The recently announced Realme X50 5G will in all likelihood be the cheapest 5G smartphone anywhere, as it is slated to come in at under £300. At that price it sounds like a real bargain for a 5G handset with all the others currently coming in at two or three times that price. So, what is the device like?
Available in 2 colours, Glacier and Polar (no, me neither, but they both sound whitish!) it is an all-aluminium and glass construction (Gorilla Glass 5). The front has a 6.57” LCD screen – yes, it is LCD not LED like all the flagships. This is one of the reasons why it is so much cheaper.
Despite this, the screen has a 20:9 ratio and a respectable 401 ppi density. It offers a 83.9% screen to body ratio as the dual selfie camera (of which more later) is in a pill-shaped cutout (like the S10+) on the top left. Finally, the screen has an amazing 120Hz refresh rate, meaning it offers super-smooth scrolling.
Bang up-to-date internals and camera
Let’s take a look at the internals. It is powered by the latest Snapdragon 765G processor, with either 128GB or 256GB of storage (non-expandable) and 6, 8 or 12GB of RAM. So, plenty of oomph there, for even the most ardent power user.
The battery is a big 4200 mAH with VOOC Flash Charge 4.0. This should give you 70% in 30 mins.
Now onto the camera. This is an impressive quad array on the rear with a 64MP f/1.8 main wide lens, 12MP f/3.0 telephoto, 8MP f/2.3 ultrawide and 2MP f/2.4 dedicated macro. On the front is a dual selfie setup with a 16MP f/2.0 wide and 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide lens.
Access is protected by by a side mounted fingerprint sensor as opposed to an in-screen or rear-mounted one.
Finally, the X50 5G comes with loudspeaker, 3.5mm headphone jack, 24 bit audio and Dolby Atmos. Oh, and one other thing it will ship with Android 10, with Realme’s own ColorOS 7 on top.
All-in-all it looks a pretty good deal for a phone that also packs 5G and will be ideal for any early adopters looking to get faster download speeds.
