Realme 7 review

Design, build, handling

The Realme 7 design is hardly an over-complicated one. The company likes to win you over with captivating colors instead of sophisticated panels. And this budget Realme 7 is no different - it is made of beautifully painted plastic, and there is a Gorilla Glass 3 keeping the screen safe.

The Realme 7 is available in two color options, and both are great looking - Mist White and Mist Blue. They are quite similar to the Realme 7 Pro's Mirror Silver and Mirror Blue - there is a sky-blue or deep-sea blue gradient that's changing from darker to a lighter hue, and it meets its doppelganger just below the rear camera in a sharp vertical line.

The rear panel has this cool frosted finish, making the Realme 7 both better-looking and easier to handle thanks to the extra grip. Fingerprints do stick, but they are not as obvious as on a glossy panel.

The frame is definitely not as flashy - it is sprayed in uniform light or dark blue color and has a matte finish. Still, combined with the chamfers around its edges - it is yet another grip-booster, and we like it.

The 6.5-inch IPS LCD panel fills most of the front of the Realme 7. It's considered a premium one within the budget segment by offering both extended 1080p resolution and 90Hz refresh rate. It has a small punch hole around the top left corner - the spot where you'd find the 16MP selfie camera.

The grille above the screen hides the earpiece and nothing else. There is no second speaker here, no notification LED either.

The Realme 7 has its fingerprint scanner at the right side of the phone integrated into the power key. While this reader is super-fast and very accurate, it can also lead to some headaches.

See, using the phone in portrait orientation - a.k.a. most of the time - your thumb will always lie on the key. Worse, it goes on this key even when you are taking your phone out from your pocket just to check the time or for missed notifications. And after a few of these "accidental" touches on the scanner, the phone turns it off and requires a PIN to unlock it.

Long story short - even if we had this great fingerprint scanner, we still needed to unlock the Realme 7 with our PIN more often than not.

The volume keys and the tri-card slot are on the left-hand side of the phone. The top of the Realme 7 is bare, while the bottom houses the 3.5mm jack, the mouthpiece, the USB-C port, and the speaker.

The quad-camera setup is the only thing of interest over at the back. It is on a raised black glass and contains the 8MP ultrawide, the 48MP primary, the 2MP depth, and the 2MP macro snappers. There is also a single LED flash.

The Realme 7 is a reasonably sized smartphone with mostly thin screen bezels and a chin that's not an eyesore. It weighs 197g, and it is 9.4mm thick, making it a hair thicker and heavier than the Realme 6. The extra battery is probably responsible for these gains.

Handling the Realme 7 is a nice experience - the phone offers excellent grip and feels secure in hand even without a case. It sure wobbles when left on a desk, but that's a common thing across the multi-camera phones.

At times, we could feel the bottom part of the rear panel crack and give in under pressure. We suspect it's just a little empty space underneath there.

And one final thing to remember - the Realme 7 has no protection against water whatsoever, so if you get it, you better be careful with it, even when it's raining.