Realme Officially Launched in Europe – Meet the 5 Pro, X2 & X2 Pro

Whilst in Madrid on Tuesday, Realme, a sub-brand of Oppo, invited us to their European Launch (not to be confused with their global launch last year) and to see the three devices they’re starting with, and boy are they starting strong.

Realme showed off three devices at the Event, the Realme 5 Pro, the Realme X2 and the Realme X2 Pro, and all are interesting for different reasons, and none of them are bad!.

Starting off with the least expensive device on offer, the Realme 5 Pro, If I told you that this device offered a 10nm SoC from Qualcomm (the 712), starts with 4GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 128GB storage, has a 4035mAh Battery, 20W USB-C fast charging a quad camera on the back headed up by a 48MP sensor from Sony, how much would you guess it cost? Well, if you said anything over €199, you’d be wrong! And for only €50 more you can double that RAM to 8GB. 

The Realme 5 Pro packs one hell of punch, the Snapdragon 712 is using semi-custom Cortex A75 and Cortex A55 cores in a 2+6 configuration, this is made on Samsungs 10nm Process, meaning fewer high-performance cores and a power-efficient node, the battery on this should last a long time, pair it with the 1080p screen, the 4035mAh battery you don’t have to worry about the battery lasting anyway, and then if somehow it is running low, just plug it in, and the VOOC Flash charge juices you back up in no time!

Realme is also talking about the Cameras, they call the 5 Pro the Quad-Camera speed master, it has a main 48mp camera, the IMX586, a decently sized sensor with an f1.8 aperture and hardware-level pixel binning to make intensely detailed 12mp shots. Next is the 8MP Ultrawide angle camera with a 119 degree FoV with a slightly slower f2.25 aperture, next is the 2MP Macro camera and the 2MP Portrait camera both with an F2.4 Aperture, and the Macro lens can focus from just 4cm away, though I wonder how much of that is ruined by the only 2mp resolution. Lastly, there is a 16MP front camera that Realme can also do pixel binning, but that would take the shots down to 4mp and… I’d have to check it out for myself.

Next up is the “mid-range” I guess, being the Realme X2. For a mere €100 more in price you trade the LCD screen for an OLED (that is also 6.4” over 6.3”), you trade the capacitive scanner for an under display one from the new 3rd gen lineup from Goodix, the Snapdragon 712 goes away in favour of the newer 730G, which replaces the 23 Cortex A75 CPUs for 2 Cortex A76s instead and a much more powerful GPU in the Adreno 618, all made on Samsungs 8nm Process.

The other major upgrade is in the camera, whilst the IMX586 48MP is fine for the 5 Pro, Relame wanted to outdo themselves, so they went to Samsung’s Camera division and walked away with the brand new 64MP ISOCELL Bright GW1, yes 64MP!, the rest of the Camera setup remains the same, an 8MP Ultrawide, a 2MP Macro camera and a 2MP Portrait Camera, but the selfie camera gets a massive upgrade to a 32MP unit at f2.0

The 4000mAh Battery that Realme shoved in there again will not be a  problem, it’s rather large, it’s got a 1080p screen, it’s got an efficient 8nm chip and if you do somehow get to kill it in a day (well done) the 30w VOOC Flash Charge is here to save your butt, with just 19 minutes needed to get you from 0% to 50%, and 90 minutes for a 0-100%.

Lastly we have the big kahuna, the flagship, the Realme X2 Pro, and for stepping up just €100 again, you get an even more impressive spec sheet. Realme goes all out for the X2 Pro and swaps out the Snapdragon 730G, an already impressive hcip for Qualcomm’s top of the line mobile chip the 855+, a chip that can hit peak clocks near 3Ghz! (2.96Ghz), you get a 6.5” OLED screen at 2400×1080, but the cool thing here? It’s 90Hz! Realme has put a high refresh rate OLED screen in this beast, and it truly is noticeable. Not only is the screen 90Hz but also has a Peak brightness for short terms of 1000nits, meaning that the optical fingerprint scanner on the X2 Pro is even faster than the 0.36s for the X2, it goes down to 0.23s, which makes sense, optical fingerprint scanners work by light, if you give them more light, such as with a brighter display, they can be faster. This is als a Samsung made OLED display and has hardware-level DC dimming, so if you are a person who is able to perceive the issues of PWM screen dimming, this is a more effective way of using voltage dimming to dim the screen.

Next is the camera system which does take a bit of a turn. First you have the awesome 64MP Samsung GW1 main camera, with it’s huge 1/1.72” sensor size and f1.8 aperture, and you have an Ultrawide camera, but this time there has been a hardware switch which also allows the ultrawide lens to be the macro lens (similar to that of the Huawei P30 Pro) this is an 8mp sensor with a 115 degree field of view with an f2.2 aperture. Next is the Telephoto lens, yup Telephoto, a 13MP 2x telephoto lens at f2.5 aperture. Lastly is the 2MP Portrait lens. On the front, the camera seems to be a bit of a downgrade from the X2, going back down to 16mp at F2.0, but it does have the more sophisticated ISP from the Snapdragon 855+ so we shall see the difference.

But wait, there is more! What about Battery? 4000mAh, what about charging? Are you ready for this? 50w! Yes 50w! This is done by actually having two batteries inside the phone and it charges each of them at the same time at 22.5W so the phone sees a single battery charging at 50w this is a smart move as it means it can regulate temperature and degradation better. What else? That 50w charger is special and made by Oppo, it’s Super VOOC, but the X2 Pro does support USB-PD (Power Delivery) at 18w, whilst I wish this was higher, it is better than nothing. Lastly I want to talk about something that Relame made a big deal about, and I’m glad they did, the haptic motor in the X2 Pro, they’re using a linear actuator, much like Apple and Google, but they also showed the vibration curve of their older and what is common for most devices and the ones they’ve custom tuned for the X2 Pro, and let me tell you, it makes a noticeable difference.

So about Price? The 6GB/64GB X2 Pro will set you back €399, the 8GB/128GB X2 Pro is just €50 more at €449 and the top dog is the 12GB/256GB version costs just €499, an absolute steal