Realme C55 in for review

Apple launched the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max last year with Dynamic Island, and as is the case with many other things Apple, we expected this feature to be copied by Android OEMs eventually. And that finally happened when Realme unveiled the Realme C55 about a couple of weeks ago with Mini Capsule. We received one at the office for a full review, but before we put it through our review gauntlet, let's take a quick look at what the Realme C55 offers aside from the Dynamic Island-like Mini Capsule.

The Realme C55 comes in Realme's signature yellow-colored retail box, including a protective case, a SIM ejector tool, some paperwork, a USB-C cable, and a 33W SuperVOOC power adapter (yes, Realme's back to the VOOC branding).

The C55 packs a 6.72" FullHD+ 90Hz LCD with a 90Hz screen refresh rate and a peak brightness of 680 nits. The panel has a centered punch hole for the 8MP selfie camera, and it supports the Mini Capsule feature, which can show the battery charging status, data usage, and step count.

Out of the box, the Mini Capsule only shows the battery status. Its dynamic light will turn red when the phone's battery reaches 5%, blue when it's charging, and green when it's fully charged. Support for data usage and steps count will be rolled out through OTA. Our unit already received one update weighing about 1.2GB, but it didn't bring these features. If the next update brings those, you will find them under the C55's Settings > Realme Lab > Mini Capsule menu.

Around the back, the Realme C55 sports two huge circles housing 64MP primary and 2MP depth cameras. These are placed inside a camera island that doesn't protrude (the cameras do, causing the phone to wobble on flat surfaces) as the camera islands on most other smartphones do, but it has a glossy finish and attracts fingerprint smudges, unlike the rest of the panel that has a matte finish and doesn't get smudged easily.

The Realme C55 comes in Rainy Night and Sunshower versions. The back cover of the latter, pictured throughout this article, flaunts a shower-like pattern and reflects rainbow colors at different angles, while the camera island has a design that gives the impression of sun rays emitting from the cameras. That's where the name Sunshower probably comes from.

That said, the panel doesn't have curved edges, so some users may not find it comfortable to hold.

Under the hood, the Realme C55 has the Helio G88 SoC with up to 8GB RAM and 128GB storage, which is expandable by up to 1TB since the smartphone has a dedicated slot for a microSD card.

On the software side, the Realme C55 runs Android 13-based Realme UI 4.0 out of the box with the January 2023 Android security level, but the update we mentioned bumps it up to March 2023. The smartphone also comes pre-installed with a bunch of third-party apps, but most of them can be uninstalled if you wish to.

Keeping the Realme C55 up and running is a 5,000 mAh battery with 33W SuperVOOC charging - a first for a Realme C-series smartphone.

The rest of the Realme C55's highlights include USB-C, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and Dirac's audio tuning. It also has a side-mounted fingerprint scanner, which we found to be fast and accurate in the short time we spent with the smartphone.

The Realme C55 has three memory options in India - 4GB/64GB, 6GB/64GB, and 8GB/128GB, priced at INR10,999 ($135/€125), INR11,999 ($145/€135), and INR13,999 ($170/€160), respectively.

In Indonesia, the C55 comes in 6GB/128GB and 8GB/256GB configurations. The smartphone also just launched in Europe in a single 6/128GB configurarion for €199.

We are now about to start testing the Realme C55, so stick around to find out if it's worth buying.