REVIEW: realme 10 is a good value midrange smartphone with huge storage | ABS-CBN

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REVIEW: realme 10 is a good value midrange smartphone with huge storage

REVIEW: realme 10 is a good value midrange smartphone with huge storage

Art Fuentes,

ABS-CBN News

 | 

Updated Jan 03, 2023 02:01 PM PHT

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The realme 10 midrange smartphone. Art Fuentes, ABS-CBN News
The realme 10 midrange smartphone. Art Fuentes, ABS-CBN News


The realme 10 is a good value midrange phone with massive storage, decent battery life and good cameras. If this phone had 5G, it would be a very strong contender in this price range. But if 5G isn’t a big deal for you, this is still a solid phone.

Realme has built its brand by offering smartphones that tick off the boxes in terms of decent design, functionality and affordability. The realme 10 doesn’t stray from this formula.

Design-wise, this phone seems to take its cue from iPhone 12 especially when seen from the back with the included gel case snapped on. Unlike a lot of Androids, the two camera lenses protrude prominently in the back, and the sides are flat instead of curvy. It’s a pretty nice look.

The glossy back panel looks great, but like other phones with this design, the gloss also makes it a fingerprint magnet.

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On the right side is a volume rocker, and a power button that doubles as a fingerprint scanner.

At the bottom is the USB-C port, a headphone jack, and the speakers. On the top left side is the SIM card try, which can handle 2 SIMs plus a micro SD card.

On the top left of the front is a punchhole for the selfie camera.

The realme 10 is also solidly spec’d with a 6.4-inch full HD super AMOLED display, with a 90Hz refresh rate. It also has MediaTek Helio G99 chipset, 8GB RAM, a massive 256GB storage on our review unit, two main cameras, and a pretty good 5,000mAh battery w/ 33W SuperVOOC fast charging.

It also has a “dynamic RAM” feature that can boost memory by another 8GB to a total of 16GB by using part of the storage. The 256GB storage will come in handy for people who like to shoot a lot of videos and share them on TikTok, YouTube or other social media apps.

Waking up the phone is pretty easy with the fingerprint scanner. Tap it with your thumb, or whatever finger you used to encode, and you’re in. As someone who prefers to hold a phone with his left hand, I wish they had put an onscreen fingerprint scanner on this instead. But I also understand that this feature might make this phone more costly.

The AMOLED screen is sharp, bright and easy on the eyes. The 90Hz screen means transitions and animations are smooth. Hardcore gamers would probably benefit more from a 120Hz screen, but this phone is clearly not meant for that niche.

Battery life is adequate for more than a full day of social media browsing, casual gaming and video streaming.

For a midrange phone in the sub-P15k price range, the realme 10 takes pretty good photos. The 50MP main camera combined with the 2MP black and white camera can take photos with pretty good details, color and contrast.

Sample shots taken with the realme 10

Sample shots taken with the realme 10

Sample shots taken with the realme 10

Sample shots taken with the realme 10

Sample shots taken with the realme 10

Sample shots taken with the realme 10

Sample shots taken with the realme 10

Low light shooting is what you would expect from a midrange phone, but well-lit indoor shots are pretty good.

When the sun is high, the cameras tend to clip details, but again that is par for a midrange phone.

What’s not par though is the lack of a wide angle camera, which is offered by other budget midrange phones. I don’t mind the absence of a telephoto lens, but I do miss having a wide angle lens for landscapes and tight indoor shots.

The realme 10 also takes decent selfies. You need to do a but of fiddling though if you’re doing “against the light” shooting.

All in all, this is a good contender for the budget midrange market. I wish it had 5G and a wide angle camera, but those features may make it more expensive. The realme 10 with 256 GB of storage retails for P14,999 while the 128 GB version sells for P12,999.

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