Realme XT review - Xiaomi needs to be worried - Android
The mid-range segment is where the action lies in India’s smartphone market. Xiaomi has had a near monopoly here by leading sales for a solid eight quarters. However, it is Realme that is the one to watch out for. Through a consistent release schedule of well-performing, great-looking products, the company has managed to carve out a niche for itself and amassed 9% market share. A remarkable feat in a place where new smartphones are launched nearly every other day and every player wants a slice of the pie. The Realme XT is yet another smartphone from the brand, and it comes a with a whole new shtick. A whopping 64MP camera makes for great marketing, but the bigger question is, does it make a positive improvement to the user experience?
Will the Realme XT bring enough to the table to fend off the competition and bolster Realme’s market share? We find out in the Android Authority review of the Realme XT.
The Realme XT is a bold move for the company. When Xiaomi announced its intent to launch a 64MP smartphone, Realme countered by showing off a fully realized product and launching the 64MP-camera-toting Realme XT in India — well ahead of the Redmi Note 8 series. It also helps that the Realme XT is priced competitively.
If you thought that the battle for the mid-range was over, you’re in for a surprise. Between Realme and the surprisingly competent Vivo Z series, it looks like the smartphone wars are just getting warmed up.
The box contents of the Realme XT covers essentials like a TPU case and a SIM ejector tool. A 20W charger is also included along with the requisite USB-C cable. The phone ships with a pre-applied screen protector, which ensures that you are ready to go as soon as you open up the box.
The Realme XT is a step up in design for the company. Realme has always had visually appealing designs with a focus on gradients, but the use of polycarbonate made the phones feel just a bit pedestrian when placed against recent Xiaomi hardware. Not so with the Realme XT.
This time around, the phone is wrapped in Gorilla Glass 5, both on the front and back. This alone has punched up the hand feel of the phone, as well as general build quality. The phone feels luxurious and the gradients absolutely shine. In our earlier Realme XT hands-on, we brought you images of the Pearl Blue variant of the phone. We’ve since gotten our hands on the Pearl White colorway, and the variant channels the look of the gorgeous Huawei P30 Pro.
The milky-white shade switches between a pale blue and an almost-pink pallet. Suffice it to say that it is a unique looking color for its category, and it’s particularly fetching thanks to the glass back.
The rest of the design is fairly run-of-the-mill, with a split volume rocker on the left and a power button on the right. Placed within a metal mid-frame, the buttons have great tactile feedback and there’s no hint of wobble.
Meanwhile, the bottom edge of the phone has a single speaker, a USB-C port, as well as a headphone jack. The phone makes use of an optical in-display fingerprint scanner, likely the same found on the Realme X. It is one of the fastest in the mid-range segment.
There’s a similar design around front too. The phone doesn’t stray too far from existing trends. Between the slim bezels, you will find an AMOLED display with a water drop notch that is just a bit smaller than the one on the Realme 5 Pro. It is functional, but doesn’t really buck the trend.
The display on the Realme XT is plenty good, and that’s not just for the price. Its AMOLED panel is bright and looks fantastic. The default color temperature is nearly perfect, striking a great balance between cool and warm tones.
There is a slight boost in saturation, and this is particularly noticeable in blues and greens. I can’t really complain, though, since it makes viewing media enjoyable. On that note, the phone does support Widevine L1, so you will be able to enjoy high-resolution content with ease.
I observed peak brightness levels around 430 nits, which is plenty bright for outdoor use. A bit more would’ve been nice, but this is par for the course for mid-range smartphones. I think the display on the Realme XT compares favorably against existing competitors, such as the Redmi Note 7 Pro. The use of an AMOLED panel means that you can get inky dark blacks on the phone, something that LCD-based phones can’t boast of.
The Realme XT runs a middle-of-the-road Snapdragon 712 chipset. Commonly found amongst mid-range smartphones, you can find it in competing hardware like the recently launched Vivo Z1x. This chipset is a mild upgrade over the Snapdragon 710 and focuses on slightly faster CPU performance. The GPU remains the same on both chipsets.
The Realme XT performs well and is a great example of a phone where the software is matched well to the hardware. Performance across day-to-day use is excellent and gives you no reason to complain. I found the animations to be a bit heavy handed, but that tends to be a point of concern with most, if not all, manufacturer skins.
The Realme XT heats up significantly around the camera when playing graphically intense games.
Gaming performance is in line with other mid-range phones. The Snapdragon 712’s Adreno 616 GPU is good enough to run the latest games with relative ease. With PUBG pushed up to the highest graphics setting, the game looked plenty good. I did, however, notice the occasional frame drop. The phone warmed up significantly around the camera over the course of an intense gaming session. It was never uncomfortable, but I would think twice before buying the Realme XT if gaming was my primary use case.
In terms of benchmarks, the phone comes very close to similar hardware by Vivo. The Realme XT managed 181,841 points in the CPU-focussed AnTuTu benchmark. This was about 3,000 points short of the 185,123 score of the Vivo Z1x. The 3DMark scores were closer at 2,095 points on the Realme XT vs the 2,100 of the Vivo Z1x. Similarly, the Basemark scores showed a noticeable difference.
The Realme XT’s battery is pretty much the standard for this segment. A 20W VOOC 3.0 charger comes bundled in the box and I observed speedy charging times. A 30-minute charge brought the phone up to 51%. Full top-offs took just under 90 minutes.
Battery life was pretty good, though not the best. In both our video playback tests and browsing tests, the phone fell a bit short of the Realme 5 Pro and similarly-specced Xiaomi competition. Regardless, you won’t find it hard to get through a full day of use with ease. Additionally, stand-by times are fantastic and
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