Realme 8s 5G review

Triple-cam setup with an upgraded main cam

The camera setup is one of the areas the Realme 8s 5G improves over the older Realme 5G. You are still getting one camera less than other Realme 8 phones, likely as a cost-saving measure to enable the inclusion of 5G at a lower price point. That is still the situation. However, the main camera on the back of the Realme 8s 5G has changed for the better, which is a 64MP Quad-Bayer unit, instead of a 48MP one.

Snooping around in some config files revealed many camera modules supported by the ROM on our Realme 8s 5G review unit. Many of the entries are clearly redundant and likely in place to enable easy porting of the same ROM to different devices. Plus, there could, very well, be several hardware alternatives for some of the camera modules-a pretty common practice.

Anyway, the new 64MP camera appears to be an OmniVision ov64b unit. That's a 1/2" sensor with 0.7micron individual pixels. Though it is a Quad-Bayer module and hence meant to bin four of those pixels together to result in a 16MP photo. The particular OmniVision sensor is fairly popular, particularly with "value" devices and can also be found in the Realme GT Master Edition, Poco X3 GT, Oppo Reno 6, Redmi Note 10S and Note 10 Pro in China, the OnePlus Nord CE 5G, to name a few. Also, apparently, the vanilla Realme 8 uses the same sensor, so we can expect consistent performance between the two devices.

Supported camera modules

Beyond the 64MP main camera, the Realme 8s 5G also has two 2MP, f/2.4 supplementary cameras - one for depth data and the other a dedicated, fixed-focus macro. According to config data, these either come courtesy of OmniVision or GalaxyCore. Potentially, interchangeably. We can't imagine that would make a major difference, though.

The camera app UI on the Realme 8s 5G is a largely familiar affair. The overall layout is fairly simple, with few menus - most of the modes are now on the main rolodex, which is good. It offers AI Scene Enhancement (also known as Chroma Boost or Dazzle Color) - it's like an advanced HDR mode, which may stack several images to offers even further improvements in the dynamic range, but the most prominent "improvement" is the higher color saturation.

Camera UI

The settings menu is straightforward as well.

Camera settings

Since the Realme 8s 5G lacks an ultrawide camera, the awkward resolution controls we struggled with on the original Realme 8 are not an issue here. You just get one straight video resolution control and a menu to select between h.264 and h.265.

Video recording mode

There is a fairly in-depth Expert mode available for photos.

Expert photo mode

You get to tweak exposure (ISO in the 100-6400 range and shutter speed in the 1/8000s-32s range), white balance (by light temperature, but no presets), manual focus (in arbitrary 0 to 1 units with 0 being close focus and 1 being infinity) and exposure compensation (-2EV to +2EV in 1/6EV increments).

Photo quality - daylight

Let's kick things off with the main camera in its default 16MP mode. These shots come out looking solid all-round. There is plenty of detail, and the dynamic range is decent, even if unimpressive.

Realme 8s 5G: 16MP main camera samples

While you can notice traces of sharpening, it is done tastefully, without going overboard. Colors generally look true to life without being oversaturated or too dull. It is worth noting that the weather was far from perfect, making conditions that extra bit harder for the Realme 8s 5G, as well. The camera holds up pretty well, especially for a budget device.

All of these stills were captured using the default camera settings on the Realme 8s 5G, which means HDR was set to Auto, without any other enhancements enabled. Realme also offers an AI Scene Enhancement toggle (previously known as Chroma Boost and Dazzle Color) within the camera app. It usually adds to the HDR look of a photo, giving colors a bit more "pop". This can be beneficial, depending on the scene.

Realme 8s 5G: 16MP main camera samples, AI Scene Detection ON

When the AI detects those and properly kicks in, the effects on certain elements like grass and the sky are obvious. We definitely enjoy the livelier look in most cases, but there are some things to look out for with Ai Scene Enhancement.

One of the "scenes" the AI can trigger is text detection. Once that happens, the camera app tries its best to find the "edges" of whatever you are trying to "scan", presuming by default that this is what you are trying to do. You have to be mindful of this behavior since once a cropping rectangle appears in the frame, the resulting shot will only include only its contents, which can ruin shots by accident.

You can capture stills in the full 64MP resolution of the main camera, as well. You don't stand to gain much extra detail over 16MP stills, though.

Realme 8s 5G: 64MP main camera samples

This comes with all the usual caveats, like occasional fringing, especially in finer details and five to six times larger file sizes than 16MP stills.

AI Scene Detection is available in 64MP mode too, but in our experience, it just made shots softer, so you might want to steer clear of it.

Here's how the Realme 8s 5G stacks up against other cameras in our extensive photo comparison database. We are including 16MP and 64MP samples.

Realme 8s 5G against the Realme 8 5G and the Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 5G in our Photo compare tool

64MP: Realme 8s 5G against the Realme 8 and the Xiaomi Mi Note 10 Lite in our Photo compare tool

There is no dedicated telephoto on the Realme 8. However, the camera app does offer digital zoom up to an ambitious 20x, with toggles for 2x and 5x in the UI. At 2x zoom, shots look surprisingly good. Expectedly, things are a bit softer overall, but other than that, we hardly noticed any extra noise. Processing and color look good and consistent with regular stills, which is expected, seeing how both come from the same camera.

Realme 8s 5G: 16MP 2x zoom main camera samples

Quality rapidly does down as you zoom any higher. Though, to be fair, some of these shots could still be considered "usable", depending on the context.

Realme 8s 5G: 16MP zoom main camera samples: 5x • 10x • 20x • 5x • 10x • 20x • 5x • 10x • 20x

The Realme 8s 5G can capture Portraits with its main camera and with additional depth info lifted from the 2MP depth camera. These photos come out looking quite pleasing overall. Subjects look sharp, and the background blur effect is pretty convincing. Since it is digitally generated, you can adjust its intensity.

Realme 8s 5G: 16MP portrait samples

The portraits are not perfect, though. Subject detection and separation are decent but do make the occasional mistake. Especially around ears, with a busy background and at higher levels of background blur. Hardly a deal-breaker, but still worth mentioning.

The 2MP macro camera has its focus fixed at around 4cm, and shooting a sharp picture is a nearly impossible task. Even if you manage to get the distance right and keep your hand steady, the 2MP images would be soft, noisy.

Realme 8s 5G: 2MP macro camera samples

On the plus side, colors don't look bad, and you can still use these macros for reading things like small text, which is something.

Selfie camera quality

The Realme 8s 5G has a 16MP, f/2.1 selfie camera. If config files are to be believed, once again, it uses a Samsung ISOCELL S5K3P9SP sensor, which, according to Samsung's product page, is a "tetrapixel" sensor with an RGB Bayer pattern, WDR and PDAF. This should mean that, by default, it is expected to bin pixels and shoot at 4MP. Then again, these advanced features could be on some different sensor, part of Samsung's ISOCELL 3P9 lineup, since we know, for a fact, that the selfie on the Realme 8s 5G doesn't have autofocus. It also captures 16MP photos. However, we can't be sure whether those are binned down to 4MP first and then upscaled back.

In any case, selfies from the Realme 8s 5G are overall solid, though their quality can vary quite a bit depending on lighting and settings. Outside, depending on the lightning, the background can get blown out - a lot less of an issue with controlled indoor lighting.

Realme 8s 5G: 16MP selfie camera samples

Realme also has pretty high levels of beautification enabled on selfies by default. These tend to make the entire frame, including the subject and the background, softer than necessary. Keeping filters off, however, can result in a detailed and pretty sharp selfie. We have very few complaints about those.

Selfie portraits also look solid. The detail is plenty, and even though the focus is fixed, the focus plane is nice and wide and hence quite forgiving.

Realme 8s 5G: 16MP selfie portrait samples

Subject detection and separation are very good, though not perfect. The occasional stray hair, glasses or a busier background do trip up the algorithm. The blur effect itself looks great.

Low-light image quality

The Realme 8s 5G holds up surprisingly well in low-light conditions. The standard 16MP shots have plenty of detail, even though noise is also well corrected and suppressed. You can still see some fine grain and softer spots where the algorithm did its job, but neither is too aggressive. There is naturally some additional sharpening applied to restore details, and it is also very well done without going overboard.

Realme 8s 5G: 16MP main camera low-light samples

Of course, this is still a budget camera, and we are not holding it to the same standards as a flagship one. Even so, you can get very decent low-light shots from it, even without fiddling with settings and modes. If you have Ai Scene Detection on, it recognizes low-light conditions and automatically enables a "Night" scene. Though with AI turned off, shots still seem to have a similar overall look, including HDR stacking to balance shadows and highlights.

There is a dedicated Night mode beyond that, as well. It is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, it consistently and noticeably boosts shadows and contains light sources and highlights better, resulting in more details in those areas.

Realme 8s 5G: 16MP main camera Night mode samples

On the other hand, it is far from the speediest Night mode we have encountered, and it can sometimes result in softer areas in the frame than just shooting in auto.

For the sake of thoroughness, we shot in 64MP mode, as well. These shots tend to be a bit softer than their 16MP counterparts without really offering additional detail.

Realme 8s 5G: 64MP main camera low-light samples

Zoomed 2x low-light shots are quite decent and retain most of the qualities of 1x shots, just with some extra softness.

Realme 8s 5G: 16MP 2x main camera low-light samples

Low-light selfies look good, as well, with plenty of detail and a reasonable amount of noise. We would have liked a bit more sharpness, but then again, that might make the selfies look overprocessed.

Realme 8s 5G: 16MP selfie camera low-light samples

The Realme 8s 5G has a screen flash feature that is on by default and does a decent job of illuminating your face to allow the camera to capture its texture and detail a bit better. You can see this general difference in complexion when looking at Night mode selfies, which tend to balance and mix the background and foreground a lot better, but generally leave behind softer, more processed skin.

Realme 8s 5G: 16MP selfie camera Night mode samples

Selfie portraits in low-light are decent, but again, nothing to phone home about.

Realme 8s 5G: 16MP selfie camera portrait low-light samples

Video recording

The Realme 8s 5G can only record up to 1080p video. You get to choose whether you want the more compatible h.264 or save some space at the cost of higher compression with h.265 (HEVC). Personally, we would go with the former since 1080p videos aren't that storage-intensive, to begin with. You get a standard AVC video stream at just over 17 Mpbs - decent, even if unimpressive. Alongside that - stereo AAC at 48 kHz. Frame rates aren't exactly locked at 30fps, but they stick pretty close to that target, which is good enough.

In terms of quality, the main cam does alright but leaves a bit to be desired. Detail is on the lower-end, even for 1080p, and there is quite a bit of noise. Granted, the lighting conditions were less than favorable, which should be taken into account, as well.

Zoomed 2x videos generally retain the characteristics of 1x ones, with a bit more softness. These are usable in a pinch.

So far, nothing really sets the Realme 8s 5G apart from its Realme 8 5G predecessor. But we do arrive at the topic of stabilization, which is now a thing on the Realme 8s 5G. It has gyro-based EIS that works on both the main and selfie cameras.

Realme calls the feature "Super steady", just like on some of its other devices. Unlike some of those, however, there is just one EIS level on the Realme 8s 5G, no Max setting in sight. Super steady does a decent-enough job smoothing out bigger jitters and shakes but also introduces some nasty focus hunting. This is an issue we've seen on other devices before too.

As we said, the selfie camera can also capture 1080p@30fps video. EIS is available for these videos as well and with rather impressive results. If you can live with the cropped frame, we definitely recommend using stabilization for selfie videos.

In terms of quality, selfie videos actually look quite impressive. Detail is great, and since there is no focus here, there isn't any possibility to introduce that nasty focus hunting.

Low-light video capture is merely OK and not impressive in any way.

Last but not least, we added frame grabs from the Realme 8s 5G into our extensive video compare database for your pixel-peeping pleasure.

Realme 8s 5G against the Realme 8 5G and the Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 5G in our Video compare tool