Early Verdict: The Realme 7 Pro looks to be a solid upgrade over the previous iteration, though at the cost of some features that are starting to become the norm for the budget mid-range market. Still, the Realme 7 Pro looks to be a decent offering from the company IF they’re able to price it aggressively.
Realme’s making it a habit to refresh its premiere mid-range offering twice a year now, and right on schedule, the company has announced its newest device, the Realme 7 Pro. The new phone brings quite a few new features to the table at the cost of a few others – which might not fly well with the Realme 7 Pro’s intended crowd.
Pros of the Realme 7 Pro:Â
- Nice-looking AMOLED display
- Beautiful exterior
- 65W fast charging
- Good camera performance
Cons of the Realme 7 Pro:
- No 90Hz refresh rate
- Smaller display VS the Realme 6 Pro
Packaging and contents of the Realme 7 Pro
Realme is nothing if not consistent in its packaging for its devices, stuffing the Realme 7 into the same yellow box that they’ve used in every other phone we’ve reviewed. In the same vein, the Realme 7 Pro also comes with the same set of accessories as other devices in the company’s lineup: namely a silicone case, a USB Type-C cable, charger, and some accessories.
The charger though is larger and more pronounced this time around because of the 65W SuperDart fast charging tech.
Design and display of the Realme 7 Pro
Realme has, at this point, fully embraced the fact that their mid-range phones are made out of plastic and have designed the aesthetics of their devices to take advantage of that material choice. The result is a unique-looking phone that stands out when you take it out from your pocket.
The matte finish is fairly smudge-resistant, and the contours of the phone allow you to get a really nice grip on the device when you’re using it one-handed so you’re not liable to accidentally drop it when you’re using it.
The power button is on the right side while the volume rocker is on the left, along with the triple card tray that holds the dual SIM slot and a microSD expansion slot. The Realme 7 Pro retains the oft-neglected 3.5mm jack at the bottom, joined by the USB Type-C port and a single speaker grille.
The Realme 7 Pro is an upgrade a downgrade of sorts from the Realme 6 Pro. If that sounds confusing, it’s because the display of the Realme 7 Pro gets upgraded to a nicer AMOLED panel instead of an LCD one, which also allowed them to use an under-display fingerprint scanner. There’s a 32-megapixel camera on the upper left side, inside a punch-hole slot.
The downgrade here is that it’s a smaller panel overall compared to the Realme 6 Pro (6.4-inches VS 6.6), and it no longer has a fast refresh rate, with the phone locked to 60Hz. Also, for some reason Realme used a Gorilla Glass 3+ VS the Gorilla Glass 5 on the Realme 6 Pro.
The good news here is that the loss of the faster refresh rate isn’t that big of a deal here since you’re getting a nicer-looking panel instead, and personally if you made me choose if I want a better-looking display or a faster one, I’d choose the former over the latter.
Camera, performance, and battery of the Realme 7 Pro
Realme still equipped the 7 Pro with a quad-camera module, nestled in the upper left portion at the rear. It protrudes quite a bit, and just like most of the phones this year it’s nestled in a rectangular module.
There’s a 64-megapixel Sony IMX682 primary wide-camera with an f/1.8 aperture, complemented by an 8-megapixel f/2.3 ultra-wide camera and a 2-megapixel macro and black-and-white sensor.
Images taken with the camera look good enough. We’ll take a deeper dive into the phone’s camera performance when we do the full review. For now, you can check out the shots below:
The Realme 7 Pro uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G octa-core processor, with Philippine devices coming with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of expandable storage.
We’ve seen the Snapdragon 720G on other phones before, so we’re already familiar with what it can do, though you’ll have to tune into our full review to see how Realme’s software enhances it.
Interestingly enough, the Realme 7 Pro sports ultra-fast charging tech via their SuperDart charging tech that goes up to 65W – faster than the charging capabilities of most flagship phones today.
The 4,500mAh battery of the Realme 7 Pro can be charged to 100% from 0 in just 34 minutes – which is one of the fastest charging rates we’ve ever seen.
That wraps up our initial look at the Realme 7 Pro – we don’t have an idea of pricing and availability for the Philippines yet, though Realme will be sharing full details on that in their official Facebook page come noon September 30. Incidentally, that’s also when our full review will drop, so keep an eye on the page till then.
