Realme 5s hands-on review

Design

As already mentioned, there's not much new about the design as it's identical to the Realme 5. We've got the glass-like sandwich chassis that has an actual glass on the front (Gorilla Glass 3+), plastic back and a plastic frame - both mimicking glass and metal, respectively.

The phone still feels solid in hand, though, and the thickness and the weight might be the part of the reason. In any case, we think that an almost 200g weight and 9.3mm thickness are justified when carrying a huge 5,000 mAh battery on board. And the extra thickness has allowed Realme to integrate the camera module with a much smaller protrusion.

Standing tall with a 6.5-inch display with a 20:9 aspect ratio, however, the phone isn't ideal for handling with one hand. And the fingerprint placement is far from perfect, too. We found ourselves stretching a finger to reach the sensor way too often. Then again, users with bigger hands or at least longer fingers won't have a problem. And while we are on the matter, the power button is also a bit out of reach too. At least the fingerprint reader itself is fast, accurate and reliable.

Otherwise, the curved back and the anodized-like side frame allow for a pretty secure grip. It's definitely not as slippery as other handsets, that's for sure. .

And now a few words about the new Crystal Red color that we got. It incorporates the same gradient pattern as the blue color on the vanilla Realme 5, while the red makes it stand out a little bit more. It's the first red-colored Realme phone in quite a while.

Hardware and performance

To be honest, there's nothing new to talk about in the hardware chapter either. The phone features almost identical gear as the original Realme 5, except for the camera.

A big 6.5-inch IPS LCD panel sits on the front with a minimalist notch and an HD+ (720 x 1600px) resolution, which for the asking price seems pretty sufficient.

A Snapdragon 665 SoC sits behind the wheel utilizing the cost and energy-efficient 11nm manufacturing process. The 3GB/32GB variant from the previous model is no longer available, so configurations now start at 4GB/64GB while the most tricked out variant is still 4GB/128GB. Of course, expansion via microSD is still possible.

Probably the best thing about this phone is the huge 5,000 mAh battery, which combined with the battery-friendly HD+ display and Snapdragon 665 SoC result in outstanding endurance. When we reviewed the Realme 5 a few months back, we got an overall 144 hours endurance rating. The handset currently sits in fourth place in our all-time battery ranking, and we are pretty confident that the Realme 5s will be in the same ballpark.

Our only gripe here is the lack of fast charging - 10W standard charging takes quite a lot of time, but we could let that one slide, after all, this phone costs merely $130.

What we can't get over, however, is the fact that it's already the end of 2019 and we are still seeing phones with microUSB getting released. We get that the 5s is built on the Realme 5 platform so it will inherit the said connector, but maybe at least that could have been upgraded to the reversible USB-C connector.

And now off to some preliminary synthetic benchmarks. We didn't expect any surprises in the performance section but let's just check that the phone performs as we'd expect it.

GeekBench 4.1 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Realme 5
  5707
• Realme 5s
  5596
• Nokia 7.2
  5440
• Honor 9X
  5345
• Nokia 6.2
  4882

GeekBench 4.1 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Honor 9X
  1559
• Realme 5
  1537
• Nokia 7.2
  1534
• Realme 5s
  1533
• Nokia 6.2
  1311

GeekBench 5 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Nokia 7.2
  1425
• Realme 5s
  1373
• Honor 9X
  1334
• Nokia 6.2
  1255

GeekBench 5 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Nokia 7.2
  336
• Honor 9X
  332
• Realme 5s
  314
• Nokia 6.2
  276

AnTuTu 7

Higher is better

• Honor 9X
  140362
• Realme 5
  139516
• Nokia 7.2
  139495
• Realme 5s
  139103
• Nokia 6.2
  114947

AnTuTu 8

Higher is better

• Honor 9X
  187528
• Realme 5s
  168635
• Nokia 7.2
  164484
• Nokia 6.2
  140736

3DMark SSE 3.1 Unlimited

Higher is better

• Nokia 7.2
  1427
• Realme 5s
  1140
• Realme 5
  1136
• Nokia 6.2
  998
• Honor 9X
  991