Oppo launched their sub-brand Realme in May 2018. The brand made a strong debut with the series pioneer, the Realme 1. This phone became quite popular, gaining a lot of attention. Just a few months later, the Realme 2 was launched. This phone is known as the cheapest notch phone with a dual-camera setup, larger battery and a decent set of hardware, all packed under an attractive diamond-cut design. The Realme 2 is priced unbelievably low at just Rs. 11,490*. We got our hands on the Oppo Realme 2, and here is the impression it left.
Design and build
The Realme 2 is quite a good looking phone and has everything the Realme 1 missed out on. Our review unit was the Diamond Blue variant. There are two other colours to choose from - Diamond Black and Diamond Red. Something interesting about the Realme 2 is the jazzy diamond cut pattern on the back. It shines under light and renders all kinds of shades. This is something that Oppo is very proud of.
The Realme 2 packs a 6.2-inch screen with a wider notch on the top than most phones. The screen is pretty massive, offering ample work space. Small hands would struggle to reach every corners of the Realme 2. Despite of featuring a large screen, it isn’t very hefty. The phone is slim and thin, weighing 168 grams. Curve corners and rounded edges give this phone a premium touch. On the left side of the phone lie volume controls and a SIM card tray; the power button is on the right.
The back of the phone houses a dual-camera setup and a LED flash on the top, whereas the bottom of the phone is busy. There is a micro USB port, 3.5mm headphone jack, a mic and a speaker grill. The fingerprint sensor is positioned at the back and is easy to reach.
Features
The Realme 2 packs a decent set of hardware along with some trendy features. This phone sports a 6.2-inch screen sporting a HD+ (1520 x 720 pixels) resolution. The screen uses a lower resolution compared to the older Realme 1 that didn’t had a notch, but a full HD+ (2160 x 1080) resolution at almost the same price.
The phone is powered by an entry-level Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 octa-core processor. The Realme 1 had the latest MediaTek Helio P60 chipset. The Realme 2 is available in two variants – one with 3GB RAM + 32GB storage and the other with 4GB + 64GB storage variant. For those who like to store lot of media on the phone, the Realme 2 has a dedicated microSD card slot that can support cards up to 256GB in capacity.
Talking about the camera, the Realme 2 houses 13MP + 2MP dual rear cameras in addition to the 8MP front-facing camera. There is an LED flash as well. The Realme 2 has a fingerprint and a face unlocking feature in addition to standard passcode and pattern unlock. The connectivity options on the Realme 2 includes dual 4G VoLTE, Bluetooth 4.2, single band 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, GPS and OTG.
Inside the beautiful diamond shell, lies a 4230 mAh battery, which Realme claims will give a good 15 hours of video playback, 18 hours of music, 10 hours of gaming or 18 hours of internet surfing. Let’s see if the phone lives up to these claims.
Performance
The Realme 2 runs on ColorOS 5.1 along with the Android Oreo 8.1 out-of-the-box. The ColorOS launcher is optimized with enhanced AI engine for faster face unlock, multi-tasking, navigation gestures, etc. Honestly, there aren’t major changes in the interface. Existing Oppo users will barely be able to differentiate between the two interfaces.
The user interface is clean, but there is no app drawer. Every installed app appears on the home screen. The screen is bright and colourful. There is a dedicated Theme store with a collection of interesting themes and wallpapers. Setting a particular theme applies changes to the system font, lock screen and icon set.
The fingerprint sensor on the Realme 2 is fast and accurate. It unlocked the phone, the moment we placed the finger on the sensor. We had also enrolled our face to unlock the phone. It was amazingly fast and precise. Realme claims that the AI Facial Unlock feature detects 128 identification points for faster processing.
The notification tap gives you access to quick settings and all your notifications. The recent tab is similar to Apple’s but a small “End all tasks” button is an addition. Split screen works fine for all compatible apps. There is a full screen gesture on the Realme 2. Enabling it replaces the three navigation buttons with three small lines at the bottom of the screen. They all serve the same purpose of navigating.
The combination of the Snapdragon 450 and the Adreno 506 graphics card delivered pretty average benchmark scores. The 3D Mark Slingshot Extreme gaming benchmark scored an OpenGL score of 449, whereas the Vulkan score was 399. The score is mediocre. The AnTuTu universal benchmark topped at 75,251. This isn’t very great either. The processor performance was noticed when we ran the Geekbench benchmark. The single-core and multi-core scores were 775 and 3623 respectively. All the scores were average, but not far behind the competitors.
Talking about the camera performance, the app looks similar to the one on iPhones. All the camera modes are lined below the shutter button with settings on the top of the screen. The rear camera clicks decent photos with enough details and contrast. In wide-angle photos, we noticed exaggerated sharpness and noise in the background. The HDR mode didn’t make very drastic changes to the results, but applied fine changes to shadows.
The portrait mode does a pretty good job. It differentiates the person from background, but the blur effect in the background can be too soft. The selfie camera gives options of Bokeh effect, beautification options and lots of animated stickers to customize selfies. We also took some video samples with the Realme 2. Videos are limited to 1080p at 30fps, but they had enough details. Colours appeared a bit pale, but can be tweaked in photo-editing apps if needed.
Verdict
The Oppo Realme 2 has a decent performance but not at par with other devices in its range. At a very low price tag, this phone has trendy features such as a notch display, face unlock, a dual-camera setup and a larger battery. The Realme 2 misses out with the lower resolution screen and the mid-end hardware. If you are purely looking for a low-priced phone with a trendy design and latest features, and you’re going to be using mostly mainstream apps, the Oppo Realme 2 is one to consider.
