Realme 7 is a new mid-range smartphone, announced alongside the Realme 7 Pro on September 10. It comes as a successor to the Realme 7, which was launched nearly six months ago. It is set to compete against the likes of Redmi Note 9 Pro, Galaxy A41, among others. 

The Realme 7 price in India is Rs. 14,999, which is Rs. 1,000 higher than its Xiaomi rival, the Redmi Note 9 Pro. Let's see if the phone is worth paying for.

Realme 7: Design

Still using the plastic chassis and back, but Realme goes for a little change in the way of handling the surface coating. That is why the Realme 7 has brought a completely different experience in both appearance and grip feeling.

With a matte finish on the Mist White version with a slight pearl sheen and concentric circle effect, it makes the product quite attractive. Not so prominent as the gradient or lightning pattern on Realme 6 | 6 Pro, but Realme 7 in my opinion is more luxurious and trendy.

Thanks to this smooth coating, the Realme 7 becomes more user-friendly. No more annoying sweat stains or worrying about scratches anymore. There is only one minus point is that this coating is also applied to the frame, so in some cases, you might find the phone to be a bit slippery when holding it on your hand.

Realme 7: Display

Not much change or it can be said that Realme 7 still uses the same screen panel with Realme 6 with completely similar specs: 6.4 inches in size, Full-HD+ resolution, IPS LCD panel, 480 nit brightness, and a 90Hz refresh rate.

But is it really similar or not, or if there are any improvements to the software or hardware of the display, only Realme knows. As a user, in the price segment of Rs. 15,000, Realme 7 owns a good display for gamers.

Thanks to the high refresh rate, gaming visuals are smoother and faster than traditional 60Hz displays. This screen also has good brightness and bright colors suitable for entertainment content. However, the contrast and sharpness of the Realme 7 screen are not good, slightly worse than the AMOLED screens.

The device owns a 16MP front camera located inside a punch-hole in the upper left corner of the screen. The size of this punch-hole is quite small and does not affect the experience. If compared to embedding the camera under the screen to reduce image quality, putting it behind a hole like this is still a better choice. In addition, because of the LCD panel, Realme 7's fingerprint reader is placed on the side like Realme 6. The position of this scanner is still very good for both left or right-hand usage.

Realme 7: Performance

Realme talked a lot about the Helio G95 - the chipset that was announced not long ago. But overall the core or clock speed, G95 or G90T are nearly the same. The G95 even has the G90T's temperature issue, just a bit less serious.

With PUBG Mobile, the device delivers a good performance at medium-graphics setting throughout the game and very stable with an average fps of around 58. The fps drops a lot after a long gaming session and heavy combat. Playing at 40 will be more stable, but I deliberately unlock to 60 fps to try out.

With Team Fight Tactics Mobile, the device can reach over 60fps, but it cannot get all the way to 90 fps but only stops at about 70 fps. It is also not stable when running the game for a long time. The device heats up to about 45 degrees with an average FPS of 60.4.

Realme 7: Camera

Realme equipped a very quality camera hardware for Realme 7 with a 64MP sensor from Sony with large size and 3 other cameras to help with other shooting modes. However, that is for the Realme 7 Asian version. If you get the global version, the 64MP primary camera is downgraded to a 48MP one. Hence, the camera quality is also lower. Therefore, I would say you should either get the Realme 7 (Asia) or the Realme 6.

If you are in Asia, however, where there is no camera downgrade, the Realme 7 would actually make an excellent replacement to the Realme 6.

The main camera takes photos at 12MP resolution by default and the results are quite inconsistant. We took four shots of each scene, two of which were over-sharpned and the other two were soft. The first shot always has limited dynamic range and is oversharpened.

Realme 7: Battery life

Realme 7 owns a 500 mAh larger battery than Realme 6, which is 5,000 mAh. Combined with the efficient software and the four energy-saving cores of the Helio G95, the battery life of Realme 7 is very good. The device usually lasts around 9 to 9.5 hours on-screen.

Combined with 30W Dartcharge fast charging (VOOC 4.0), that allows the phone to charge 50% in just 26 minutes and 100% in 65 minutes.

Therefore, users don’t have to worry much about the battery life, as the phone not only lasts long but it also takes over an hour to get a full charge.

Realme 7: Verdict

As mentioned, I would say if you can get the Asian version of the Realme 7 with the 64MP primary camera, go for it. Otherwise, it is better to grab the Realme 6 instead. If you are in India, the handset is currently available for sales for Rs. 14,999 for the 6GB + 64GB option and  Rs. 16,999 for the 8GB + 128GB option.