Realme 5s review

Introduction

The Realme family has grown quite a bit ever since the first Realme 1 smartphone to a point where the company is now confident enough to release handsets slotting in almost every market segment and also releasing hardware refreshes on a regular basis. This review will be all about the hardware refresh of the Realme 5 - a decently-priced smartphone with nice build and relatively powerful hardware.

What lacked in the previous model, however, was a more competent camera setup. While the 12MP main camera on the Realme 5 was doing a fine job for the price, a trendy48MP camera might make it an even more tempting offer.

Enter the Realme 5s - the hardware refresh improves on this very aspect while staying at the same price. The rest of the hardware remains, which also means that the Realme 5s - similarly to the Realme 5 - offers great battery life, high price/performance ratio thanks to the Snapdragon 665 SoC.

Realme 5s specs

• Body: Gorilla Glass 3+ front, polycarbonate back; splash-resistant
• Screen: 6.5-inch, 19:9, HD+ (720 x 1600px), IPS LCD
• Rear camera: Primary 48MP, 1/2" sensor size, 0.8µm pixels, f/1.8 aperture; Ultra wide-angle: 8MP, f/2.2 aperture, 1/4" sensor size, 1.12µm pixels; 2MP macro camera; 2MP depth sensor; LED flash; 2160p@30fps video recording
• Front camera: 13MP, f/2.0 aperture
• Chipset: Snapdragon 665: octa-core CPU (4x2.0 GHz Kryo 260 Gold & 4x1.8 GHz Kryo 260 Silver), Adreno 610 GPU
• Memory: 3/32GB, 4/64GB or 4/128GB; dedicated microSD slot for up to 256GB expansion
• OS: Android 9.0; Color OS 6.0 on top
• Battery: 5,000mAh, 10W charging
• Connectivity: Dual SIM (4G), Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, microUSB, FM radio
• Misc: Rear-mounted fingerprint reader

The Realme 5s also offers more RAM and storage for the same price, now starting with a more 2019-worthy configuration of 4GB of RAM and 64GB of expandable storage. Unfortunately, though, the dated microUSB port is still here.

Unboxing the Realme 5s

The Realme 5s comes in the exact same box as the Realme 5 containing the user manuals you'd expect along with a transparent silicone case and the USB-A to microUSB cable for charging and data transfer. You also get a 10W charging brick as well.