realme started off life as a sub-brand of phones from OPPO and after their success were spun off into their own brand but still under the BBK Electronics umbrella. Late last year realme (yes, officially all in lower case) launched into Australia with four new affordable smartphones.
The operating system realme have used in the past has always been OPPO’s ColorOS but this was only while they developed their own identity. When ColorOS 7 was released last year realme mentioned that their new UI would be closer to stock Android and would be arriving soon. Yesterday it arrived and it does indeed look a lot closer to stock Android.
Apparently realme have still based their new UI on ColorOS 7 and Android 10 but have a much more simplified design with many new features. realme have included a lot of theming features such as the ability to change system colours, icons and animations. realme state that the interface has “an authentic colour scheme, that delivers a sense of vitality” which can then make the “user feel younger” — not so sure about that but it sounds good and I am willing to give anything a try at my age.
The launcher will no longer be OPPO’s launcher with the new realme launcher providing a lot more options including the ability to change an icon’s transparency, size and shape.
With the cleaner design comes an improved performance as you would expect and hope. There are a few new features but at this stage the details are a bit scarce but one feature that looks promising is the “Personal Information Protection” feature where the system provides empty information pages to apps requesting access to your information. This can include call history, contacts, messages and calendar information.
The rollout of realme UI begins this month with the realme 3 Pro and the realme XT (available here in Australia) and will continue with the realme X and 5 Pro in February and the X2 Pro in March. We expect all realme phones launched this year to arrive with Android 10 and realme UI out of the box.
