Realme 6 hands-on review

Design and handling

Design-wise, the handset looks a lot like most smartphones these days. Only the front uses glass - it's Gorilla Glass 3, to be exact. The back is made of polycarbonate while the frame is a mixture of aluminum and plastic.

An interesting note to make - Realme says the phone is waterproof, although hasn't provided any proof, meaning there's no official IP certification to go with those claims. Nevertheless, the company assured us that the handset would do just fine in the rain or when splashed with some water. The "ports are tightly sealed".

There's a small curvature to the front panel for added comfort while the back has a more pronounced curve to the sides. We would have appreciated a bit more curvature for the sake of comfort. And the camera bump is big enough to cause wobbling unless you put on the included silicone case.

The surface also feels like a fingerprint and scratch magnet. For the short time, we've been testing the Realme 6, it was able to pick up a couple of small scratches, but this is expected given that the back panel isn't glass. That doesn't take away the fact that it looks gorgeous. Realme says it was going for the comet-like effect, hence the name of the color we have here - Comet Blue.

The front of the device comes with thin side bezels while the top and bottom come out a bit thicker. The punch-hole camera design is particularly interesting, though, as the camera itself looks a bit bigger than usual while the bezel around it is surprisingly thin. Maybe a bit far from the left edge eating away a good chunk of the screen real estate. Maybe a centered design would have been better, although we found this to be quite subjective.

Moving to the side frame, we like the clickiness of the power button, which has the fingerprint reader embedded in it, and the volume rockers. The fingerprint reader placement is ideal for users using the phone with their right hand. Picking the phone with your left hand, you can either unlock it using the face recognition feature or register your middle or index finger on your left hand. But that also requires some finger gymnastics. For more about the usability of the fingerprint reader, check out the next page where we talk hardware and software features.