Realme 5s review

ColorOS 6 based on Android 9 Pie

This is not our first time reviewing Realme's current and latest ColorOS 6 skin on top of Android 9.0 Pie. Luckily, Realme pledged on updating most of its phones, including the Realme 5-lineup with the latest Android 10 coming with ColorOS 7 so in a way, most of what we discuss here would probably change.

We predict that the navigation gestures won't change as much, though, given that one of the currently available options aligns with Android 10's default navigation method. Swiping left or right from the edge of the screen acts as a back button while a single swipe from the bottom bezel will bring you back to the home screen. Swipe and hold will open up the recent apps menu. The quick switch is performed by swiping from the left or right edge of the screen and hold - it's a bit slow compared to the bottom swipe-and-flick on vanilla Android 10.

Home screen, notification shade and general settings menu

As far as biometrics go, we have no major complaints, except for the slightly sub-optimal fingerprint reader placement, but we've talked about that in the design section of the review. Functionality-wise, it's great - it's accurate, it's responsive, ultra-fast, and reliable. Definitely not what you'd expect given the price point. Additionally, the face unlock does a pretty nice job of fast unlocking too, but it's needless to say it's less secure than the good old fingerprint reader.

Biometrics options

Like all Realme and Oppo phones, the Realme 5s also offers a set of screen-off gestures for quick launching apps on a locked screen. It's pretty neat in the cases where it recognizes the said gesture because it's not ideal. It can be a miss sometimes.

Some advanced features like split-screen are also supported, and even though it's an Android Pie-native functionality, it's still a rare sighting in this price range, so it's good to see it here. You split the screen by swiping upwards with three fingers. Don't mistake it for the downwards three-finger swipe, though, as this one makes screenshot.

The battery section offers all of the usual features with the addition of preset power modes like High Energy efficiency Mode and Balance Mode. Performance modes are also available ranging from High Performance to No Performance Improvements.

Battery options and optimizations

A relatively new addition to ColorOS is the so-called Game Space. It aims to optimize your gaming experience and get rid of distractions during gameplay. For example, you can handpick which notifications can go through and quick access to the performance mode.

In terms of usability and fluidity, we didn't notice any hiccups, lags or hangs at all, despite the budget-friendly hardware. And besides, the 720p screen doesn't seem to put all too much pressure on the Snapdragon 665 and animations looks snappy.

Performance and benchmarks

The Realme 5s runs on the rather new Snapdragon 665 SoC that aims to be a significant upgrade over the Snapdragon 660 chip by being more cost and energy-efficient while performance-wise, both SoCs should perform quite similarly. And the key advantage of the Snapdragon 665 over its predecessor is the 11nm manufacturing process allowing for lowered power consumption and less heat during load.

The chipset utilizes an octa-core CPU based on 4x 2.0 GHz Kryo 260 Gold cores and 4x Kryo 260 Silver cores ticking at 1.8 GHz. The Adreno 610 takes care of graphically-intensive tasks, which also doesn't offer that big of a performance leap but it asks less energy in return.

Here's how the chipset performed in our synthetic benchmark tests.

GeekBench 4.1 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Realme 5 Pro
  6106
• Realme 3 Pro
  5881
• Realme 5
  5707
• Realme 5s
  5596
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 8
  5590
• Realme 3
  4936
• Samsung Galaxy M10
  3662

GeekBench 4.1 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Realme 5 Pro
  1913
• Realme 5
  1537
• Realme 5s
  1533
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 8
  1512
• Realme 3
  1482
• Realme 3 Pro
  1471
• Samsung Galaxy M10
  724

AnTuTu 7

Higher is better

• Realme 5 Pro
  182765
• Realme 3 Pro
  155647
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 8
  141915
• Realme 5
  139516
• Realme 5s
  139103
• Realme 3
  132764
• Samsung Galaxy M10
  64144

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Realme 5 Pro
  27
• Realme 3 Pro
  23
• Realme 5
  13
• Realme 5s
  13
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 8
  13
• Realme 3
  13
• Samsung Galaxy M10
  3.2

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Realme 5
  26
• Realme 3
  26
• Realme 5s
  24
• Realme 5 Pro
  22
• Realme 3 Pro
  20
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 8
  11
• Samsung Galaxy M10
  6.3

GFX 3.1 Car scene (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Realme 5 Pro
  15
• Realme 3 Pro
  13
• Realme 3
  8
• Realme 5
  7.2
• Realme 5s
  7.1
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 8
  7
• Samsung Galaxy M10
  2

GFX 3.1 Car scene (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Realme 3
  15
• Realme 5
  13
• Realme 5 Pro
  12
• Realme 5s
  12
• Realme 3 Pro
  11
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 8
  5.9
• Samsung Galaxy M10
  3.7

3DMark SSE 3.1 Unlimited

Higher is better

• Realme 5 Pro
  2253
• Realme 3
  1189
• Realme 5s
  1140
• Realme 5
  1136
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 8
  1126
• Samsung Galaxy M10
  294

On the CPU front, the chipset performed expectedly well surpassing most of the similarly-priced alternatives and also performing exceptionally well in the GPU department as the screen resolution is gaming-friendly at 720p so the Adreno 610 doesn't have to deal with too many pixels.