Indian state employee: Realme U1 smartphone - advantages and disadvantages

The Chinese company OPPO has long enjoyed well-deserved popularity in the global market. At the same time, it continues to develop more and more new regions. On November 28, 2018 in India, the company presented its new smartphone under the Realme brand. It is called Realme U1. The technical parameters of the device became known and the first reviews began to appear. According to them, you can already understand that it will be a kind of budget flagship with a very cool selfie camera.

The system will work on a new chip from MediaTek. This manufacturer of single-chip systems did not have the best year. Chip sales fell 3 times compared to the previous one. And the new Helio P70 processor is designed to help developers redeem themselves. It is aimed at the mid-price segment and the smartphone from OPPO should be the first phone on this chip. OPPO has been working successfully with MediaTek for a long time and well optimized their phones for their chips. So something worthwhile could well come out of this model. In the meantime, let's take a look at the information that is already available.

Design and display

The phone is made in frameless style. The screen occupies almost the entire front panel, and on top it has a nice teardrop-shaped cutout in which the front camera is installed. Judging by the few reviews, the smartphone really has practically no black bars on the sides, so the designers did their best in this regard.

On the left, it has volume keys and a triple tray for 2 SIM cards and a MicroSD card. On the right side is the off button.

Below the standard is a speaker, a port for charging, and a 3.5 mm audio output.

In their pre-release video, the developers showed the technology of a fingerprint scanner built right into the display, which will be implemented in this smartphone, but judging by the first reviews, where a fingerprint scanner is visible in the hands of some reviewers on the back of the phone, the technology was still not implemented.

The screen itself is made using IPS technology and, according to the manufacturers, it should transmit about 16.7 million colors, so the color reproduction of the display should be at a high level. So it is, the picture on the phone looks nice without too much sharpness, albeit a little dull.

The phone easily responds to touches in any part of the screen and supports multi-touch, although it is not yet known how many touches.

The glass used for the display is Corning Gorilla Glass 3, which is water and scratch resistant. In terms of its protective properties, it, of course, is inferior to Gorilla Glass 5, however, the phone does not position itself as a flagship, but is rather aimed at the middle price segment.

Main technical characteristics

CPU

So we come to one of the 2 things that make the phone interesting. The new processor from MediaTek for the middle segment is intended to be an alternative to the upcoming line of 700 processors from Snapdragon.

This is an 8-core processor manufactured on the latest 12nm. process using BigLittle technology. The role of high-performance cores will be performed by four Cortex A73 cores with a frequency of 2.5 GHz. 4 cores Cortex A53 with a frequency of 2.0 GHz will be responsible for the execution of light processes and power saving.

Judging by the AnTuTu test scores posted online, it scores a total of 156,906 points, leaving behind Snapdragon 660, HelioX30 and Samsung Exynos 7872.

The CPU part is clearly ahead of the rest of the models. The processor part left the Snapdragon 660, HelioX30 and Samsung Exynos 7872 behind by about 30,000 points, scoring almost 74,000 points.

But the graphics part of the GPU is not impressive. The Snapdragon 660 still beats it by 90 points, as does its older comrade HelioX30. Only the Samsung Exynos is inferior to it in this parameter.

User UX testing went well for the P70. Testers rated it above the Snapdragon 660 and Exynos 7872, only surpassed by the X30. Users probably appreciated its ability to work with multiple threads and low heat levels, thanks to the ability to transfer the load between 10 cores.

On the RAM module, it also showed good results, scoring 11,111, beating all the competitors presented.

Developers from MediaTek also report that the new processor will be focused on the use of artificial intelligence. In particular, it is said that the emphasis in this direction is on the modernization of the face recognition system and the modeling of AR and VR.

The new development from MediaTek showed good results in gaming tests on Realmi U1. Despite the fact that the graphics accelerator is inferior to Adreno, with the P70 you can safely play Asphalt 2 at maximum settings and PUBG at medium settings.

Preliminary tests are impressive and this chip may well become popular in the mid-range smartphone segment. According to rumors, in addition to OPPO, Xiaomi and Meizu are already interested in it.

Front-camera

Another thing in the smartphone that deserves close consideration is the selfie camera. The waterdrop notch houses a small, high-resolution sensor. During the daytime, Realmi takes great detailed selfies, perfectly capturing natural skin tones and ambient colors.

The AI ​​beauty mode does its job well most of the time, smoothing out ugly skin areas. And it does it quite imperceptibly and non-aggressively.

In the absence or lack of light, the image really looks like it was taken with a 25MP camera.The camera tries to capture the details and make the image cleaner, but it ends up looking a little grainy and even the HDR mode won't help here.

Main camera

The rear camera consists of two sensors. The main one with a resolution of 13MP and an aperture of f 2/2 and a side one to create a bokeh effect. The camera performs quite well in natural light, taking very detailed photos, but this effect worsens in low light.

The increased brightness mode worked well, which can be very useful if you need to add color and contrast to the photo. HDR works quite well, and you can use popular shooting modes such as time-lapse, professional, and portrait mode. The latter works especially well thanks to the second sensor.

Software

There is little that can be added to the main technical characteristics, speaking about the software part of the phone. It is worth mentioning, perhaps, the presence of pre-installed applications that can be removed at your request, as well as the presence of an application for scanning text.

It uses the camera to scan and recognize handwriting. Since the phone is Indian, it works best with Hindi. In addition, it can translate recognized pieces of text into other languages.

Battery

The user of the new Indian miracle can count on a whole day of work without recharging. When watching video in HD, the device will last almost 15 hours. It does not provide a fast charging system, but the 10W adapter supplied in the kit will make it a little faster.

Price

The phone is not sold in the CIS countries, but on Amazon the initial cost for 3/32 GB starts at 12,000 rupees, which is equivalent to 172 dollars.

Version 4/64 GB will cost 14,500 rupees. At the current exchange rate, this is about 207 dollars.

Advantages and disadvantages

• Powerful processor. Judging by the tests, MediaTek has a chance to whitewash its name with this processor. It has good specs and performed well in tests. But it should be remembered that this is a mid-range processor and you should not expect anything supernatural from it.
• A good front camera, which, in sufficient light, produces beautiful pictures, and the beauty mode perfectly complements them, without smoothing the skin beyond what is necessary.
• Excellent bright screen with good color reproduction.
• Beautiful frameless design and ergonomics. It's a pleasure to hold the phone in your hand, thanks to its rounded edges and comfortable shape, and the screen really looks like it takes up the entire space of the front panel.
• Price.

• The lack of optical and electronic stabilization, which is why the camera twitches with any awkward movement during shooting.
• In the absence and lack of light, photos from the front camera become grainy. The quality of shooting from the rear camera in the absence of light also leaves much to be desired.
• There is no built-in fingerprint scanner. This would not be a problem if the developers did not promise to put it in their presentation video.

Outcome

OPPO has got, probably, one of the best budget smartphones of 2019. It has a good camera, an elegant design, a fairly powerful, promising processor and a 3-slot SIM card tray. It has some drawbacks, but the price covers them all with a vengeance. Unfortunately, it is not yet available in Russia, but it is definitely worth paying attention to if it still appears in Russian online stores or on Ali-express.