The Realme XT became the most popular smartphone in the Philippines last week. This is largely due to its 64MP quad-camera setup.
I have been using the device for more than three weeks. Here is my full review of its design, display, performance, software, cameras, connectivity, security, and battery life.
The 6.4-inch Super AMOLED display of the Realme XT.
The Realme XT looks elegant especially the Pearl White color variant. It uses glass for the back cover with hyperbolic light streaks that appear in certain angles.
It’s also quite slim but this comes with a pretty substantial camera bump. The four rear cameras look awesome though. Of course, Realme proudly prints 64MP on top of the main camera while decorative yellow rings embellish the ultra-wide camera.
Realme XT with its hyperbolic light streaks at the back.
It has the familiar Realme layout with the power button on the right side; volume keys and SIM card tray on the left side; and loudspeaker, USB Type-C port and 3.5mm audio jack at the bottom.
On the front of the Realme XT is a 6.4-inch FHD+ Super AMOLED display. It has a small “Dew Drop” notch at the top for the selfie camera and narrow bezels on all four sides.
Bottom ports of the Realme XT.
The screen itself looks sharp and bright with vibrant colors and deep blacks. This isn’t surprising since it has a Full HD+ resolution and uses AMOLED technology.
It can save power with the new Dark Mode feature by going to the Settings > Realme Lab > Dark Mode. It can also display information while the screen is off with minimal effect on battery life by turning on the Screen-Off Clock feature in the Display Settings.
Playing Call of Duty Mobile on the Realme XT.
The Realme XT is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 712 AIE chipset and 8GB of RAM. In terms of raw processing power, it can achieve more than 180,000 points on Antutu Benchmark and solve 1 million digits of pi in 2.47 seconds using RealPi Benchmark.
You can download those apps and try them on your current smartphone to compare its performance with the Realme XT.
Opening apps is quick and scrolling through social media apps is smooth. I barely experienced any stutter while using the device. It uses the Color OS software with several customizations and additional features on top of Android 9 Pie.
| Game Tested | Average Frame Rate | Temperature |
|---|---|---|
| Mobile Legends | 60 fps | 38.8°C |
| Call of Duty | 58 fps | 37.5°C |
| NBA 2K20 | 44 fps | 39.4°C |
In terms of gaming performance, the Realme XT can run Mobile Legends: Bang Bang at a perfect frame rate of 60 fps and Call of Duty Mobile at 58 fps. However, it shows some frame drops during busy scenes in NBA 2K20 with an average frame rate of 44 fps.
These frame rate measurements were conducted with the graphics quality of each game set at the highest options. More details are available in my Realme XT Gaming Review including temperature measurements.
Overall, the Realme XT has powerful hardware for casual tasks and heavy gaming. It only falls short when compared to other smartphones equipped with flagship chipsets.
The Realme XT has a quad-camera setup at the back. It’s composed of a 64MP main camera, 8MP ultra-wide camera, 2MP macro camera, and 2MP depth camera.
Its 64MP main camera combines 4 pixels into 1 resulting in more detailed 16MP pictures. There’s an option to shoot using the full 64MP resolution which enables you to zoom in on the pictures and still gets sharp details.
Here’s a sample picture using the full 64MP resolution (original file):
Realme XT 64MP Sample Picture
This one is a cropped version of the original picture. From the original dimensions of 9216 x 6912 pixels, I divided that by 10 and got this 922 x 692 picture which is effectively a 10x zoom:
Cropped and zoomed-in version of the previous image.
Despite the 10x zoom crop, the resulting picture still has decent quality. This is useful when re-framing pictures of landscapes or even during gatherings and you want to ensure that every face is sharp and clear in the picture.
Take note that the 64MP pictures take up a lot of storage space with around 18MB of file size each. Use it only when absolutely needed.
Now, let’s take a look at some Realme XT sample pictures with the default camera settings:
Fruits captured by the Realme XT
Valley of Colors captured by the Realme XT
Strawberries captured by the Realme XT
The sharpness of the sample pictures is great and the colors look natural. If you’re not contented with the color saturation, just enable the Chroma Boost feature when taking pictures. Here a sample:
Valley of Colors with Chroma Boost by Realme XT
The Realme XT is also equipped with an ultra-wide camera. It can capture a wider scene which is useful when shooting landscapes.
Garden in ultra-wide and chroma boost by Realme XT
Burnham Park by Realme XT
Burnham Park by Realme XT in ultra-wide mode.
For low light photography, the Realme XT is equipped with a Nightscape mode. Here’s a sample for that:
Realme XT Nightscape mode sample picture.
The Realme XT can shoot 4K videos with decent quality. However, you need to keep it at the default resolution of 1080p to enable the electronic stabilization. It has a noticeable effect in reducing the shakiness of handheld videos.
Meanwhile, a 16MP front camera takes care of selfies. The picture quality is good in terms of sharpness and colors. You might want to disable the AI Beauty effect if it’s too much.
Author’s selfie using the Realme XT.
Overall, the Realme XT has a good set of cameras. The 64MP resolution is useful and not just some marketing gimmick. Nevertheless, leaving the default camera settings produce good-looking pictures.
More sample pictures are available in a related post: Realme XT Sample Pictures: 64MP in Baguio City!
The Realme XT comes with 128GB of internal storage. That’s already a lot but there’s still a dedicated microSD card slot that accepts up to 256GB memory cards.
It can connect to 4G LTE networks as well as dual-band Wi-Fi networks. The mobile data speeds I experienced were fast but it mostly depends on the cellular signal in your area.
The Realme XT has Face unlock and under-display fingerprint scanner.
For security, the Realme XT has an under-display fingerprint scanner which is quite fast and reliable. There’s also Face Recognition which can be more convenient.
Meanwhile, the sound quality of the phone’s earpiece and loudspeaker are both average. It’s enough for casual music listening in your own room but there’s a bit of distortion if the volume is set at 100%.
There are no free earphones inside the box but the pre-order promo comes with a free Realme Wireless Youth Buds. Otherwise, the Realme Buds is a more affordable alternative with decent audio quality.
The Realme XT and its VOOC charger.
The Realme XT has a 4,000mAh battery which lasts a whole day on a single charge. It usually has around 15% of battery capacity left after a day of use.
It scored 10 hours and 55 minutes on the PCMark Battery Life Test 2.0 with the screen brightness set at 50% and airplane mode turned on. That’s slightly better than the Realme 5 Pro’s 10 hours and 38 minutes.
There’s a VOOC Flash Charge 3.0 charger inside the box of the Realme XT. It quickly re-charges from 0% to 100% battery capacity in 1 hour and 25 minutes only.
The Realme XT and its box.
Overall, I highly recommend the Realme XT smartphone. It has an elegant design, good gaming performance, dependable cameras, and enough battery life.
However, there are several tough competitors in its price range. The Huawei Nova 5T and Xiaomi Mi 9T Pro both with flagship-level chipsets are only ₱2,000 more expensive.
Nevertheless, the Realme XT has the 64MP quad-camera system for the win!
