The Realme 9 5G and the Realme 9 5G Speed Edition are new additions to the 9 series. These launches are a bit surprising given that the company has launched three other smartphones in the same series in the past two months. The Realme 9 series spans a wider price range than previous generations, with many more options to choose from. This is good, but it can also cause some confusion for potential buyers. I will mainly focus on the vanilla Realme 9 5G in this review to see how it compares to other smartphones in the same price range.
Realme 9 5G price in India
The Realme 9 5G costs Rs. 14,999 in India for the base variant with 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage. The other variant with 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage costs Rs. 17,499. This smartphone comes in two colors, Stargaze White and Meteor Black, and I had the former for this review.
Realme 9 5G Design
The Realme 9 5G has a familiar design and reminded me of other Realme phones I’ve used in the past. The large display has a camera hole in the top left corner. It has thin bezels on the top and sides while the chin is larger. It’s not distracting and is acceptable for a phone at this price. Realme has used plastic for the frame and back, keeping the weight down to 188g.
The power button on the right side has an integrated fingerprint scanner while the volume buttons are on the other side. The buttons are all positioned towards the center of the frame and are easy to reach even with one hand. The phone is remarkably slim, with a thickness of 8.55 mm.
The Realme 9 5G is slim and packed in a 5,000 mAh battery
At the bottom, the Realme 9 5G has a 3.5mm headphone jack, primary microphone, USB Type-C port and speaker. The top of the phone is completely blank. The back of the Realme 9 5G is flat with curved sides that make it comfortable to hold. It has three cameras housed in a rectangular module that protrudes slightly outwards. This causes the phone to rock on a flat surface, which I didn’t like.
The Stargaze White finish has patterns on the back that change color when viewed under light. The back panel does pick up smudges, but they are not easily visible. Realme includes a clear cover in the box.
Realme 9 5G Specifications and Software
The Realme 9 5G has a 6.5-inch LCD display with a full HD+ resolution and a maximum refresh rate of 90 Hz. Realme has chosen the MediaTek Dimensity 810 5G octa-core SoC. This phone has a 5,000mAh battery and supports 18W fast charging. You also get a compatible charger in the box. The tray on the Realme 9 5G has two nano-SIM slots and a microSD card slot for storage expansion. This phone also supports Bluetooth 5.1, dual-band Wi-Fi and six satellite navigation systems.
As for software, Realme UI 2.0 is based on Android 11. My device was running the March 2022 Android security patch. The user interface is simple and easy to get around, which is good, especially if you are a first-time Realme user. You can switch between the traditional three-button layout or swipe gestures for navigation. It also has features such as a smart sidebar, a floating carousel with shortcuts to your favorite apps and actions.
In the hole in the display is the 16 megapixel selfie camera
Realme UI 2.0 provides personalization options for changing the icon style, color scheme, fonts, and icon layout. In the Settings app, the Realme Lab section has experimental features that you can try. One such feature is Sleep Capsule, which allows you to stop using apps after a certain amount of time to help you sleep without distractions.
I did find a huge amount of bloatware pre-installed on the device. Some of these apps, such as FinShell Pay and Theme Store, sent spam notifications during the review period. On the plus side, third-party apps can be uninstalled to reclaim storage space.
Realme 9 5G performance and battery life
The Realme 9 5G offers decent performance and I have never noticed any slowdowns with regular use. The display switches between 60Hz and 90Hz, depending on what you’re doing. You can also lock it at 90 Hz which makes scrolling very smooth. You can choose between Vivid and Soft color modes, depending on your preference.
Watching videos was fun, but the single speaker didn’t produce a very engaging sound. The Redmi Note 11 is a direct competitor at this price, offering an AMOLED display and dual speakers, so not having them on the Realme 9 5G was a bit disappointing. The side-mounted fingerprint scanner on the Realme 9 5G was fast to read fingerprints and never required multiple attempts to unlock the phone. Facial recognition was also fast.
The fingerprint scanner is built into the power button and is easy to reach
My review unit had 6 GB of RAM and allowed me to reallocate up to 5 GB of storage as RAM. Multitasking was a breeze and I was able to jump between different apps without having to reload them in the background. The loading times of the app were also decent.
The phone performed well in synthetic benchmarks, scoring 372,099 points in AnTuTu. In Geekbench 5’s single-core and multi-core tests, it scored 609 and 1,830 points. In 3DMark’s Sling Shot test, the phone scored 3,475 points.
Casual games ran fine without any issues. Even Call Of Duty: Mobile ran on ‘Medium’ graphics and ‘Medium’ framerate settings by default and was playable without stuttering. I played the game for 15 minutes, resulting in a four percent drop in battery level, and the phone barely felt warm after that.
The Realme 9 5G has a triple camera setup on the back
The Realme 9 5G offers a very good battery life and you can easily use it for a day and a half on a full charge. In our HD video loop test, the phone managed to run for 16 hours and 38 minutes, which is a very good time. The included 18W charger can charge it to about 27 percent in 30 minutes and to about 52 percent in an hour. Fully charging the phone takes just over two hours.
Realme 9 5G Cameras
The Realme 9 5G has a primary camera of 48 megapixels with an aperture of f/1.8 that can store photos up to 12 megapixels by default. You don’t get an ultra-wide angle camera on the Realme 9 5G, which I think is a big miss. The other two are a black and white portrait camera and a macro camera. For selfies, it has a 16 megapixel camera. The camera app is reasonably loaded and has several shooting modes. It has quick switches for HDR and AI scene recognition. There’s a new Street Mode filter that applies a high-contrast and saturating look to the photos you take.
The performance of the daylight camera was decent. The phone was able to measure the light correctly and automatically activate HDR in bright scenes. I found the AI too aggressive with greens, making plants and trees look artificial. The primary camera’s output was decent when viewed as it was, but magnifying these shots revealed quite a few missing details. An ultra-wide angle camera would have given this phone more versatility.
Realme 9 5G daylight camera preview (tap to see full size image)
Close up pictures were good and the phone took sharp pictures as long as I was at a suitable distance. It also managed a decent background blur. Portrait shots were sharp and had very good edge detection, along with enough background blur, which can be adjusted before the shot is taken. Macro photos were average and limited to 2 megapixels in resolution.
Realme 9 5G camera samples; top to bottom: close-up, portrait, macro previews (tap to see full size previews)
The camera’s low-light performance was strictly average when shooting in normal ‘Photo’ mode. Photos looked soft and distant objects had a watercolor-like effect. Night mode made no significant difference to the output. It did produce slightly better detail in darker parts of a scene, but the output had a yellowish tint and looked like a filter had been applied. The phone also didn’t stabilize the shots, so vibrations caused unwanted blur.
Realme 9 5G low light camera and night mode camera previews (tap to see full size image)
Selfies looked good in both daylight and low light. In low light, the Realme 9 used a screen flash that helped to get better results. Portrait selfies were good, but the phone applied a beautification filter by default.
Realme 9 5G Selfie Portrait Previews (tap to see full size image)
Video recording tops out at 1080p for both the primary camera and selfie shooter. The Realme 9 5G does not stabilize footage by default. It does have an ‘Ultra Steady’ mode that crops the frame a bit to try and stabilize the footage, and this helped improve the video. Low light images had a slight grain.
Overall, the Realme 9 5G’s camera performance was good in daylight, while low-light conditions were challenging.
verdict
Realme has launched so many smartphones with a price below Rs. 20,000 lately, that the models and series overlap, making it difficult to choose the right one. The Realme 9 5G has a very simple design and the specs, while good, won’t leave buyers standing in line in my opinion. The Realme 9 5G shares a lot of hardware with the Realme 8S 5G (Review) and it looks like the company has cut some specs on that older model to get a lower price.
The 6GB RAM variant of the Realme 9 5G costs Rs. 17,499, while an equally specified variant of the Realme 8s 5G would cost just Rs. 500 more. The latter is said to offer better value for money as it has a higher resolution 64MP camera and 33W fast charging.
The base variant of Realme 9 5G costs Rs. 14,999 and is better value for money than the one I tested. If you’re a regular user you might consider this, but I’d suggest looking at the Redmi Note 11 instead as it has an AMOLED display, stereo speakers and 33W charging. It lacks 5G, but none of the network providers in India even offer it now, so it might not be a huge loss.
