Realme 9i review: Decent budget phone

Emerging smartphone-maker Realme in a short span of time has made tremendous progress in making an impact in the budget and upper mid-range segment with feature-rich 5G phones in India.

. Now, the company has introduced the Realme 9i with a reliable Qualcomm chipset. Does it deliver the goods? Let's check it out.

. Design, build quality and display Realme 9i flaunts a glossy shell on the back. It is made of sturdy polycarbonate material, but very smooth. To an extent, the Prism Blue model manages to repel the fingerprint smudges, but after prolonged usage, it will begin to show.

. Thankfully, the company has offered a transparent silicone case with a retail box and it manages to keep the phone clean and also safe from cracking when dropped accidentally on the hard surface. Realme has also pre-fixed a layer of the screen-guard on the display and it manages to protect it from scratches when kept along with keys in the pocket.

. On the front, Realme 9i features a 6.6-inch full HD+ (2412 x 1080p) LCD screen and can offer peak brightness of up to 480 nits. The display quality is decent and bright enough to read contents outdoors but not suited to view videos for long hours.

. However, when indoors, I had no issues as such while binge streaming videos on YouTube. I believe, it is a good affordable phone option for online studies.

. As far as the side-mounted fingerprint sensor is concerned, it works great. I did not face any issue unlocking the device. It responds instantly to the finger impression and opens the lock screen on the device.

. Also, the stereo loudspeakers of the Realme 9i works wonderfully good. It is loud and also even the volume is put on high, the audio delivery in terms of acoustics and voices of the singer come out good with less distortion.

. Performance Realme 9i features a 6nm class Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 paired with Adreno 610 GPU. It is backed by 4GB/6GB LPPDDR4x RAM with 64GB/128GB storage (UFS 2.1) storage. It also supports expandable memory up to 1TB.

. The budget phone also features Dynamic RAM Expansion (DRE) technology, wherein users can extend 4GB/6GBRAM by another 5GB to 9GB/11GB, provided there is enough space in the storage. With this, the device will deliver a smoother user experience and faster response to the inputs.

. As advertised, the device works fines without any issues while performing day-to-day activities such as opening apps, switching between multiple apps, and loading the camera app.

. Even while playing games such as Angry Birds, it fared well in terms of responses to the touch inputs.

. Also, while playing videos, operating the camera, and recording videos too, the phone showed no issues of lag-ness.

. As far as the battery life is concerned, it was able to deliver more than a day under normal usage. With extreme usage such as binge-watching on YouTube videos for long hours (on Wi-Fi), the device was able to still last a full day.

. Also, with the 33W charger, the device is capable of going from zero to 100 per cent battery capacity in a little over an hour.

. However, I am pretty disappointed that the device still runs Android 11-based Reale UI. It's been more than six months since Google rolled out Android 12, but Realme has made efforts to bring the latter to top-end models. I Hope, it rolls out the latest update to the Realme 9i at the earliest. It will definitely improve the user privacy security on the device and also with the material you interface, people will be able to match the colourful wallpaper with supported apps on the home screen and enhance the style quotient.

. Photography On the back, it houses a triple-camera module— main 50MP (with Samsung JN1 sensor, f/1.8) backed by 2MP(f/2.4) B&W portrait camera and 2MP (f/2.4) 4cm macro with LED flash.

. Realme 9i takes brilliant pictures in the natural sunlight. And, the most interesting thing is the photos have near-accurate colours. See the dual pink-white petal of the hibiscus flower and orange-yellow rose, they are near-natural as we see through our eyes. I am mighty impressed with this aspect.

. However, the autofocus seems to lose steam as the light dwindles in the evening and in the night, it becomes the worse. However, if you are patient enough and have a steady hand, after a lot of attempts, you will be able to get a good snap.

. I'd like to add that the picture taken with night mode has a lot of noise and it becomes more pronounced when viewed on the large screen of the PC monitor. On the bright side, the photos, which I took with normal photo mode and LED flash on, the details of the subjects in the pictures were sharp and good enough to be shared on the social media platforms.

. On the front, it houses a 16MP (f/2.1) snapper. It takes really fine selfies and the video quality is also good for a budget phone. However, as you use more, it gets very apparent, that phone's camera superficially brightens the facial colour tone. I can't complain as it made me look better with no acne scars, much fairer than I originally am. It even goes a step further by offering options to adjust facial jaw bone, cheeks, nose, eyes' size and more.

. Final thoughts Realme 9i is a decent value-for-money budget phone. It is a good option for people to gift children for online studies, as it can easily last long the entire session with a full charge. Also, the display is good for its asking price.

. But, the photography, particularly at night, kinda takes the shine off the phone. On the bright side, the phone takes good pictures in the daylight with near-accurate colours.

. Realme 9i comes in two configurations-- 4GB RAM + 64GB storage and 6GB RAM + 128GB storage— for Rs 13,999, and Rs 15,999, respetively.

. Get the latest news on new launches, gadget reviews, apps, cybersecurity, and more on personal technology only on DH Tech.

Realme 9i review: Decent budget phone

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