Realme 5 review

Design

The Realme 5 is a Realme done by the book. Since the Realme 1 the maker has been trying and succeeding into making stunning phones that look way more premium than their price tag would suggest. And same goes for the Realme 5.

The phone has a flat piece of Gorilla Glass 3 at the front to keep its large screen safe. The frame and the rear panel are made of plastic, but that's a tough job to determine that at first as the Realme 5 back is nothing short of flagship worthy.

The Realme 5 and 5 Pro are the company's first splash-resistant phones. Realme has sealed the gaps around the panels, as well as the ports, the mics, and the speaker with a combination of glue, rubber gasket, and rings. That's quite the achievement for one of the cheapest smartphones around!

The Realme 5 is available in two colors - Crystal Blue and Crystal Purple. Both have this triangular-patterned design that was first introduced years ago with the Oppo R1x. Depending on the available light, these patterns go from lighter to darker hues, and each shape is doing that with different intensity. So, as far as looks are concerned - Realme has one again aced those.

Realme 5

The back, as we said, is made of plastic, but thanks to quite a few different stacked layers, you wouldn't tell it's not glass. And even the always-on fingerprint scanner has been painted with the same blue or purple color, and thus the whole design is kept seamless.

And while we are still talking about the back, here is one of the key selling features of the Realme 5 - the quad-camera setup. Realme has jumped from dual- to quad-cameras in just a couple of months, but it has done it quite right. The arrangement on the Realme 5 is as on the 5 Pro - the 8MP ultrawide shooter is at the top, followed by the 16MP primary, then the 2MP portrait snapper, and the 2MP macro cam.

Just like on the Pro, the Realme 5 has the ultrawide camera surrounded by two yellow rings and an F/1.8 sign, which was meant for the main imager. Well, whatever the logic, it does look better this way, at least.

The setup is humping just enough to wobble annoyingly when left on a flat surface, but that's pretty much inescapable with these multi-camera setups.

Now, let's see what's at the front. The 6.5" IPS LCD, of course, and this unit packs 720p+ resolution. While that's far from perfect, it's quite expected for the class. At least the performance will gain a lot from that.

Anyway, the screen lacks the trendy bezel-less look with rather obvious black strips around the top and longer sides. The bottom has a pretty chunky chin, but hey, we can't be this picky.

The top of the screen has a waterdrop-shaped notch that houses the 13MP selfie camera. The earpiece is above that notch and so thin that it's almost invisible.

The frame is made of plastic and has a sandblasted-like finish, which makes it quite grippy. And because of this the Realme 5 provides for a rather good grip, and we felt it pretty secure most of the time.

The Realme 5 has everything on its frame. On the left, you'd find the tri-card slot with an independent space for a microSD. And the bottom has the microUSB port, the audio jack, the mic, and the loudspeaker.

Realme 5

The Realme 5 measures 164.4 x 75.6 x 9.3 mm - that's about 7mm taller than the Realme 5 Pro. The phone also weighs 14g more at 198g - not a lightweight phone for sure.

The Realme 5 is a looker, and it's one that's not as slippery as it looks. The phone provides enough grip even at that size, and while single-handed operations are rarely possible, it's a phone that's still a pleasure to use and having around. Fingerprints do stick on the back, but because of the cool paint job you can hardly see them.