Realme C3 Unboxing, First Impressions: New Budget King?

Realme C3 Unboxing, First Impressions: New Budget King?

So much value

Chinese brand Realme has continued to be one of the biggest success stories in the mobile space ever since its humble beginnings less than two years ago. The brand’s astounding 700% growth in Q4 wasn’t a fluke and was driven mostly by products much like the device we’re unboxing today.

The Realme C3 is the latest budget phone in the company’s sub Php 10K lineup and is the first device in the line to sport a MediaTek processor. From our short time with the phone, it’s pretty clear that Realme’s newest budget smartphone punches well above its price point, has the potential to really threaten Xiaomi’s entry-level offerings.

Packaging and contents:

Realme has been consistent in the packaging and presentation of their smartphones through the years, and the C3 is no exception. The phone comes in a yellow box with its name in large, bold letters.

Opening it, you’ll see the phone, documentation, USB charger and cable. There’s no freebie silicone case for the back, nor are there headphones available for the phone as well.

A great looking budget gaming phone

Realme’s design team has been doing a great job of late, transforming what would otherwise be boring slabs of plastic into visually interesting pieces of consumer tech. The Realme C3 follows the company’s current “Sunrise Design” aesthetic which makes it look like sunlight is emanating from the phone’s camera module.

Aside from being aesthetically pleasing to the eye, the ridges that make up that design make the phone quite grippy and drastically reduce smudging on the C3’s rear.

The overall size of the C3 is what you’d typically expect from a phone nowadays, despite it having a 6.5-inch display. The phone still retains a headphone jack which isn’t surprising for its price category. Unfortunately, it still uses a micro-USB port which is also par for the course for budget phones.

As for build quality, the Realme C3 feels to us like a well-built phone. And aside from the use of a micro-USB port, the phone looks and feels like a mid-range device.

The phone uses a 6.5-inch HD+ LCD display with a notch at the top that houses a 5-megapixel sensor. The bezels are a little large for our taste but that’s to be expected from a phone in this price range.

The rear cameras aren’t anything to write home about, but for once PH buyers aren’t getting the short end of the stick. Two versions of the Realme C3 exist, with the Philippines getting the superior version with triple cameras and a fingerprint scanner on the rear. The camera setup consists of a 12-megapixel primary sensor, a 2-megapixel portrait sensor and a 2-megapixel depth sensor. We’ll be tackling the camera performance in-depth in our full review, but we’ll be leaving a couple of photos below that you can take a look at:

The biggest advantage of the Realme C3 compared to its competitors is its MediaTek Helio G70 processor built on a new 12nm manufacturing process. It’s the first time that Realme moved away from using Qualcomm chips for their budget C series of phones, but the change is definitely worth it, as you’ll see in the comparison video that MediaTek themselves posted VS the G70’s direct competitor, the Snapdragon 665:

The Helio G70 delivered excellent marks in AnTuTu, scoring higher than most other smartphones in its price bracket. Our review device came with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage.

We’ll be diving into gaming performance specifics in our full review, but know that the Realme C3 manages to plow through games like Asphalt 9 and Call Of Duty with very few hiccups. It’s also important to note that the phone has a large battery – 5000mAh – which should be enough to power it for a day or two on a single charge.

The Realme 3 also ships with Realme UI, a new overlay that’s built on top of Android 10. With many budget phones still stuck on Android 9, it’s nice to see Realme pushing out a budget phone that uses the latest version of Android.

That’s pretty much it for this hands-on. We don’t know the official price of the phone yet, though in Indonesia the phone retails for around IDR 1,699,000, which is around Php 6.2K in our currency. If Realme sticks to Indonesian pricing, then they might have a real winner in their hands with this phone.

Realme C3 (Southeast Asia) Specs

  • MediaTek Helio G70 octa-core processor
  • Mali-G52 MC2 GPU
  • 3GB RAM
  • 6.5-inch HD+ LTPS IPS mini drop display, Gorilla Glass protection
  • 32GB of expandable storage
  • Triple rear cameras: 12-megapixel f/1.8 main camera with PDAF; 2-megapixel f/2.2 macro camera; 2-megapixel f/2.4 depth sensor; with LED flash, Chroma Boost, 80FPS slow-motion at 480P
  • 5-megapixel f/2.2 front camera
  • Dual SIM
  • 3G, LTE
  • WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, A-GPS
  • AI Face Unlock, Fingerprint scanner
  • 5000mAh battery
  • Android 10 with RealmeUI

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