Realme C1 review: A budget phone for the youth?

It seems that more and more companies are entering the smartphone market with youth facing agenda these days. Realme, although it isn’t technically a new brand (it is more of a sub-brand of Oppo that now operates independently), is a new brand with new ideas about what’s important in a phone and how to attract customers to its platform.

Realme is also positioning itself as a brand for the youth. We are seeing an abundance of phones these days which are catering to the demands of superior performance and improved design language at much lower price points for the youth of today. Realme follows the same trend and, with its tagline “Proud to be Young”, it is positing itself to be the leading brand for the younger generation.

Today, we are looking at one of the first phones to be officially launched in Pakistan under the Realme brand. Realme C1 is a budget smartphone which prides itself over stunning looks and stellar performance in an under 20,000 PKR price tag. Let’s take a look at whether this device can provide the performance and experience that Realme is promising.

Pros and Cons

For those who prefer to get their information in a more condensed form, here are some pros and cons that we have established after our two-week-long review period. Let’s first take a look at some of the positive aspects of this phone:

• Stunning design
• Decent camera for price
• Amazing battery life
• Good enough display for day to day operations
• Great unboxing experience

The pro list is decently sized, but it doesn’t mean that there aren’t any downsides when it comes to buying a Realme C1. Here are some of the cons that we noticed:

• No fingerprint sensor
• Face unlock is finicky, leaving no proper way to unlock except PIN
• Performance and RAM management leaves a lot to be desired
• Micro-USB is really not meant for 2019
• Charging takes a really long time

Specifications

Before digging in the review, let’s first take a look at what the phone has to offer, both in the box and the phone chassis:

• 6.2 inches IPS LCD with HD+ resolution (720 x 1520 pixels)
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 processor with Adreno 506 GPU
• 2 GB RAM with 16 GB internal storage, can be expanded with a microSD card of up to 256 GB
• 13 MP back camera with f/2.2 aperture and 2 MP secondary sensor for depth perception
• 5 MP selfie camera with f/2.2 aperture
• Non-removable 4230 mAh battery

After you are done admiring the strikingly simple and modern packaging, here’s what you can expect to find inside the box:

• The phone
• Warranty information and user manual
• Silicone back cover
• Wall charger and USB A to Micro-USB cable (Oppo branded, for anyone still confused about the origins of the Realme brand)

Design and build quality

Before moving on to the review of some inner components and how they perform in this phone, let’s first talk about the exterior of the phone. The design and build quality are the most striking features of this phone, and the clearly show the effort spent by Realme in making this budget phone seem pricier than it actually is. Considering that this device is made for the younger generation, who highly value the aesthetics and looks of their devices, Realme seems to have made all the right choices when it comes to designing this phone. The reflective coating on the back panel, which gives the plastic back a more premium look, makes it look like it has a glass back panel similar to devices coming at much higher price points than Realme C1.

Being made out of plastic, the device feels quite sturdy in the hand. There are no weird flexes and creaks when force is applied across the horizontal or vertical side. It has a very solid construction and it seems like it can handle a lot of abuse without showing any major signs of damage, another quality which the younger generation would value very highly. The back panel does seem prone to fingerprints and micro-scratches, so it’s better to make use of the free back cover that Realme provides in the back.

Display

Realme C1 is not meant to be amazing at this price range. It needs to be good enough for the price that Realme is demanding for this phone, and that’s exactly what the display on Realme C1 accomplishes. It’s not amazing and won’t be winning any prizes for sharpness and color accuracy, but it works perfectly for what it is meant for. It’s plenty bright to be used in all conditions (except peak level direct sunlight, it becomes a little illegible in that scenario). It is perfectly fine for browsing, texting and any other activity that you expect a sub 20,000 Rupees phone to be able to perform.

Coming towards an inevitable evil that is present these days in most phones — the notch. While it’s not as small as the teardrop notch on Realme 2 Pro, the notch on Realme C1 is better than most. It only extends about halfway in either direction and does not hide a lot of the notification bar, allowing some notifications to display their icons to alert you about their presence. Most people will soon get used to seeing that notch atop their display unless they are struck by some severe OCD regarding their hate for notches.

Performance and battery life

Now we come towards two of the most polarizing features of this phone. On one hand, we have the amazing battery life, courtesy of the humongous 4,230 mAh battery, coupled with a power efficient chipset and less demanding HD+. It is easily a two-day phone, three if you are miserly in your use of the phone and are not pushing it beyond what this phone is meant for. It gets the highest grade that any phone currently has for battery life that I have tested in the past few years (until Samsung releases its rumored 5,000 mAh budget phone). However, I do wish that Realme had opted for a bit faster-charging technology for Realme C1. The 4,230 mAh battery takes a long time to recharge, making topping it up while sleeping the only manageable solution to its desire to remain plugged in for a long period of time.

On the other hand, the exceptional battery life, design and feature set means that Realme had to cut corners somewhere. It did so with performance. With a Snapdragon 450 chipset and merely 2 GB of RAM, it’s not a snappy phone by any measure of the word. I am not going to dabble into technicalities too much which might confuse the normal users, but it’s sometimes painfully slow to use. But how much does it matter for the normal user? To answer that question, instead of running some benchmarks and posting those scores here to confuse readers, I measured how much time do some popular apps take to launch from a cold boot (completely cleared from memory).

• Careem: 20 seconds
• Uber: 18 seconds
• Facebook: 6 seconds
• Messenger: 8 seconds
• YouTube: 8 seconds
• Twitter: 9 seconds
• Netflix: 9 seconds

Considering that the phone comes with only 2 GB of RAM and the memory management is quite stringent in the included version of ColorOS, you will spend a lot of time opening apps from cold boots. The time taken by some of these apps is quite high for modern phones, and considering how impatient the youth of today is, this does seem like a negative point in Realme C1’s favor.

Other than app launch delays and sluggish performance in resource-heavy apps like Maps, the phone does seem to be optimized well for lighter tasks. There are no considerable delays while switching apps and navigating the UI, however, there do seem to be a few corners that Realme had to cut to make the phone smooth during these tasks (more on that later in the review).

User experience

Realme C1 ships with ColorOS 5.2.1 atop Android 8.1, a tried and tested combination on a number of other Oppo phones (Realme started out as a subsidiary of Oppo, which explains the use of both their Android skin and accessories). I quite like the ColorOS. It comes with a lot of different features and apps to make the life of a user easy. It provides enough customization to keep the user happy and runs fairly well on the humble hardware being used in Realme C1. It does seem to cut corners to keep the phone running smoothly during these simple day to day tasks.

One of the biggest examples is simplifying the recent tasks’ view to a horizontally scrolling list of icons instead of live previews that Android usually provides. It’s definitely weird at first if you are coming from another device and I couldn’t get used to this during my two weeks review period.

One big complaint that I have with user experience on Realme C1 is the absence of a fingerprint sensor. Realme decided to only use the face unlock feature on Realme C1 and, supposedly, cut down the cost of including a fingerprint sensor. The face unlock works okay-ish; not great or even well, just okay. In my experience, even after adding and removing facial data many times in different lighting conditions, the face unlock didn’t work well enough to make me forget the absence of a fingerprint sensor. I wish Realme had opted for a fingerprint sensor instead of going this all-face route.

Camera performance

The camera is another aspect which is highly valued by Millenials and Generation Z. You cannot expect to call yourself a phone for the youth without putting in some decent camera module in your device, and, thankfully, Realme did just that. Now before I say anything else, it must be reminded again that this is a sub 20,000 PKR phone, so Pixel level camera performance is downright crazy. The 13 MP back camera, assisted by the 2 MP secondary sensor for depth or “bokeh” effect is perfectly adequate for what is meant to do; click an odd picture here and there for social media sharing purposes. It does its job well enough considering that use case.

While you cannot expect some record-breaking dynamic range or sharpness in the images taken by Realme C1, they do come looking pleasant at the first glance. There is a lot of noise and softness introduced by post-processing when you look closely, but most people buying this phone would not care for such minor details.

Same goes for the 5 MP front camera. It is not going to revolutionize the front camera or increase your Instagram profile’s appeal with scenic selfies, but it will work okay to capture the moment when you meet up with your old friends.

Final thoughts

Realme C1 is a budget phone and a proper one at that. What do I mean by a proper budget phone? Well, it’s a phone that costs less than 20,000 PKR in Pakistan (between 17,000 and 18,000). So it’s not like a OnePlus or Pocophone which is technically for people who are looking to buy a flagship-specced phone at a lower budget. It’s a phone for people who wanna spend as little as possible to get the best entry-level smartphone experience that they can find.

I think Realme is targeting the wrong demographic here. Although I can totally see a school/college going student buying Realme C1 as their first phone, I think people who don’t really care about app loading times would be more happy to purchase this device, and, according to my own experience, those people usually do not belong to Generation Z. Maybe Realme should start targeting this phone at people who are just looking for a long lasting and reliable phone to use for making phone calls, doing a light WhatsApp chatting and browsing Facebook. You know, stuff that older people tend to do these days.

Realme C1 is a solid phone, with a good camera, passable display, and amazing battery life. You do compromise a bit on performance when you opt for this phone, but most core functions of the phone are optimized so well that if you are just looking for a reliable budget phone, you will have no complaints in getting this beautiful looking device for your daily use. On the other hand, if you are irritated by slow opening apps and jagged performance in some more demanding apps, you should probably look elsewhere, preferably in a higher price segment, for your next smartphone.