Realme 8 Pro review, smartphone with 108MP camera

The smartphone market has now reached its maturity. There are models of excellent workmanship even in the mid-range and of shocking novelties, able to make the user remain speechless, they have not been seen for quite a while. That said, as a good technology enthusiast, I'm always happy when I have the opportunity to test a new smartphone, and that's why I welcomed realme's proposal, which gave me the opportunity to test its realme 8 pro.

realme 8 Pro is a balanced mid-range smartphone from all points of view and in which the photographic sector stands out: it is in fact equipped with a quadruple rear camera with main sensor Samsung HM2 from 108MP (the highest pixel count sensor ever built into a phone). The latter is capable of making shots from 12.000 9.000 pixels x and videos up to resolution 4K is 30fps. All this is associated with an excellent software, with automatic corrections and improvements based on artificial intelligence and many shooting and shooting modes, such as the night mode, the Starry Mode for photographing and making time lapse videos of the starry sky, the Tilt mode. Shift and In-sensor Zoom technology for 3 × zoom with optical zoom quality.

There is no shortage of excellent 6.4" Super AMOLED display, a performing processor (Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G) is lots of internal memory with the possibility of expansion via dedicated slot. The operating system is really UI 2.0, a customized version of Android 11 developed by the Chinese manufacturer that offers a lot of space for customization and that surprises once again for the performance and functions dedicated to safety. In short, everything looks really good. But what are, in detail, the strengths and weaknesses of this realme 8 Pro? Find out by reading the rest of the review.

Technical features

Before I get to the heart of the review and describe my personal experiences with this realme 8 pro, it seems appropriate to make a "general picture" of this device and list yours technical features.

realme 8 Pro rides a 6.4 "Super AMOLED display with FHD + resolution (2400 x 1080 pixels), 1.000 nits brightness and mode support Always on.

To animate the device we find the powerful chipset Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G con CPU Octa-core (consisting of one Kryo 465 CPU with two high performance 76GHz Cortex-A2.3 cores and six high efficiency 55GHz Cortex-A1.8 cores), Adreno GPU 618 and Qualcomm AI Engine of 5ª generation combined with 6 or 8GB of LPDDR4x RAM e 128GB of storage (in UFS 2.1 typo).

There is also the slot of expansion for microSD (up to 256GB) and it should be noted that this adds to the two slots dedicated to SIMs (it is therefore possible to use two SIMs, more precisely Nano SIM, in addition to the memory expansion card). Alas, 5G support is missing, but on the other hand there are full 4G / LTE connectivity and support for the most advanced networks Wi-Fi (also dual-band e wireless ac) and Bluetooth 5.0.

Also note the support NFC for the exchange of data wirelessly and the use of payment systems such as Google Pay and the presence of the headphone jack, always pleasant to find.

To shine in the data sheet of this device, however, is the photo gallery, who can boast the presence of ben four sensors on the rear side: the main one is the Samsung HM2 from 108MP and 1 / 1.52 "with aperture f / 1.88, 6P and PDAF lenses. It is the sensor with the highest number of pixels ever integrated in realme devices - and more generally on smartphones to date - capable of taking shots from well 12.000 9.000 pixels x and with cutting-edge technologies on board, such as those ISOCELL Plus, Smart-ISO e Pixel Binning (which I'll tell you more about later).

To make "company" to the main 108MP sensor we find a 8MP wide angle sensor with 119 ° FOV, f / 2.25 aperture and 5P lenses; a 2MP macro sensor with f / 2.4 aperture and 4cm shooting distance and, finally, a 2MP black and white sensor with f / 2.4 aperture. This configuration allows you to capture richly detailed shots even in low light conditions, photos in portrait mode and videos in 4K / 30fps or 1080p / 60fps. but I'll tell you more about this in a dedicated chapter of the review.

Also noteworthy is the front camera from 16MP with aperture f / 2.45, Sony IMX471 sensor and 5P lenses. Equally remarkable is the battery, from 4.500 mAh, which thanks to SuperDart Charge da 50W reaches 50% charge in just 17 minutes. Charging takes place via the USB-C port of the smartphone with the charger from 65W and cable included in the sales package.

Il audio compartment instead it sees the presence of technology Hi-Res audio and the reduction of background noise through i two microphones integrated. Then there can be no lack of brightness sensor, proximity sensor, sensor for magnetic induction, accelerometer and gyroscope.

The measurements of the smartphone are equal to 160,6 x 73,9 x 8,1 mm for 176 grams of weight. The operating system that comes pre-installed is really UI 2.0 based on Android 11 (realme 8 Pro is the first smartphone that is launched on the market with this version of the operating system pre-installed).

Package Contents

My first impact with realme 8 Pro can only have happened by doing theunboxing smartphone. This is what is inside it.

• Smartphone Real 8 Pro
• USB Type-C charging cable
• 65W charger
• Paper clip for the SIM trolley
• Screen protection film
• Cover to protect the smartphone
• Quick guide manual
• Manual with product information and warranty

Considering the price and, above all, the fact that many manufacturers tend to reduce more and more the "standard" equipment of their phones, I would say that you can't really complain!

108MP camera

Let's start immediately from photo gallery, which is definitely the highlight of this one realme 8 pro, as I was able to see also in my "road test".

As already mentioned above, the smartphone is equipped with a rear camera equipped with four sensors: the main one is the surprising Samsung HM2 108MP and 1 / 1.52 " with f / 1.88 aperture, 6P lenses, PDAF and technology support ISOCELL Plus, Smart-ISO e Pixel Binning.

Technology ISOCELL Plus it improves light sensitivity (ISO) by 15% and allows for images with more faithful colors, thanks to the fact that the metal grid used to separate the pixels and avoid the dispersion of light inside the sensor (dispersion that would cause an increase of the “noise” in the shots obtained) is made with a special, more efficient material developed by Fujifilm. Technology Smart-ISO Instead, it adjusts the ISO settings automatically to get the best shots in both full and low light conditions. Technology Pixel Binning 9-in-1finally, it allows you to take nine photoreceptors of the same color adjacent to each other (0.7μm) to compose a larger pixel (2.1μm) and thus obtain greater sensitivity to light, with clearer shots even in low light conditions.

The main camera is flanked by a 8MP wide angle sensor with 119 ° FOV, f / 2.25 aperture and 5P lenses; from a 2MP macro sensor with f / 2.4 aperture capable of shooting from 4cm away and from a 2MP black and white sensor with aperture f / 2.4, able to make portraits more detailed and contrasted.

This setup is capable of super-detailed shots up to 12.000 9.000 pixels x resolution e video in 4K/30fps o 1080p / 60fps. But this "brute force" would be nothing if not associated with a good software equipment, and in fact realme has also thought of this, equipping the realme 8 Pro camera app with a series of functions and shooting modes from a true top of the range. .

To begin with, the mode has been added to the classic photo shooting modes 108MP, which uses the powerful Samsung HM2 sensor to take very high resolution shots with crystal clear details even at high zoom levels. By activating the function AI scene in the Camera app, then, you can make your shots even more beautiful thanks to the automatic corrections made by artificial intelligence to color, brightness and other scene parameters.

To better understand what we are talking about, I leave you to a series of examples related to the photos taken in this mode (you can see them in full size by clicking on their thumbnails but, eye, they weigh about 30MB each; make sure you have a fast enough connection to be able to download them in a reasonable time!).

Technology In-Sensor zoom allows you to have shots that have little to envy to those of smartphones that have a 3x optical zoom. In fact, using 12MP of the 108MP of the sensor in question and treating everything with realme's Clarity Enhancement Algorithm, the final results are quite detailed and balanced.

Theultra wide angle which, by setting the zoom level of the camera to less than 1x, allows for excellent panoramic shots.

I was definitely convinced there too night mode of realme 8 Pro, which takes advantage of the ISOCELL Plus, Smart-ISO and 9-in-1 Pixel Binning technologies of the Samsung sensor and artificial intelligence functions (which can be activated or deactivated as desired, thus offering the most experienced photographers the ability to manually adjust ISO, AF and other parameters) to achieve clear and brilliant shots even when the lighting conditions of the scene are not optimal.

In this regard, it must be said that the algorithm Super Nightscape of realme has been updated and now features various shooting modes, such as Pro Nightscape, Ultra Nightscape e Tripod mode, in order to adapt to various circumstances.

Still on the subject of night photography, the presence of the new one must absolutely be emphasized Starry fashion, designed to capture even the night skies with minimal noise.

Starry skies can also be captured in mode time lapse video. In fact, realme has developed an exclusive time-lapse video algorithm based on the Starry mode that takes 16 single photos every 15 seconds for a total of 4 minutes; after which the algorithm combines everything into a final 30fps movie (we are talking about 240 photos in an hour, to obtain an 8-second time-lapse video) of great effect. And you don't have to worry about taking up RAM and storage, as the phone takes care of storing only the most meaningful content for use in the final movie.

Unfortunately, the city lights did not allow me to fully appreciate and test this feature properly, but with a tripod and a clear starry sky available, you should be able to get good results.

Another shooting mode introduced by realme in realme 8 Pro and that is definitely worth mentioning is that Tilt-shift, which allows you to take miniature-style landscape photos. As a rule, such an effect, with blurring on the sides, is obtained by using lenses designed for the purpose (very expensive); in this case, however, everything happens through software processing algorithms. The results obtained are more than convincing. It is also possible to realize time lapse video in 10x speed tilt shift mode (it is the first smartphone to support this mode).

Finally, there are more classic shooting modes, like that macro, which allows you to take very detailed shots of small objects at a distance of 4cm.

As for videos, you can make movies in 4K is 30fps, In 1080p a 60 o 30fps, In 720p at 60 or 30 fps and videos slow motion a 1080p/120fps, 1080p / 480fps, 720p / 960fps o 720p / 240fps, with also the possibility of shooting in mode Dual-View, i.e. shooting from the front and rear cameras at the same time.

I did several shooting tests and I must say that, although the general results are decidedly good, the videos obtained with realme 8 Pro did not make me cry for a miracle: if the photos convinced me right away, the same thing with the movies, especially those made in non-optimal lighting conditions, which seemed a bit less detailed than my expectations (which were still very high, given the shots).

In any case, the presence of the modality must be emphasized ultra steady, for greater stability of the movies even during the most animated scenes, and of the movie mode, which allows you to manually adjust advanced parameters such as AF and ISO. Also for videos, it is possible to activate the functions of AI that automatically optimize and improve the parameters of the scenes shot. The level of zoom it can be adjusted from 0,6 to 5x.

Also noteworthy is the front camera from 16MP with Sony IMX471 sensor, aperture of f / 2.45 and 5P lenses, and the latter also enjoys many interesting software functions, primarily those dedicated to selfies and portraits with dynamic bokeh (also available for the rear camera).

For the rest, what to say? We find ourselves in the presence of an excellent hardware equipment combined with a mature and constantly evolving software, full of many interesting features - from HDR to support for Google Lens - which it is impossible to describe all in a review and which is pleasant to discover day after day. using the smartphone.

Design and ergonomics

realme 8 Pro looks like a very modern design phone (which the manufacturer calls Bold Design), where the display covers 90.8% of the front surface. Elegant and discreet the hole for the camera, placed at the top left.

La rear cover, available in shades Infinite Blue, Infinite Black, Illuminating Yellow e Punk Black, is made with high quality plastics and is worked with extreme care. It is soft and pleasant to the touch. To make everything more elegant there is the texture carved on the cover, which simulates the starry sky, and the slogan Give to Leap, printed vertically on the right.

At the top left, however, there is the camera module with the four sensors. The latter protrudes a little, but especially if you use the transparent plastic case supplied, there is no imbalance by placing the phone on a flat surface.

As for ergonomics, even if we are talking about a device with a large screen, with its own 8,1 mm thick and its 176 grams of weight, realme 8 Pro turns out a lot comfortable to hold. The "premium" feel of the construction materials and the good overall balance allow for a rather easy use in any context, even if clearly we are not talking about a phone designed for one-handed use (but now almost no smartphone is!) .

Il grip is very good and gets even better if you use the transparent plastic case included in the sales package. The impression is that of having a fairly robust device in your hands, even if for obvious reasons I have not done any crash tests myself. Unfortunately, waterproofing is missing, but you can't want everything from a device belonging to this price range.

Display

The realme 8 Pro display is a Super AMOLED da 6.4 “ us FHD + resolution (2400 x 1080 pixels) which allows you to fully enjoy all the content displayed on it, primarily the ultra-detailed photos that can be taken with the device's 108MP camera. The fact that it is a Super AMOLED display ensures better color and contrast reproduction than LCD panels, as well as better energy efficiency. In this model, then, I did not find the tendency to "shoot" the colors that I found on other similar panels.

Moving content, such as movies and games, can then take advantage of the high image refresh rate of 180Hz, which allows you to have an excellent fluidity of what is reproduced on the display.

Apart from that, the screen is appreciated for its own 1.000 nits of maximum brightness, which allowed me to use the terminal without any problem even in direct sunlight. There oleophobic protection it seemed to me beyond sufficiency: the screen keeps some imprints, but less than other devices that I have happened to try, even at the highest end.

The support for technology is also to be appreciated DC Dimming, which avoids the "invisible flickering" typical of old AMOLED panels and therefore avoids the risk of tiring the eyes, even after prolonged use of the device. The support for the mode is also appreciable Always On, to display various useful information on the screen while the device screen is off.

Finally, the fingerprint sensor under the screen which, like all sensors "hidden" in this way, leads to some compromise in terms of accuracy, but the unlocking success rate is still high (75-80% I would say). Practically infallible, however, it is unlock with the face (with 2D scan) performed by the front camera.

Performance and memory

It is common opinion - and I share it - that the performance of mid-range smartphones is now comparable to that of top-of-the-range models. Some differences can only be noticed in particular areas, which mostly affect niches of professionals, while in the use of "every day" a model like realme 8 Pro has very little to envy to more expensive smartphones.

Among other things, we are talking about a smartphone equipped with a chipset Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G which, compared to the previous generation, presents a 10% improvement in CPU performance and 75% in GPU and display performance.

Translated into the "real" use of the phone, this means that even applications that are not very light, such as Facebook e Instagram, are loaded in a timely manner and that you can also play graphically demanding video games, for example Call of Duty Mobile, with reduced loading times and super smooth animations.

In this regard, the function is worth mentioning Play area of realme UI, which allows you to optimize the performance of the phone for games according to various preset profiles, temporarily putting aside other activities and concentrating all the power of the device on the gaming sessions to be faced.

To lend a hand to the CPU and GPU are the 8 GB of LPDDR4x RAM (6GB in some markets) and i 128GB of internal memory, expandable up to 256GB with microSD (via dedicated slot, additional to the two dedicated to SIMs). I emphasize that we are talking about 128GB of space, which are rare commodities on devices in this price range (and in this case they serve like bread, considering that the weight of a single photo taken in 108MP mode is around 30MB!).

Battery

The ratings on the battery of a smartphone are never easy to do, as the variables involved are many and the results change depending on the use made of the device.

What I can tell you, though, is that I struggled to get this realme 8 Pro downloaded. With my average usage, consisting mainly of online browsing, messaging, email management, calls, music and video playback and photo and video making, I reached the two days of use quite easily. By adding gaming sessions here and there, overall battery life has clearly dropped, but not dramatically. With a more "light" use of the device, however, I even managed to cover three days of use without recharging!

realme 8 Pro is equipped with a 4.500 mAh and the manufacturer declares a total autonomy of 33 hours on call, 82 hours of listening to music streaming on Spotify, 8 hours of gaming, 22 hours of messaging on WhatsApp and 20 hours of video playback on YouTube. Well, I must say that comparing these numbers to those I recorded in my tests, the accounts add up.

To make these numbers possible are the many optimizations on the software side present in the device. The realme UI 2.0 operating system in fact provides numerous settings related to energy saving including the most disparate usage scenarios. In addition to the classics energy saving mode e super energy saving, there are more granular settings that you can activate in the menu Settings> Battery> Other Battery Settings.

For example, the Performance Mode allows you to choose whether to always have maximum performance; whether to automatically modulate based on the apps used or whether to always keep them low to increase battery life. There Optimized overnight chargingInstead, it reduces battery aging by learning the times when the user usually charges the phone and releasing the charge gradually, thus avoiding subjecting the battery to longer charging sessions than necessary.

Values ​​worthy of note are also those relating to 50W SuperDart charge which allows you to bring your phone's battery to the 100% in 47 minutes and 50% in about 17 minutes; all in safety and avoiding overheating or overvoltage. Wireless charging is not supported.

Audio and connectivity

The realme 8 Pro audio sector convinced me. On call, also thanks to the reduction of background noise performed by two integrated microphones, the sound was loud and clear for all the people I contacted during my tests (for the record: the dialer is the stock one from Google, without call recording function).

In listening to music and, more generally, in the reproduction of multimedia contents, I have to make a distinction: inlistening with headphones and earphones I really appreciated the possibility of using the dear old headphones with wire, thanks to the presence of the audio jack (now increasingly rare to find on smartphones, especially top-of-the-range ones), then support for technology Bluetooth 5.0 it allowed me to use Bluetooth headphones and earphones while enjoying a very wide range and without annoying lag when playing videos.

In 'listening without headphones, on the other hand, I must say that the presence of the single speaker (mono audio) placed in the lower right part of the device allowed me to listen well to music and videos outdoors, but it did not allow me to "immerse myself" in the contents as I can do with devices that mount stereo speakers (or in any case take advantage of the ear capsule for this purpose).

As regards the signal reception, nothing to complain: as mentioned, 5G is missing but, given the still scarce diffusion of this technology, it is not a big minus. It is a big plus, however, the support for all major 4G frequencies, which allows you to always navigate at excellent speeds. Very convenient, then, the possibility of using two Nano-SIMs (dual SIM dual standby) without having to give up the expansion of the internal memory with microSD.

Also side Wi-Fi there is support for all the most advanced standards, including a 5GHz faster than those at 2.4GHz (not always supported by mid-range devices): this allowed me to take full advantage of the speed of the home fiber and exchange files quickly with other devices on my network.

Special mention should be made to another component that is not always found on mid-range smartphones: the chip NFC, which allows you to exchange data over short distances with other devices but, above all, to make contactless payments through systems such as Google Pay.

Operating system and applications

realme 8 Pro is the first smartphone that is launched on the market with the operating system really UI 2.0 based on Android 11. This version of Android customized by the Chinese manufacturer confirms a high rate of responsiveness and flexibility.

Among the most interesting innovations, the over 100 customization options available (including global color themes, the ability to change not only the style but also the shape and size of the icons and much more) and optimizations in terms of speed and performance which - according to the manufacturer's official estimates - led to a 32% improvement in system speed and an improvement of over 23% in app startup times.

Improvements - as well as welcome confirmations - are also highlighted in the sector of file and information security, with functions such as the Private safe (a reserved area in which to hide private files by protecting them with a password), the Payment protection (to detect and eliminate any risks for the payment systems configured on the device) and much more.

For the rest, we are dealing with a lean and reliable system, completely in British, with i Google services and Play Store integrated, support a Google Pay for payments and a convenient system gesture which allows you to quickly and easily access many features.

In this regard, I found the functionality particularly convenient Split screen, to divide the smartphone screen in half, use and two applications at the same time (which can be called up by moving three fingers upwards on the display).

In short, the customizations of realme do not undermine the basic performance of Android and, on the contrary, they manage to give it that little bit more both from the point of view of customization and ease of use (the settings menu is very linear and clear in all its sections, for example).

Conclusions

The time has come for conclusions. So what do I think of this realme 8 Pro? I'll answer you with an evaluation that I make every time a friend or reader asks me which type of smartphone to buy: mid-range or top-of-the-range.

My answer is that, by now, mid-range smartphones have reached such a maturity and a general quality that only the photographic sector can really make a difference in "everyday life". So, brutally summing up: if you want to take very high quality photos and videos, go to a top of the range; otherwise a mid-range is just fine. Well, realme 8 Pro shakes my claim.

Yes, because here we are dealing with a smartphone that costs less than half of the main top of the range, but which from a photographic point of view does not look bad at all in the presence of many of them. Of course, the video sector didn't make me scream a miracle, but the photos ... those made me really stunned when I imported them to the computer and saw them on a monitor, nice big, with 4K resolution: even zooming, the quality remains excellent, with defined details and natural colors.

If we add these characteristics to the excellent general performance of the device, the surprising battery life and the good work done by realme on the software side, my final judgment can only be positive. Then it is clear, a top of the range with a price double, if not triple, compared to this realme 8 Pro will always have that little bit more in terms of construction materials and general reactivity, but never as in this case the difference between medium and top. of range becomes thin, with a choice that becomes easier for those who do not have ultra-professional needs and are looking for a powerful, reliable smartphone with excellent photographic equipment to buy at a reasonable sum. Too bad for the absence of waterproofing, 5G and wireless charging!

That said, realme 8 Pro is on sale in the colors Infinite Blue, Infinite Black e Punk Black for less than 300 euros: 299 euros for the 8GB + 128GB configuration, 279 euros for the 6GB + 128GB version (the latter available exclusively on Amazon). For more information, you can consult the official realme website.

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Article created in collaboration with realme.

Realme 8 Pro review, smartphone with 108MP camera