Review: Realme 2 Pro, the right time to enter

Pakistan's smartphone market has recently seen a surge of new entrants with many International companies finding an untapped marketplace in the country.

The latest entry to join the smartphone bandwagon is China's Realme.

After success in neighbours India, the Chinese brand has set its eyes on Pakistan. The company sent in their flagship for review purposes and before we venture into the details, here a quick look at its specs.



Powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 processor, Adreno 512 GPU with 8GB of RAM and 128 GB of internal storage, the Realme 2 Pro has a 6.3-inch display, Android Oreo OS and a 3500 mAh battery.

Design



The device certainly gets plus points for its design. The full-screen model follows the footsteps of modern smartphone designs with its round edges and slim bezels. A little bulky in its feel, the device's back has an interesting glass-like effect dubbed as the dewdrop effect by the company.

The 6.3-inch Full HD display owing to its gorilla glass insertion has an overall glossy feel both towards the front and back.

Performance

With 8GB of RAM, the device is definitely poised to do well performance wise. Although the average user may not be able to tell, the device packs a powerhouse in terms of combining the Snapdragon processor and RAM.

Switching between the apps and testing out hardcore games such as PUBG makes you understand the dynamics behind the processor. The graphics accelerator definitely helps with gaming purposes with PUBG being the main beneficiary.

The target audience seems to be the younger generation with an emphasis on the hardware. The Fingerprint sensor is surprisingly pretty smooth with facial recognition installed in the device as well. The UI overall was spread out smoothly in the device and the device was quick in terms of response rates.

In terms of audio, the single speaker isn't as loud as you would like and remains one of the backward features of the device along with the lack of a USB-C port.

Camera

Diverging a little bit from the performance, the Camera has a decent outcome. A 16MP + 2MP Dual camera with an f/1.7 aperture does pretty well for bright shades. The daylight outcome especially of landscape subject matters was pretty detailed as was the bokeh portrait mode. Blurring out backgrounds, focusing more on subjects and enhancing objects, the camera hits all the right notes. The selfie camera has decent quality as well for all those looking to stream.

For low light pictures, the device struggled a bit but for its price, it has a decent output.

Price



Priced at Rs 43,999 on Daraz.pk, the device is slightly pricy if you consider it a midranger. However, in terms of the flagship comparisons, the device is reasonably priced.

Whether being sold exclusively on Daraz helps market the brand more exclusively depends purely on the target audience but for now what matters is whether its the right time to enter Pakistan's smartphone domain.



The 8GB RAM is arguably its most important selling point. Whether that is enough to sway customers remains to be seen but for now, it is important to understand Pakistan's average customer likes to get their hands on a flagship and with other flagships becoming more expensive, Realme stands a decent chance.

The company, however, does need to understand that the dynamics of Pakistan's smartphone market are quite different from foreign markets. The same success model may not work here and Realme has to adjust according to the dynamics of the country. Regardless, there's a lot of market space to be captured in the country.