PDAF
• 5-megapixel f/2.2 front camera
• Dual SIM
• 3G, LTE
• WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, A-GPS
• 4230mAh battery
• Android 8.1 Oreo with ColorOS 5.1 UI