Realme X2 Pro review: Phone stacked with latest specs

Realme, Chinese sister company to Oppo, Vivo and OnePlus, has been seeing spiralling success over the year. In 2019’s third quarter, the company shot from a 47th position in Q3 2018 to 7th in Q3 2019 globally. It is a company that has been growing 808 per cent. In India, Realme is at the fourth spot with a 14.3 per cent share, after Xiaomi (27.1 per cent), Samsung (18.9 per cent) and Vivo (15.2 per cent). In short, Realme is doing brilliantly. And, the company has no plans to take it easy anytime soon.

What they’re doing instead is to now take the first steps into premium territory, though to be frank it’s getting difficult to define what that premium segment really is anymore since smartphones that are more affordable than the crème de la crème are offering incredible value.

Latest entry

Realme’s newest phone, the Realme X2 Pro, is what the company describes as their ultimate flagship. That’s probably going to hold true until the next one, but for now, the X2 Pro is the latest shiny new thing — literally. We have the Neptune Blue to check out and it’s a nice enough colour though no longer distinctive.

The back of the phone looks nice and glossy without somehow being that much of a showcase for fingerprint smudges, but it isn’t very unusual looking. That is, except for the oddly placed Realme logo, which is off to one side just under the camera strip. It could have looked playful and whacky but actually just looks misaligned, sadly. It is still good looking. The phone is glass back and front, and looks as premium as it is aiming to. 

There’s a Lunar White variant of the X2 Pro which customers may like, white has now become a little more desirable after it took a slight break from being ubiquitous at one point in time. But the prettier colours belong to the Master Edition which will come in an unusual brick red and soft grey concrete. This is, by no means the lightest of phones. It houses a 4,000mAh battery so lightness would be difficult but at 199gms, it’s best used with both hands as a habit rather than stress out one hand.

On the front, the Realme X2 Pro does not look unusual either, but that is not to say it does not look good. There are no curved glass edges and the display has a small, gently curved notch which has been put in so as to not make it too intrusive at all. The 6.5-inch Super HDR 10+ AMOLED display is nice and crisp at 2400x1080 ppi resolution.

Super power

However, the crowning glory is that it comes with the 90Hz refresh rate feature. OnePlus can no longer lay exclusive claim to that trick. You can drop the refresh to 60Hz from settings but if you’re looking to save battery, there’s probably no need to bother with whatever minimal difference this would make. 

Realme has made sure you don’t really have to think of the battery very much because not only is it a big one but the marquee feature of this phone is that it debuts the fastest charging setup with its 50W charger. This Super VOOC charging takes the device from Zero to 100 in about 30 minutes, a fact that was demonstrated on stage by pitting Realme X2 Pro against iPhone, Galaxy Note 10, and Huawei P30 Pro, which all lagged far behind in charging level.

We timed the charging here and the claim turned out to be quite right: the phone was charged from sub-5 to 100 per cent in half an hour. You will need to use both the cable and the charging adaptor that comes with the device for this speed. The phone has pretty good sound, a super fast in-display fingerprint sensor, and no extra memory slot.

More specifications

The Realme X2 Pro runs on Snapdragon 855+ like the OnePlus 7T Pro and also like it uses UFS 3.0 storage for faster writing of files. The storage options are 8GB and 128GB , and 12GB with 256GB. It runs on Android 9 Pie with ColorOS 6.1 interface, which to my mind is its biggest drawback.

I have long found this interface disorganised and messy looking with settings in a seemingly random list and elements that don’t sit well together, on top of unnecessary bloatware like UC Browser, Helo, Opera News and more. But hope is on the horizon as work on developing a better version of the interface is underway.

On the X2 Pro, Realme has put in the 64MP primary lens it debuted on the Realme XT . Its sensor is a Samsung ISOCELL GW1 with, f/1.8 aperture. I found the results from this camera pretty nice with accurate enough real-life colours though a little over-sharpening.

By default you get 16MP photos after all the pixels are combined and processed with algorithms. You can take a direct 64MP photo as well, if you select the option from the camera’s menu. Tap on the on-screen icon and you can start to zoom in on a subject. 2X from this 13MP lens with f/2.4 aperture is optical. After that there is a hybrid for up to 5X and then it’s software all the way to 20X. Keep tapping and you get to the ultra-wide 8MP lens with f/2.2 aperture. It’s nice enough and does not show a sudden drop in quality. There’s a 2MP depth sensor which performs no better than average.

The front camera is a 16MP with f/2.0 aperture and a whole lot of beauty settings, some of which are turned on by default, so you may want to review those to see whether you want to look like yourself or a ‘better version’ of you.

The Realme X2 Pro is value for money that’s difficult to argue with. But it does have competition. There is the OnePlus 7T snapping at its heels, for one. Several others, like the Redmi K20 is in the same territory.

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