Realme U1 (Ambitious Black, 3GB RAM, 32GB Storage)

Although this phone is being marketed as selfie expert, I personally am not a fan of selfies. I am just a casual user who uses different apps and services like social media, swiggy, urban clap, mobile banking etc. I take photos occasionally but I I extensively use my phone camera for taking pics/scanning business documents, letters, visiting cards etc. I don't play games except hay and Plants vs Zombies 2.I am coming from an iPhone 5s and I purchased 5s around 2014 by paying 60k+ for a 32GB storage. It was a flagship phone at that time. Towards the end of 2014, Indian market got flooded by chinese OEMs with extreme race to the bottom competition. I started using Xiaomi Mi 4 as my secondary phone since 2016 (Yes its Mi 4 2014 model).So in a way I do have quite a bit of experience with MIUI, Android and also iOS. However, both 5s and Mi 4 do not support VoLTE and 5s had terrible phone reception from day 1. Even battery life of 5s was not so great. Screen size is small. Mi 4 on the other hand offered amazing battery life, had great reception and MIUI offered lot of useful features especially built in call recording. I like native call recording feature because it allows me to listen to the phone calls whenever I note down important information. It can be quite useful feature if you talk to lot of people and have to remember lot of things.Overall, I decided to buy Realme U1 because I already used Xiaomi for 3 years and really wanted to give Realme a chance.Anyway, for me the following are the upgrades with Realme U1:VoLTEDual SIM4GB RAM (Mi 4 had 3 GB)Powerful processor (Mi 4 and 5s had processors with almost equal horse power)Bigger Battery (Mi 4 had 3000 mah while 5s had 1500 mah)Bigger Storage (64GB Vs 16/32GB of Mi 4 and 5s)Huge Screen (Almost 40% bigger than Mi 4 and 150% bigger than 5s in terms of area)Amazing Front CameraMicro SD SlotFace UnlockLouder SpeakerDowngrades/ConsNo 4K Recording (2014 Mi 4 had 4k recording feature)Ok-ish back cameraNo Video StabilizationNo Dual Band WifiStill Micro USB portPlastic BuildHeavier BuildReview:As you can see my review, you might have understood the type of user I am. So coming from 2013/2014 phone, this phone although costing only 12k felt like a huge upgrade. That shows much far smartphones have come during the last 5 years.The biggest surprise for me about this phone was the display. I was literally blown away by the quality of display this phone had. I mean, I just couldn't believe how good the display was at first. It felt so premium. I know lot of people are going to come up with lot of stats about colour accuracy and stuff but trust me if you show the display to a lay man, they will surely get surprised. Since, I haven't used any newer phones for a long time, I don't know if other phones are also offering such good quality displays.Next biggest surprise for me was front facing camera. I read many reviews stating that front camera is bad and it is not up to mark. Yes, I do agree with this because this phone is being marketed as selfie expert and people would certainly have high expectations regarding selfie camera. If you remove the tag of "selfie expert" and are only looking forward to make video calls or day light selfies or may be casual selfies, I think this phone is more than sufficient. I think Realme should reconsider its marketing strategy regarding this phone. They shouldn't have called it Selfie Expert.Coming to the performance, during heavy usage, I did find little bit of tiny stutters in some specific apps but absolutely butter smooth performance 99% of the time. I am starting to think that it is the fault of apps which are not properly optimized by the developer. In simple words, the phone is a beast. The fault lies with some crappy apps.Next is games performance. Many reviewers stated that gaming performance is good. I got carried away by the reviews but I will be honest, even after using realme's game space (the app which optimizes games performance) I could find significant performance boost but the performance is nowhere what the reviewers said about this phone. There are many frame drops in asphalt 9 on highest settings but game performs well on medium graphics with very rare frame drops (I don't play pubg) but apparently pubg (according to some) runs fine on medium graphics when launched in realme's game space app (i.e. with graphics boosters and optimizer). In simple lay man terms, this phone can handle things only on medium level graphics/medium settings.One of the biggest things I loved about this phone overall was its heat. The phone doesn't heat up as much as my Mi 4. This phone does heat up but very less. It has very good thermal optimization.One more thing I observed is that this phone doesn't throttle the chipset much which means you won't find ups and downs in performance. It performs equally at all times (unless you turn on battery saver). This is something apple introduced with iPhone 6 (I think) and continued. Many phones boast of performance but have poor thermal handling capacity and often these companies use throttling mechanism to maintain the temperature of the devices. I observed this in many reviews and also experienced it in few phones I tried before. Some of the phones have such a poor thermal handling capacity that we keep hearing about phone being blasted. Fortunately, realme has done amazing (I mean it), really fantastic job in terms of thermal handling and also throttling.I also urge all users to chose phones with heat handling capacity because we are currently in summer and most of us use our phones outside. So, don't compromise on heat handling capacity for few shots of performance boost. Too much heat may lead to phones catching fires or even blasts. Irrespective of what phone you use, don't play games outside and also use the phones without cases when charging or heavy tasks.Finally, coming to back camera. One of the biggest disappointments is lack of Image stabilization. Although I was able to scan documents using scanner apps crystal clear with back camera, I couldn't help but notice the lack of video stabilization. If you plan to shoot something with walking around (like a park or something), get ready to watch the shakiness. For some reason, even Honor decided to remove Image Stabilization feature in their latest update. I think these companies are purposefully doing these gimmicks to convince users to buy more expensive phones.Even though there is dual camera on the back, I personally didn't feel the camera to be impressive but I am not saying that the camera is unusable. Its just that it takes decent pics but not great ones. If you have little patience, you can actually take great pics with the camera. If you are a casual user who occasionally uses camera, this camera would be fine.Coming to low light, I came to the conclusion that this is one of the only areas where flagships really rule. My advice is that if you are serious about the camera, do yourself a favor and get a DSLR. I am not saying this to defend this phone or bash other phones. Its true that smartphones cameras are getting better and better each year but they are still nowhere near DSLRs in many aspects.If you are someone who travels a lot, that's the only reason to a buy a smartphone with excellent camera. For social media use, any camera works just fine because most of the websites compress images until they loose all details before they get uploaded on your feed. Added to that there are filters. So, in the end, all images become crappy. However, if you are serious about photos but do not travel a lot, get a DSLR.Finally coming to battery life, I am easily able to get more than 1 day battery life. If I use the phone casually (not for gaming or downloads), I was easily able to squeeze 1.5 days of battery life. Of course if you plan to use lot of maps mobile data, location services and GPS, battery drains fast but would easily last 7 hours at least.I think lot of people who are complaining about battery life are either gaming heavily on this phone or some app in the background is eating up everything. From my experience of 10+ years of using smartphones from budget to flagships, 90% of the times smartphone batteries do well but the main culprit of battery life are rogue apps which run on background and eat off all battery life without the knowledge of user. I have experienced both good and bad days of battery life even on flagship phones like S2, S4, 5s, Lumias etc. and 90% of the times, like I said, the culprits are rogue apps.Finally, the last but not least. Face unlock was completely unexpected, It is working blazing fast. I tried to fool it with photos and tried different tricks but none of them actually worked. Initially I thought face unlock feature is waste but after using face unlock on this phone. It has hard to go back to fingerprint or pattern lock. Most of the times many features sound great on paper but work really bad in real life but I have to hand it to realme, they have done excellent job in this. Even fingerprint sensor recognition is super fast.Verdict:I can easily recommend this phone to any casual user like me who uses apps a lot but less games or camera. However, if you are a gamer, all I can suggest is go for a higher end phone because as far as reviews are concerned, no other phone offers any significant performance boost compared to realme u1 at this price range. So, better make your budget 15k.Finally about the camera, if all you with your photos is upload them to social media, this phone will be great job (not because it takes great pics but because social media compresses image until they lose quality any way). So, if you are looking purely from non-gaming perspective, this phone is a must buy but keep your expectations in check.

The Realme U1 was launched and marketed by the company as the ‘best selfie-camera smartphone’ in India in this price segment.In our tests, it did look like the smartphone indeed packs some credible credentials when it comes to camera prowess. The Realme U1 is powered by the new octa-core MediaTek Helio P70 which is the new 12nm based processor which is clocked at 2GHz and comes paired with 900MHz ARM Mali-G72 MP3 GPU. Our review unit came with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of inbuilt storage, while there is also a 3GB RAM/32GB storage version. While the Realme U1 runs Android 8.1 Oreo-based on ColorOS 5.2, it comes with some essential features such as dual 4G VoLTE and Face Unlock.Let’s start with the processor first. This was the first smartphone we tested which comes with an octa-core MediaTek Helio P70 processor and while it is positioned against the Qualcomm Snapdragon 600-series chipsets. Considering the price segment in which the Realme U1 has been launched, smartphone brands are still going with the Snapdragon 636 processor which makes Realme’s new smartphone an interesting package at its price.The Realme U1 can handle heavy graphics games such as PUBG Mobile and Asphalt 8 with ease, and doesn’t offer any frame drops. However, we noticed that when multiple apps were running at the background, there were some minute lags during our gaming sessions. But those were related to the software and we will talk about it later.Realme U1 user interfaceOn the other hand, when it comes to multitasking, the smartphone can easily handle up to 10 running apps in the background while we would recommend cleaning the background apps if you are looking for an extended gaming session. After two hours of continuous gaming, the device felt a little warm but it didn’t affect the overall experience while using the smartphone and nothing making us too uncomfortable.Apps open quickly on the Realme U1 and there is support for Dual 4G and Dual Standby. Realme has also added software-backed gestures to make things even interesting for the users.Now, let’s talk about another nifty feature of the Realme U1, the Face Unlock feature which is quick in well-lit condition but during our time with the device, we found out that it doesn’t work in low light conditions. We tried it in different lighting conditions, the face unlock feature just showed up a message that said less light around.Moreover, the drop-down menu has some very practical options such as Boost, Google Assistant, Screen recording and more. On the other hand, there is also an option to view or access more shortcuts which can also be dragged to the drop-down menu. This brings us to the software and UI of the Realme U1. The smartphone runs on Android 8.1 Oreo based on ColorOS 5.2 and the over-the-top skin means that it comes with a lot of bloatware as well. The good thing is that most of the pre-loaded apps can be deleted, but the software customisation has made the UI a little glitchy, in our opinion. That said, we finally got to see the single-slide option for dismissing notifications from the drop-down menu while the ColorOS earlier used to have a two-step process from clearing individual notifications.Overall, the ColorOS 5.2 is a deal breaker for us and we wish that Realme offered the Realme U1 without bloatware that’s now almost the case with ColorOS.Since the Realme U1 was launched with claims of it being the best selfie-camera smartphone in the segment, we had high hopes from both the dual rear cameras as well as the front 25-megapixel AI camera. The Realme U1 features a 13-megapixel rear camera with LED flash, f/2.2 aperture and a 2-megapixel secondary camera with f/2.4 aperture. At the front, there is a 25-megapixel camera with f/2.0 aperture, 4-in-1 pixels, AI beautify which can scan 296 facial recognition points, Sony IMX576 sensor, and a studio portrait lighting mode.In real life, the dual rear camera setup works fine in most cases as the primary 13-megapixel sensor captures a great amount of details under good exposure as well as natural lighting. Pictures come up really good, however, if you need colours to pop out, you will have to keep your hands a little steady as the autofocus takes a couple of seconds to focus.Realme U1 camera sampleRealme U1 camera sampleThe phone also comes with the Super Vivid mode which basically gives an overdose of artificial colours. Majority of our sample shots offered almost natural colours while HDR mode works well, especially in the auto mode while the secondary 2-megapixel sensor also helps in using modes such as Professional, Portrait, Timelapse, and Panorama. The secondary sensor makes the subject stand out from the background, however, to get the perfect Portrait shot, you need to keep your hands steady, again.Coming to the front 25-megapixel AI camera, this is the same setup which we previously saw on the Oppo F7 earlier this year. It should be noted that the Oppo F7 came with a higher price tag than the Realme U1, which makes the deal even more interesting here. When you click a selfie from the front camera, the sensor brings out almost-perfect skin tones, details as well as colours. With the AI beauty mode, you get an even better result since the sensor smoothens the subject. The front sensor also gets the Super Vivid mode and it works perfectly fine in regards to colour saturation.The 4-in-1 pixel binning technology, which the company talked about during launch, helps the front camera to add a good amount of depth effect into selfies while the mode does compromise with the resolution. Moreover, if you click a selfie, you will also get a real-time preview of the HDR version. The panorama mode also works like a breeze and there are no blurred effects while capturing the full extended frame.The same is not the case with the front camera under low-lighting conditions since the 4-in-1 pixel binning features doesn’t work in such situations and results come out with noticeable noise as well as grains, despite using HDR. Last but not the least, the camera app has all the modes on the primary interface while almost all the settings can be accessed with a two-tap function. In our opinion, the Realme U1 packs a very capable camera though it requires few software upgrades to make it challenge the competition.