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Realme has done the unthinkable — created a whole new design language for the modern-day smartphone. And incredulous still is the price it comes at, despite being the brand’s flagship. I’ve had a couple of weeks with this snazzy new smartphone and here’s how it fares.
Design
The realme 11 Pro+ showcases a design that I am not going to forget in a hurry. And, nor will you. The decision to onboard high-end luxury fashion designer, Matteo Menotto, to craft this new flagship’s design details seems to have paid off impressively.
Not only has he delivered a design that really stands out, he has also done away with the concept of a plastic or glass rear design and adorned it with a luxe-looking vegan leather finish. Three colours are available — Sunrise Beige, Oasis Green, and Astral Black — of which I got the green variant. With a sage green tone, the design includes a distinct two-toned 3D-weave running down in the middle of the back. The vegan leather finish also makes for a confident grip, even on sweaty summer days.
The conspicuous camera module — bang at the centre — catches my eye. With a very symmetrical camera layout — which I elaborate on further down — the finish here also mirrors the green tones of the smartphone.
Despite a massive 6.7-inch AMOLED display and weighing around 189 grams, the phone still feels lightweight to use. Messaging, binge-watching and doom-scrolling feels smooth as silk, thanks to the display offering upto 120 Hz refresh rates. Realme continues its trend of curved vision displays, which wraps around the edges maximising the real estate on-screen. It makes watching YouTube shorts and Netflix shows quite enjoyable — actually, any media for that matter. The only issue is that while framing videos I see a bit of a warp-effect around the edges.
Camera quality
The circular camera module on the realme 11 Pro + houses three lenses — the 200 MP OIS SuperZoom Camera bang at the centre, an ultra-micro camera to its left and an 8 MP ultra-wide camera to the right.
Shots taken outdoors, in daylight, are vibrant and sharp. It also handles contrasts fairly well, with a high dynamic range that delivers in the pictures I took of dark clouds on an otherwise sunny day. The skin tones, and especially textures, are (thankfully) fairly accurate once I remember to turn-off the beauty mode, which is on by default. Shooting stills from a moving vehicle also delivered pretty stable results, driven by low shutter speed. Both videos and shots taken at night are well-exposed, with rich colour tones and minimal noise. The 4x zoom and beyond, however — in both videos and stills — ended up delivering poorly-rendered subjects, with a fair bit of noise.
For added effects, I have the Lonely Planet filters available once I switch to Street mode. Only three of these are officially co-branded — Cinematic, Crisp, and Tranquil — and almost all are reminiscent of early 2010s-era Instagram filters.
A “moon mode” makes its debut on a realme smartphone, which doesn’t get a dedicated button but kicks in once I point it at the moon, thanks to AI.
Tech Specs
The realme 11 Pro + flagship runs on a MediaTek Dimensity 7050 5G chipset. Based on Android 13, it has realme UI 4.0 as an overlay. I got to use the hugely customisable always-on display (AOD), yet again, which I love! There’s nothing better than not having to unlock my phone and open to Swiggy to check how far my pizza is. That and Spotify on the AOD makes life much easier for me. The review unit I used hads a whopping 12 GB RAM and 256 GB storage space.
Throughout my couple of weeks of using Outlook, Uber, Netflix and casual gaming, I neither faced any lags nor any heating issues. There is a fair bit of bloatware that I find on booting up, which needs 2-3 minutes of uninstalling to get rid of. Realme has also promised 2 years of OS upgrades and 3 years of security patch.
Battery life
As has been the case with most realme smartphones, battery life was outstanding. The smartphone is powered by a 5,000mAh battery and ships with a 100W SUPERVOOC charger for fast-charging. With moderate usage, the smartphone stayed on for easily 1.5 days before I had to plug it in. The charging time was quick and efficient at about 30 minutes to power up fully from zero.
Verdict
At this price point, I’d be hard-pressed to find another smartphone that delivers on all fronts — design, performance, and battery life. There is a bit of bloatware and nuances of photography where it doesn’t deliver well. Apart from this, there’s very little holding the realme 11 Pro + back from potentially being your next favourite affordable flagship.
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