Realme has been among the players in the Indian smartphones market to have done really well the past 5 years since their launch here. The company has offerings across price segments from 8,000 to 40,000. The realme 11 Pro+ 5G is a new mid-range device that’s aimed at providing high-end experience without having a price close to that. Priced at Rs. 29,999 (Rs. 27,999 for the base model) Let’s try and see if the 11 Pro+ is worth the hype or not.
Design: The realme 11 Pro+ comes with a familiar 6.7-inch curved display with a 0.65mm protective glass on the top. The device has rounded edges and the back is rounded towards the middle too, and reminds me of earlier generation Samsung Galaxy S series flagship devices in terms of looks. The back houses the circular camera at the top-centre spot, which is protruding but the placement means the device angles downwards when placed on a flat surface and doesn’t wobble when it’s typed on or used for most part of the screen. I have the Astral Black colour that has a shimmery back that I don’t mind. The other two colours (Sunrise Beige and Oasis Green) come with vegan leather backs that’s handmade, as per the company. The right side houses the volume buttons as well as the power/lock key near the middle. The bottom locates the USB type C port, loudspeaker (second outlet at the top) and the primary mic. The phone weighs slightly under 190grams and measures under9mm in thickness, it isn’t the most comfortable phone to carry around for most people, but I found it not that uncomfortable to use while on the go.
Display: The phone sports a 6.7-inch full HD+ (2412x1080) AMOLED display that supports refresh rates of up to 120Hz as well as HDR10+. It’s definitely one of the best, if not the best, displays we have seen on a realme smartphone so far. The AMOLED display does justice to high resolution photos and full HD videos, giving nice and bright output, HDR10+ for video streaming apps could be improved in terms of darker scenes and contrast, but then it might be a bit too much to ask for a phone priced at this point for now. The eye comfort mode seems to be tweaked and is now supported at the hardware level, and I really liked its implementation.
Camera: One of the things talked most about the company during the launch of the device was its triple camera system. You get a 200 MP (f/1.69) camera (which is a Samsung ISOCELL HP3 SuperZoom sensor), an 8MP (f/2.2) ultra-wide camera, and a 2MP (f/2.4) macro camera. There are a lot of modes that you can your hands on – Street photography, Astrophotography, Moon shot. The main camera takes really detailed and well stitched shots in daylight and slightly low-light scenes. It has in-sensor cropping mechanism for 2X and 4X zoom without loss in quality, and it seems to do it quite well with very little loss in sharpness of your subject, that too not always, considering there’s no telephoto lens. Shots at night seem to have improved a lot, with better colour and dynamic range, though I would say there’s certainly some room for further improvement when it comes to tracking your subject on the move. On the front, you get a 32MP (f/2.45) camera that takes clear and focused shots, but even though filters and retouch options are a little better in terms of keeping making it look natural, I would still prefer no filters and retouched completely off from it.
Performance and software experience: The device is equipped with a MediaTek 7050 chipset (octa core processor clocked at up to 2.6Ghz (launched recently), Mali-G68GPU coupled with 12GB of 256GB UFS3.1 storage (also comes in 8GB plus 128GB base configuration). It runs on realme UI 4.0 based on Android 13 with the April security patch installed. The phone’s look and feel are very much like previous realme phones (similar to how OxygenOS looks now), giving a lot customization options, including icons, colour shade for the system UI, lockdouble tap to lock and unlock, and so on. There are a lot of third party apps that come pre-installed out of the box, but you can thankfully uninstall almost all of them. Also, you need to spend a few minutes to switch off personal recommendations and notifications from under Settings in order to not get any ads or promotional stuff pushed in to your notification pane. In terms of performance, you an get your daily tasks done without facing any glitches here. Apps open and close quickly enough, scrolling with 120Hz enabled works reliable and so does switching from one app to another without having to wait for the app to resume from where you left it previously. For gaming, you can play the relaunched BGMI on the device with HDR graphics enabled, and the phone should be able to handle it. It doesn’t heat up much during video recording or while playing games, though it does while charging with several apps open in the background. One app I faced was the phone not removing Emails from the Outlook app in the notification shade but that seems to have been fixed with the latest update. Another one was the Gmail app not showing notifications for new Emails during first few days, but I haven’t encountered it since then.
Battery life: The phone packs a 5,000mAh battery and comes with a 100watt SuperVooc charger, lasting about one working day quite consistently even with a couple of hours of WiFi hotspot over5G, brightness at 40%, 120Hz refresh rate switch od, two Email Accounts, an hour of music playback and composing short Emails in between. The phone charges from 1% to full in about half an hour using the bundled charger, though every once in a while it does heat up asa bit with apps opened, but this didn’t happen every single time.
Connectivity and other stuff: The phone supports dual 5G and I found its 5G (only using one SIM card) to be pretty much in line with higher-end devices in terms of 5G network reception and switching to and from 4G/LTE. The speakers on this device are really loud and clear that you won’t mind using them for gaming and watching videos when alone. WiFi and Bluetoth worked as you expect them to and so does call quality, which doesn’t show any troubles when outside in a noisy place.
Verdict: The realme 11 Pro+ is a feature-packed smartphone that does a lot of heavyweight stuff well – really nice display, a set of capable cameras that can give a lot of other smartphones in this price range a run for their money, and a great battery life. Its performance is generally reliable and smooth, but I would like to see way fewer apps that push promotional notifications out of the box. If you’re looking for a new Android smartphone at or under Rs. 30,000, realme’s 11 Pro+ is the latest addition to the worthy list in the Indian market.
