Okay, the segment of budget 5G phones is getting hotter day by day because today Realme launched their latest Realme 12x 5G. Now this could be priced around 11 to 12,000 rupees, and for that price, this could be one of the best budget 5G phones out there. You get a 120Hz display, dual speakers, and Dimensity 6100+, so the question that has to be asked is: can this be the go-to 5G phone on a budget? We shall find that out together.
But first you get a yellow box inside. You have to make it real branding. Well, I hope it’s real. You get the phone, a transparent case, some paperwork, type A to type C cable, a sim ejector tool, and a 45-watt charging brick. Now I would say there are a few interesting things here, like the design, for instance. You get this blue color, and it really looks good to the eye, but here’s the interesting thing. The realme 12x wears the same design style as the realme 12 series. You get that big circular camera with this zip-style design that looks like It looks like a bag; however, this is a polycarbonate bag; other phones in the Realme 12 series have vegan leather. Now, this is my personal opinion, but I really like phones with this style of camera island; it is right in the center.
So, the phone looks absolutely symmetrical. Besides this, the phone also has an IP54 rating, so it can survive slashes of water, or if you use it in rain, the phone should be fine. And here’s the best part about budget phones: you get a freaking headphone jack, and you also have an option for a microSD card. So, yeah, happiness is pretty affordable, I guess. Now coming to the front, you get a 6.72-inch full HD plus 120Hz display, and see here, I’ll play the trailer of Bade Miya Chote Miya. The colors, brightness, and all are pretty good, but the trailer looks like a desi version of Assassin’s Creed and Fast and Furious. Coming back to the phone, the phone has an advertised peak brightness of 950 nits. For a phone in this price range, this is absolutely fine. And not just this; you even get dual stereo speakers here, so listen to this. So, the audio is pretty loud, but there are a few things that I must mention about the display.
A, see this chin at the bottom; it is a bit big, so if you’re watching movies, it may be a bit distracting, and B, this is an LCD display. That being said, considering this has to be around $10,000 to $12,000, I really have no complaints here because if you get AMOLED, you see compromises in camera and performance. Camera is one area where Realme has been doing really well with the Realme 12 series. This Realme 12X has a 50-megapixel main camera, and the photos from it come out well. like the photos are sharp so you can even zoom in 2x and have a look at this shoe photo it looks good and this flower photo especially was really good like it was a bright sunny day the photo and the sky looks poppy however one small thing that we noticed is while we’re taking portrait mode photos it showed the blur on the viewfinder but as soon as you take the photo the photos doesn’t have the blur so i think this can be fixed via software update and of course of course you get a 2 megapixel depth camera and you get an 8 megapixel selfie camera that can record 1080p 30 fps and on the rear video you can record 1080p 30 fps and here’s how the video and mic quality is. The skin tone in selfies is good if you zoom in; there is a bit of oversharpening, but for an 8-megapixel camera, these are good selfies.
So overall, for the price, I would say that the camera is adequate. Now the Realme 12x comes with a Dimensity 6100 processor, and there will be three memory variants. 4GB, 64GB is the one that we have, and then there will also be an 8GB variant, but all of them will have 128GB of storage. Of course, you can expand it via the microSD card slot, and in our first impression, We didn’t see any lag or anything while using the phone; things were pretty smooth. Plus, we ran the N2-2 benchmark, which gives an overall score to the phone; it scored somewhere around 4,16,000, which is a lot better than the Snapdragon 695, which you used to get in this price range. So, playing casual games like Subway Surfer, the performance is smooth, but let’s see how far we can push it. Let’s try BGMI. For the price, I would say the performance is pretty normal. Now, one of the most talked-about aspects of any Realme phone is the software, so let’s talk about it. This comes with Android 14 right out of the box, and Realme has their own skin, Realme UI 5.0, working here, which for the most part is pretty fine, like you can do a three-finger swipe for split screen, and then you have this feature called the dynamic button, like you can set different actions for double tap or double press of the power button. And here’s a cool one, so you have this feature called double tap to scan, like if there is a QR code, I can just tap the back twice and it scans, no need to open the camera separately. pretty quick and handy. also Realme is promising 2 years of software updates and 3 years of security updates for a phone at this price. It is pretty nice. That being said, one area that kind of bugs me is the pre-installed app.
I get it; it is a budget phone, so there will be some pre-installed apps, right? Now, there are hot apps and hot games, so if you disable them, you can go to the app drawer, long press on the hot apps, then go to settings, and then just disable hot apps and hot games. And here’s another interesting thing: you get a 45W charger with the phone, which is nice because phones in this price range usually come with 20–22W charging. So, if you’re in a hurry, the phone can get charged to 50% in around half an hour. Plus, it has a 5000 mAh battery, so in normal usage, it should easily last you one full day. Which brings me to the burning question: is this a go-to 5G phone on a budget? Well, we have only used it for a couple of days, so we’ll need to test it further and compare it to other phones in this price segment. That being said, as per my first impression, considering the price point, I would say Realme has done a good job with a nice design, adequate performance, and a and a decent camera.
