First Impressions Verdict: The realme C55 is a device that aims to funnel all the specs you’d find on a midrange phone, down to the entry-level segment. We’re more than happy to see a notchless design, Full HD display, decent internals, and even a Dynamic Island within this market. 

Pros

• No notch, and you even get a Dynamic Island
• Can take good photos

Cons

• No 5G
• Only the main camera is decent

 

Unboxing and Packaging Contents

Inside the box is what we’ve gotten used to from realme. Everything is characteristically yellow and you’ll find the smartphone, guides, a jelly case, a 33W charging brick, and the USB Type-C cable. Having a fast charger in a box (or even a charger at all!) is always going to be a big win in our opinion. Good job.

Design

The realme C55 breaks free of what people think a phone in its price range should look like. There’s no notch here – that’s already a big plus in our book. After all, the waterdrop really ages a phone and has gone out of style a long time ago. There is admittedly a tiny bit of chin and bezel, but it’s still relatively slim compared to its competitors.

Its sides are standard-fare for entry-level to midrange realme devices. There’s a physical side-mounted fingerprint scanner which we know some users prefer over the in-display variety. The volume rocker is on the same side.

Display

Up front is a 6.72-inch IPS LCD display with a 90Hz refresh rate. More importantly, the resolution here is a surprising Full HD. Yes, that should be the bare minimum in 2023 and we believe so too. But we’ve been seeing smartphones even more expensive than this one here release with only HD panels, so the realme C55 gets another check in our book.

As we always say, this IPS LCD panel doesn’t have the vivid color reproduction of an AMOLED panel. Despite this, colors are natural without being washed out. We’d be more than happy to stream some YouTube videos or even watch a Netflix movie or two on this device.

It’s rated at 680 nits of peak brightness. Not the best, but outdoor use should be doable.

The party trick here is the “Mini Capsule” interface that turns the punch hole into a Dynamic Island. You can easily see your charging status as well as other notifications on this pill-shaped panel, most definitely inspired by a fruit-themed tech giant across the world. Seeing features like that in a smartphone that costs a mere fraction is genuinely astounding.

Cameras

The realme C55 keeps things simple with a 64-megapixel main sensor and a 2-megapixel depth camera. The latter is what we often see as extra padding for the camera system on these entry-level devices so we won’t even bother with it. So how does the primary camera perform?

In good lighting conditions, the realme C55 performs superbly. These photos aren’t only good for social media, but we’d also be willing to use them for our site. That’s a big thing to say about photos that come from a device within this market category. Despite the contrast between the bright oranges and the dreary sack they come in, both extremes are represented accurately in the photo. There’s also no confusion in terms of focus when it comes to wide shots of goods on shelves or the like.

Low-light conditions really prove to be challenging for any camera, and an entry-level smartphone’s optics are bound to struggle. There’s a significant amount of noise in these shots. You can tell that the device is trying to fix it with some intelligent software tweaks, but there are hardware limitations that can’t be surpassed.

We’d still say that these night shots are decent though. We’ve definitely seen worse and this is far from unusable.

Internals

The beating heart of the realme C55 is the MediaTek Helio G88 processor with up to 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, expandable via a microSD card slot. Since it’s a Helio chip, no, it does not support 5G bands.

Make no mistake though; the chipset is a reliable performer despite its position on MediaTek’s hierarchy of processors. It may not be the quickest, but we were consistently able to navigate the home screen, open various apps, and do our everyday tasks without crashes and bugs. Of course, our tests mostly involved video streaming, messaging, social media, and the like. We have yet to test how this realme C55 would perform if a power user were to get his hands on one of these.

Wrap-Up and First Impressions

The realme C55 has a lot going for it, especially if its leaked starting price of below PHP 9K holds true. This phone would not be a flagship killer by any means; but it would be a pseudo mid-ranger punching far above its own weight. Considering how light realme UI is to run, we wouldn’t hesitate recommending this smartphone.

Watch out for our full review coming out soon.