If you are not a brand junky wedded to just the well-known brands like Samsung and Apple, you can get a lot of smartphone for not much money. We are not talking about cheaply built phones with poor specs either, but premium build and specs high enough to meet the needs of most people and challenge the much-costlier flagships.
Samsung themselves have identified this area as a key one and their A range of phones is designed to fill the gap. Indeed, the Samsung Galaxy A40 was recently announced as their best selling phone in the UK for 2019. But outside of Samsung most of these phones are coming from the Chinese challengers Xiaomi, Oppo and Realme and it is the Realme X2 that we are going to look at now.
Super AMOLED screen and Gorilla Glass back
Let me start by saying that this phone represents incredible value for money at just over £200. For this you get a 6.4” Super AMOLED screen and Gorilla glass 5 back with a plastic frame, giving the whole thing a premium feel. It is driven by the high-end mid-range Snapdragon 730G processor with 6 or 8GB of memory and 64, 128 or 256GB of storage that is expandable via a MicroSD card.
The Realme X2 is powered by a 4000 mAh battery, with 30W fast charging giving you 67% charge in just 30 minutes. Access is protected by a fast under-screen optical fingerprint scanner, making it quick and easy to unlock the phone.
Quad array camera
The impressive specifications continue with the camera, with a quad array on the back. This has a main 64MP f/1.8 wide lens, an 8MP f/2.3 ultrawide, 2MP f/2.4 macro and a 2MP f/2.4 depth sensor. The combination produces great shots in most conditions and is complimented on the front by a 32MP f/2.0 wide selfie camera that is in a central teardrop notch.
Available in Pearl White, Pearl Blue and Pearl Green, the Gorilla glass back has a metal-like finish with a subtle gradient pattern on it that moves dependent on how the light strikes it. Such a shiny back is of course, a fingerprint magnet, but the Realme X2 ships with a free clear plastic case that will not only prevent this but counter the fact that the rear camera array sits proud on a flat surface.
As I said at the start, amazing value for around £200 and it is certainly on my list of potential replacements for my current Samsung Galaxy S9+.
