Realme 10 4G Review: Does this 4G device work in the era of 5Gs?

Realme 10 4G Review Summary:

Editor’s rating: 4/5

Realme launched its first smartphone for the year 2023 – Realme 10; surprisingly, it is a 4G device. While many will be wondering why a 4G device is being launched in this era of 5G, the company believes that 5G accessibility for all is still far away in India. Most consumers in India are still using 4G due to affordability and availability; thus, the market for 4G smartphones will continue to thrive in 2023. This is the reason the company has come up with a 4G device so that these consumers have more options for buying. 

The Realme 10 4G is powered by an Helio G99 chipset and is one of the slimmest devices packing a large battery. But will this 4G smartphone be able to make its mark among the 5G influx? Let’s find out. 

Realme 10 4G : Design

The Realme 10 4G has a boxy design with curved edges at the back. The rear panel has a light particle design that reflects different shades when light falls on it. The back side of the smartphone has two lenses and an LED flash without any camera island. The lenses are slightly protruded, which doesn’t give the device a proper balance when placed on a flat surface. Like most Realme phones, vertical Realme is badging at the bottom left corner of the phone.

The smartphone is available in two colors- Clash White and Rush Black and the variant I received have Clash White color, which I really loved. Its color and design catch your attention from afar. The back panel did reflect different hues when the light fell on it, making it look even more stylish. 

The Realme 10 4G houses volume rockers and a power button on the right side edge, whereas a dual SIM tray finds a spot on the phone’s left edge. You can spot a USB Type-C charging port, speaker grille, and 3.5mm headphone jack on the bottom edge.

An AMOLED display and a selfie camera at the top left side dominate the facia of the phone. The smartphone has noticeable bezels. The Realme 10 4G feels good in hand as it weighs just 178 grams and has a thickness of 7.95mm despite having a big battery. All-in-all it has a good design for a phone priced under 20k. 

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Realme 10 4G Review: Display

The Realme 10 4G sports a 6.4-inch AMOLED panel. It is one of the most affordable phones to feature an AMOLED display, as most of its counterparts still feature an LCD panel. The display size is decent and gives good visuals and it being AMOLED makes sure that colors pop and contrast levels are excellent. It is evident during content consumption as the blacks are profound, and the other colors are affluent. The display has a 90Hz refresh rate which might seem less; it feels smooth while scrolling or doing everyday tasks. Realme claims it offers a 360Hz touch sampling rate; while we can’t be absolutely sure about that, it feels ultra-responsive. The display gets Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection, which allows you to worry a little less about scratches and cracks.

The only slight niggle I found in the display department was the brightness levels. Although Realme 10 4G claims to give 1000 nits peak brightness, the display was not clearly visible in outdoor environments where the sun was shining bright, even with the brightness turned to max. It is now winter in India when sunlight is not as sharp as in summer. So, if the display fails in winter sunlight visibility, how will it fare during summer? Otherwise, the display is good for this price point. 

Realme 10 4G Review: Camera

The Realme 10 smartphone has a dual camera setup at the back. It includes a 50MP primary camera and a 2MP B&W camera. The Camera UI is similar to its predecessors, so there’s nothing new to understand here.

Coming to the quality of the images clicked, the primary camera has a normal ‘Photo’ mode and a ’50 MP’ mode, both of which give decent pictures. The images clicked in bright sunlight are bright, rich, and full of details. The colors are beautiful, and even in the brightest of sunlight, there is no dispersion of light (this was even when I captured the sun directly via the camera). The shots of flowers and fields are vibrant and have good color accuracy.

Even in low light, indoor settings, the primary camera gives detailed images with rich colors. Mirror images in low light are good in quality, and even when there is a burst of colors in an indoor shot, the quality is decent. 

A new mode, called ‘Street Photography,’ takes good wide-angle shots covering large areas. These shots cover a good field of view, and the best part is that only a few details are lost, even if the photos are clicked by zooming in. 

The 2MP additional lens is where the camera setup lags. The camera has no autofocus, keeps asking you to move close or away from the subject, and still hardly takes any usable shots. The object itself is blurred, and the edges are distorted. There are no details. It would have been better if Realme had just given the 50MP lens and omitted it because only the 50MP lens is worth considering. 

Coming to the 16MP selfie lens takes bright and detailed selfies in daylight, but a skin texture filter enabled made my face look fairer and the lips redder. Although some might like this, it made my face look artificial. Using nature mode, too, didn’t make much of a difference. I wish there was a way to take natural selfies. 

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Realme 10 4G Review: Performance

MediaTek Helio G99 Chipset powers the Realme 10 4G. The chipset is based on 6nm technology, the effect of which can be seen in the battery drainage. The battery drains slower than usual, and the smartphone runs faster than its predecessor (Realme 9). All thanks to this powerful processor and a Dynamic LPDDR4X RAM of up to 16GB, the apps open and load quickly, and the smartphone is fast and seamless when switching between various apps. Up to 8GB in-built RAM ensures a decent multitasking experience, and up to 128GB UFS, 2.2 storage gives ample space to store documents, audio, photos, videos, and more. Realme claims that the 10 4G can run up to 15 apps simultaneously in the background, but this does not hold true in operation. During my usage, the smartphone started slowing down when the number of running apps in the background went over 9-10. That’s alright, considering the phone’s price and hardware. 

Here are the results of scores of benchmark tests that we run on Realme 10:

Coming to the software, Realme 10 4G runs Android 12-based Realme UI 3.0 skin on top. The OS is similar to other Realme devices and doesn’t have all the new customizations and features that Android 13 has come up with. Moreover, the smartphone comes with bloatware in the form of apps like Dailyhunt, Amazon, Flipkart, Moj, PhonePe, Spotify, and more, which can be uninstalled if you don’t need them. Otherwise, the UI is user-friendly and easy to customize. 

Realme 10 features an ultra-boom speaker for audio which works well, and the audio quality during calls is decent as well. It is the only smartphone in the segment that is TUV SUD fluency certified for giving clutter-free usage for years. 

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Realme 10 4G Review: Battery

The smartphone packs a 5000mAh battery that easily lasts more than a day if your usage is light to moderate. However, if you are someone on your phone the entire day for work, calls, leisure, and more, then you will have to charge it once a day. The smartphone comes with 33W fast charging, and the charger is bundled inside the box. The 33W bundled charger takes around 30 minutes to charge from 0 to 50% and about 75 minutes to charge to 100%. The charging speed will seem slow as chargers can charge from 0 to 100 in under 20 minutes, but a 33W fast charging speed is a decent spec at this price point. The Realme 10 also claims that the charging has been made safer by equipping the charger with a five-core identity charging condition, adapter, interface overload, and more. One is advised to use the charger inside the box to charge Realme 10 device for the best performance. 

Realme 10 4G Review Verdict: Should you buy it?

Despite a few flaws, the Realme 10 is a tempting offer that we would suggest because of its value for the money.  We were impressed by its appearance, good AMOLED screen, battery life, performance, and even stability. 

Although it still runs Android 12 and the software is loads of bloatware, these minor niggles can be overlooked if you want to change your existing 4G device without upgrading to a 5G one, and that too within your budget.