Realme 9i hands-on review

Design and ergonomics

The Realme 9i is all about design. Available in Prism Blue or Prism Black, the 9i features a rear panel that undergoes hours of shaping before it ends up with its light-catching effect. Dubbed an 8-layer optical coating, the rear panel goes through a 5-axis CNC precision machining process. The texture that results from the process features 3000 prism-like line combinations. The coating aims to produce a layered and transparent look.

When hit with light just right, the rear panel shows vertical lines going from the top to the bottom of the device. Our Prism Blue model is especially dazzling.

While the Realme 8i was a pretty phone, especially in the Purple colorway we tested, its glossy rear panel was less enjoyable to touch and look at. The Realme 9i, while still not immune to finger smudging, does a much better job at looking cleaner. It's also much easier to wipe clean than it would have been with a glossy finish.

The camera module is fitted under a glossy plate, which will attract oils easily, though. The island's placement also means that the Realme 9i wobbles if you use it on a flat surface (if you're one of those weirdos).

The Realme 9i is ever so slightly smaller than its predecessor, though you wouldn't notice a difference side by side - it's 4g lighter and 0.1mm thinner.

In a vacuum, the Realme 9i is a slim and light device and we found it comfortable to hold and use. The rounded edges don't dig into your palm as flat sides would.

The display is good. It gets plenty bright and remains legible even under direct sunlight. The colors are punchy and there's very good contrast. Viewing angles are excellent thanks to the IPS matrix.

A word on refresh rate handling. Realme claims the screen can dynamically refresh, depending on the scenario, between 30Hz-48Hz-50Hz-60Hz ad 90Hz. On Auto the homescreen sits at 60fps and ramps up to 90fps when you begin scrolling. When viewing a video the screen goes down to 30fps, but otherwise, the phone sits at 60fps. It's the same with refresh rate fixed at 60Hz - only video playback in YouTube drops below 60fps. We didn't find a discernable difference between Auto and 90Hz mode.

Controls on the Realme 9i are the same as on the 8i - there's a USB-C on the bottom, flanked by a 3.5mm headphone jack and, in this case, one of two speakers. There's a volume rocker on the left alongside a tray for two SIMs and a microSD card slot. There's a fingerprint scanner on the opposite side. We found it to be quite snappy and easy to work with. Unlike the 8i, the 9i has a second speaker, tucked into the earpiece.

Controls on the Realme 9i

The display has a single cutout for the selfie camera.

Hardware

The Realme 9i has a 6.6-inch 1080x2412px IPS LCD of 90Hz refresh rate and a maximum brightness of 480 nits. The display has a 20:9 aspect ratio and is covered by Dragontail Pro Glass.

Realme has kept the 5,000mAh battery of the 8i but added faster 33W charging. The maker promises 995 hours of standby, 48 hours of calling, 20 hours of WhatsApp, or up to 116 hours of music playback. Using the 36% faster 33W Dart Charge, the Realme 9i can go from 0% to 100% in 70 minutes.

The camera setup is highlighted by a 50MP f/1.8 main camera that uses a 1/2.76" sensor with 0.64µm pre-binned pixels. A 4-to-1 binning method brings the final resolution to 12.5MP. There is a pair of 2MP sensors, one for macro and another for depth. On the opposite side, there's a 16MP f/2.1 selfie with a 26mm lens.

We have a few camera samples for you on the next page.

Performance

Let's look at the performance from the 6nm Snapdragon 680 chipset. It's equipped with an octa-core processor split between four 2.4GHz Cortex-A73 and four 2.4Ghz Cortex-A53 cores. An Adreno 610 GPU takes care of graphics, while there's 4GB or 6GB of RAM, that can be expanded through Realme's virtual DRE solution by taking from the storage - either 2GB or 3GB for the 4GB model, or up to 5GB additional RAM for the 6GB model, making potential RAM as high as 11GB.

Realme claims the Snapdragon chip is up to 20% faster on CPU performance and 17% faster on GPU performance than its predecessor. Our testing didn't really back up those claims; in fact, the 8i turned in better synthetic numbers.

None of our standard set of games managed to reach 90fps.

GeekBench 4.4 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy A22 5G
  6913
• Realme 9i
  6291
• Samsung Galaxy A22
  5464

GeekBench 4.4 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy A22 5G
  2690
• Realme 9i
  1839
• Samsung Galaxy A22
  1783

GeekBench 5 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Realme 9 Pro+
  2335
• Realme 9 Pro
  2020
• Realme 8i
  1886
• Samsung Galaxy A22 5G
  1719
• Realme 9i
  1581
• Samsung Galaxy A22
  1372
• Xiaomi Redmi 10
  1294

GeekBench 5 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Realme 9 Pro+
  814
• Realme 9 Pro
  694
• Samsung Galaxy A22 5G
  560
• Realme 8i
  539
• Realme 9i
  384
• Samsung Galaxy A22
  376
• Xiaomi Redmi 10
  361

AnTuTu 8

Higher is better

• Realme 9 Pro+
  495096
• Realme 8i
  293507
• Samsung Galaxy A22 5G
  242155
• Realme 9i
  229368
• Samsung Galaxy A22
  185358

3DMark SSE Vulkan 1.0 (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• Realme 9 Pro
  2773
• Samsung Galaxy A22 5G
  2257
• Samsung Galaxy A22
  1383
• Realme 9i
  1291