realme ventured onto our shores officially last year and have offered up some great value for money for Aussies. They are set to continue this in 2020 with the launch of the realme C3 at an extremely aggressive price.
The realme C3 is an entry level price for a phone so you should not expect any high end specs here but what it does have is value for money specs. Powered by an octacore Mediatek MT6769 processor accompanied by 3GB of RAM and 64GB of storage it is a phone that will turn many heads.
The design is striking in both Blazing red and Frozen blue with the patterned polycarbonate rear offering a different look to the fingerprint magnets many phones are these days. The display is a tear drop 6.52-inch LCD display with a 720p HD+ resolution.
Imaging-wise the phone packs a triple rear camera with a 12MP main camera a 2MP portrait lens and a 2MP macro lens, something you don’t often see in en entry level phone. The camera includes PDAF, HDR and Chroma Boost to provide better dynamic range, screen contrast and vivid colours. The front-facing selfie camera is a 5MP lens good enough to take decent selfies in decent light.
The battery is a whopping 5,000mAh which realme say can last for 20.8 hours of streaming online movies — seems a stretch but that is realme’s claim, and it is a rather large battery.
A big addition which they missed in their previous phones is NFC and with the rear mounted fingerprint sensor as gatekeeper Google Pay is supported. The super fast facial recognition can be used to unlock the phone quickly but not securely for Google Pay. Bluetooth 5 and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n are included. For those clinging onto the past there is a headphone jack.
This phone represents the first time we have seen the Android 10-based realme UI in Australia — before now they have used OPPO’s ColorOS. The new operating system from realme is designed to be closer to stock Android and after having used it for a week or so I can say that it certainly is. It looks and behaves a lot closer to stock than ColorOS ever has.
The realme C3 will retail for just $269, yes, a paltry $269 from today at the realme online store, JB Hi-Fi, Bing Lee, Make it Mine, mobileciti, 5GWORLD, Essential Appliance Rentals, Amazon, Kogan, eBay and Catch.com
This phone is a great phone for those looking for a phone for someone who does not need all the grunt of a premium phone and just needs a phone that does the basics — this does that and does it well.
Great device overall and Realme’s first device in Australia with NFC, but with a few negatives…
3GB of RAM is a little low for the asking price in 2020 considering Realme wants to make a dent in our flooded phone market.
Micro-USB is 2020 is a sin.
The lack of 5Ghz WiFi is also annoying for those on a 50-100 Mbps home internet connections meaning your phone will top out at around 45Mbps on 2.4Ghz WiFi.
Bring on the 6 series phones Realme 😉
Cheers