Realme C3 Review: Great Gaming Performance, Stellar Battery & Average Cameras

Realme C3 Review 

The Realme C3 began another season of war of super budget phones. And you may ask when does this season get over? NEVER. The phone costs about 8999 indian rupees or 113 US dollars and is one of the cheapest phones you could find in the market. Helio G70, 3 GB ram, 32 GB internal storage with expandable memory are a pretty sweet combo in the price. So let’s see what’s good and bad with the phone.

Realme C3 price in Bangladesh BDT ৳10,990 (3/32GB) and in India Rs. 8999 (3/32) , Rs. 9999 (4/64GB). Highlighted features of Realme C3 

●6.5 inches IPS LCD display 

●5000mAh Battery 

● MediaTek Helio G70 processor 

■Display and Design 

So as soon as I unboxed the phone, the First handheld feeling was awesome. It did feel a little heavy but boy it looked beautiful. There was a charger and cable in the box. No earphones and No case. Phone comes with a protective layer right out of the box. you can remove it and get a tempered on or you can just keep it and be happy with it First setup was quite fast and to the point. It does ask if you would want the phone to automatically select the best wifi and if you would want these apps to install as the phone sets up. There is also no wifi AC support so you can’t run it on the 5 ghz line.

The realme C3 phone is huge, because the display is huge and there is a massive 5000 mah battery in it. It features 6.5 inches IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen display. But the screen resolution is low. And you would notice it while you are using youtube. And not just that, it also doesn’t support apps like netflix,prime etc. So yeah, Super budgeted and super restrictive. Outdoor brightness of the display is fine. No problems viewing it in daylight. 

■Camera 

Lets talk about the cameras of realme C3. This is one area where I was really not impressed much. I have personally not tried the redmi 8a cameras but the realme c3 was just okay when it comes to its camera performance. There is a primary camera at the back with an impressive 1.25 micrometer pixel size and a useless depth sensor. And a 5 mp front camera which lacks any kind of dynamic range a phone could have. Now we have to understand that to make other things good, realme did clearly sacrifice investing in cameras. So when you buy this phone, make sure you know that you prioritized investing in performance and not the cameras. The daylight shots were fine and average but there is a chroma boost feature on the phone which kinda enhances the picture quality and adds too much saturation to the shot too. But I would suggest to always keep it on as it does add more details to the pictures. The portrait mode also works fine on the rear camera. And the panorama shot works fine too. Here’s a video sample from the rear camera. There’s of course no stabilization and the details were lacking on the video.

The front camera also takes fine pictures in daylight and the portrait mode does an ok job too. I felt the front video was way better than the rear camera’s video. But let me know what you guys think. There’s also a slow mo option on the rear camera which is definitely better than not having one. If I talk about the low light performance of the camera, the sensor was actually able to capture a lot of light in the handheld shot and it was kinda expected due to that good pixel size. And the chroma boost was able to enhance it a little more. And because the phone does have pro mode too, you can hook up the phone on a tripod and take capture even more light to the shot. Noisey but expected. The front camera in low light just worked. I mean, it did click something as you can see. The video from the rear camera was still quite fine and things were visible on it but on the front camera, find me if you can. No, just exaggerating but yeah, it is not good.

■OS and Hardware 

The Realme C3 runs of realme UI 1.0. If I talk about the performance alone, the phone felt very snappy. The performance of the phone and many activities didn’t actually feel as if the phone is from a super budget category. This actually proves how good the Helio G70 processor is. Trying out multitasking, and many of realme UI features such as split windows etc, never actually felt as if they were lagging. All the apps opened blazingly fast too. Pretty good from a budget phone. And if you compare the benchmarks of G70 vs the snapdragon 439 which is on the redmi 8 or 8a phones, which are similarly priced, you would see that the realme c3 which has the G70 is a clear winner too when it comes to benchmark. And because of all this the face unlock performed extremely fast. It kept surprising me how good and fast it was and worked quite good too in low lit scenarios. 

There is no fingerprint sensor on the phone though. I was able to play call of duty on the phone at low settings, and as visible there was no other setting I can choose or change. The game knew this is the max settings this phone can play on and that’s about it. The memory optimization of the phone was decent. Some older apps stayed in the memory even after few hours. The camera app opening animation was a little jittery in the beginning but later it kinda subsidized. I think all it needed was an update. The phone comes with a dark mode, which worked flawlessly, and supported most of the apps too as the phone runs on android 10 out of the box. Apps like youtube worked even after I skipped logging in to my google accounts. It was possible to uninstall most of the preloaded apps from google on the phone which I always find as a blessing as not many of us use all these apps. The realme ui has a refreshing new set of animations on them. So this will look good and refreshing till you get used to seeing them regularly.

■Battery 

The  realme C3 came with a 10W charger, it takes its sweet time to charge. It took me somewhere around 20 minutes to charge 15% of the phone so I think charging the whole 5000 mah battery of the phone will easily take 3 hours. But the battery backup was insane. 

The phone’s low resolution display, and optimized processor can make the phone easily last 1 and a half day or even 2 - as this totally depends on your usage. So expect around 7-8 hours of screen on time the speaker output was just above average. It is neither too low or too high. But yeah, if the room you are sitting in has some ongoing noise of fans or AC then the sound might feel a little low.

■ Our Verdict 

Few things which I didn’t like in realme ui is that the realme app store sometimes shows ads before it opens and the default browser keeps sending these silly news notifications which I think we can turn off. Which i was not able to check. I personally feel the feature rich customizations on realme ui makes these realme phones really open to personalizations. There’s also a lock screen magazine feature on the phone, which shows a variety of ever changing wallpapers on the lock screen with some links as underlying links. But this feature is actually useless when your face unlock auto is on - which I believe most of the people prefer to do so to avoid that extra swipe to unlock the phone. 

So yeah, as already stated get the phone for the best performance in this price segment there is literally nothing else to compete against this phone in this price. The cameras are okayish but the performance and battery is where realme has made almost no sacrifices in this price segment.

Realme C3 Full Specifications 

● Network
2G bands	GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 - SIM 1 & SIM 2
3G bands	HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100
4G bands	LTE band 1(2100), 3(1800), 7(2600), 38(2600), 39(1900), 40(2300), 41(2500)
Speed	HSPA 42.2/5.76 Mbps
GPRS	Yes
EDGE	Yes
● OS & Hardware
OS	Android 10, realme UI 1.0
Processor	Mediatek Helio G70 (12 nm)
Chipset	Octa-core (2x2.0 GHz Cortex-A75 & 6x1.7 GHz Cortex-A55)
GPU	Mali-G52
● Design
Dimensions	164.4 x 75 x 9 mm (6.47 x 2.95 x 0.35 in)
Weight	195 g (6.88 oz)
Build	Glass front (Gorilla Glass 3),Plastic back,Plastic frame
Colors	Frozen Blue, Blazing Red
● Display
Type	IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
Screen Size	6.5 inches IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen Display
Resolution	720 x 1560 pixels (~264 ppi pixel density)
Multitouch	Yes
Protection	Corning Gorilla Glass 3
Sensors	Accelerometer, Proximity, Compass
● Memory
Card slot	microSDXC (dedicated slot)
Internal	32GB / 64GB
RAM	3GB / 4GB
● Camera
Rear	12 MP, f/1.8, (wide) 2 MP, f/2.4, (depth)
Front	5 MP, f/2.4
Features	HDR , Face detection
Video	1080p@30fps
● Multimedia
Music play	Yes
Radio	FM Radio
Games	Yes
Alert types	Vibration; MP3, WAV ringtones
Loudspeaker	Yes
3.5mm jack	Yes
● Battery & Power
Type	Non-removable Li-Ion 5000 mAh battery
Charging	10W Fast charging
Fast Charge	Yes
● Expected Price
US Dollor	$113
Bangladeshi Taka	BDT 10,990 (For 3/32 GB varient)
Indian Rs.	Rs. 8,999 (For 3/32 GB varient), Rs. 9,999 (For 4/64 GB varient)