Realme 9 5G price in India
The Realme 9 5G price in India is Rs 14,999 which comes with the 4GB RAM and 64GB storage variant of this smartphone. At the same time, the price of its 6 GB RAM and 128 GB storage variant is Rs 17,499. The smartphone is available in two colors in which the option of Stargaze White and Meteor Black is available. It had the Stargaze White variant.
realme 9 5g design
Realme 9 5G has a familiar design and visually reminds me of all the company’s smartphones I’ve used before. A hole for the camera has been placed in the left corner of the large screen of the phone. The edges at the top and sides are thin but the chin is thick. It doesn’t burn much and it goes on smartphones in this price range. Realme has used plastic for the frame and rear panel, so the company has managed to limit its weight to 188 grams, which feels quite light.
The power button is available on the right side of the phone, on which the fingerprint scanner is located. The volume buttons are given on the other side. All buttons are easy to reach when used with one hand. The phone is quite slim and its thickness is only 8.55mm.
The bottom of the phone has a 3.5mm headphone jack, a main microphone, a USB Type-C port, and a speaker. While the upper side is completely blank. The back of the phone is completely flat and the edges are curved, making the phone very comfortable to hold. There are three cameras in the rectangular module at the rear, which feels slightly protruding. Due to this, the phone does not stand stable on a flat surface, which I did not like.
The back panel features a stargaze white finish with a pattern that changes color when seen in the light. The panel has fingerprints but it is not easily visible. A transparent phone case is also available inside the box.
Realme 9 5G specifications and software
Realme 9 5G has a 6.5-inch LCD display with Full HD+ resolution. It has a 90Hz refresh rate. The weight of the phone’s performance is on the eight-core MediaTek Dimensity 810 5G processor. The device has a 5000 mAh battery, which supports 18W fast charging. The charger comes in the box. The SIM tray has space for two Nano SIMs and a microSD card. Bluetooth 5.1, dual band Wi-Fi and 6 satellite navigation systems have been included in this phone.
Talking about the operating system, it runs on Realme UI 2.0 based on Android 11. Android security patch of March 2022 was placed on my unit. The user interface is quite easy especially when you are using a realme phone for the first time. You can toggle between the three-button layout or swipe gestures for navigation. It also has the Smart Sidebar feature, which provides quick access to your favorite apps and actions.
In Realme UI 2.0, you get a variety of customization options, in which you can change the icon style, color scheme, font, and icon layout. You also get experimental features to test in the Realme Lab section within the Settings app. One such feature is Sleep Capsule, which allows you to stop using apps after a certain period of time, so you can sleep without disturbance.
I found a lot of bloatware pre-installed on the device. During the review, I kept getting spam notifications from some apps like FinShell Pay and Theme Store, but you can also remove third-party apps.
Realme 9 5G performance and battery life
The performance of the Realme 9 5G was quite good in general use. The refresh rate keeps changing between 60 and 90 Hz depending on what you are doing on the phone. You can also lock it at 90Hz for smoother scrolling.
The experience of watching videos on the phone was good, but the sound from the single speaker was not very loud. In this case, the Redmi Note 11 gives it some stiff competition, in which it has been given dual speakers along with the AMOLED display. Its side-mounted fingerprint scanner is pretty fast and it took no more than one attempt to unlock the phone. The facial recognition feature of the phone is also very fast.
My review unit had 6 GB of RAM, plus 5 GB of storage that can be converted to virtual RAM. Multitasking is fluid on the phone. I was able to quickly switch between apps without reloading any apps in the background. The loading time of the phone app is also less.
Talking about the benchmark scores, the phone managed a score of 372,099 points on AnTuTu. It scored 609 on the Geekbench 5 single-core test and 1830 on the multi-core test. The phone achieved a score of 3475 on the 3DMark Sling Shot test.
Common games ran smoothly on the phone. Even Call Of Duty: Mobile defaults to medium graphics and medium frame rates. I played the game on the phone for 15 minutes, then the battery was down to 4 percent. The heat on the phone was almost non-existent.
Realme 9 5G offers a good battery life and you can comfortably use it for about a day and a half on a full charge. The phone lasted 16 hours and 38 minutes on our HD video loop test, which is a pretty good time. The 18W charger that comes with the phone charges it to 27 percent in 30 minutes and 52 percent in an hour. It takes a little over 2 hours for the phone to fully charge.
Realme 9 5G cameras
Realme 9 5G has a 48MP primary camera, which has an f/1.8 aperture. Capture 12MP photos by default. The ultra-wide camera is not included in the phone. Its other two sensors are black and white portrait and macro. The phone has a 16-megapixel selfie camera. Many features and shooting modes are available in the camera app. A quick switch button is also provided for HDR and AI mode. The phone also has a street mode that provides high contrast and high saturation effects when taking photos.
The phone’s daylight camera performance is good. It captured the light well, and HDR mode kicked in automatically when brightness was high. AI mode felt more aggressive in terms of green and made trees and other green things look too artificial. The phone’s main camera takes good shots, but details drop slightly when zoomed in. The ultra-wide camera should have been on the phone so much could have been done.
Close-ups of the phone were good, and background blur held up well, too. Portrait shots were sharp, and edge detection was good with background blur. Macro shots were average, and the resolution was just 2 megapixels.
The phone’s camera performance in low-light conditions in normal photo mode was pretty average. The photos looked soft and there was a water color effect on the distant objects. There was no significant difference even after using night mode. Although it brought out detail in the darker areas, it did get a yellow tint, as if a filter had been used. The shots were also stabilized so blur was also visible.
Selfies looked good even in daylight or low light. Using the screen brightness in low light gave good results. Portrait selfies were decent, but the phone used the beautify filter by default.
The phone can record videos up to a maximum of 1080p with the main camera and the selfie camera. By default, it does not stabilize the footage. It has an Ultra Steady mode, which crops the frame slightly to stabilize the footage, which improves video. Slight grains were visible in low-light images.
Overall, the Realme 9 5G’s camera performance was decent during the day, but the phone struggled in low light.
Verdict
Realme has launched so many smartphones in the sub-Rs 20 lakh range that it becomes difficult to separate their models and series and not understand which phone to choose. Simple design and specs have been given in Realme 9 5G which I think will not attract much. The hardware features of the phone are quite similar to Realme 8S 5G. It seems that the company has lowered some of the specifications of the older models to keep the price of the phone down.
The 6GB RAM variant of the Realme 9 5G is priced at Rs 17,499, compared to the more expensive Rs 500 Realme 8s 5G with similar specifications. Realme 8s 5G has a 64-megapixel camera and 33W fast charging, making it cheaper.
The base variant of Realme 9 5G comes for Rs 14,999. I found a better value for money than the unit I tested. If you are a simple user then you can check out this phone. But I suggest you go for Redmi Note 11 as it also has an AMOLED screen, stereo speakers and 33W fast charging support. It does not have 5G connectivity, but no network provider provides this service in India at the moment. So there is nothing wrong with getting a Redmi phone.