Realme has been steadily making its presence felt in the country ever since it officially separated from OPPO last year. The brand officially launched in the Philippines back in November 2018. And from there, they established their presence in 4,500 retail stores nationwide. And alongside that, they have 25 service centers, 10 concept stores and 15 regional offices across the archipelago. Suffice to say that if you already own one of their phones or are about to buy one, there’s no shortage of places to check their phones. And when you need servicing, there’s plenty of that to visit too.

In as little words as possible, their ultimate goal is for every Pinoy to be able to buy a smartphone that’s on par with today’s demands for performance vis a vis price. “Realme is committed to offering powerful performance, stylish design and sincere service andto exploring more possibilities with smartphones.“

And just recently, they announced their latest offerings – the Realme 5 and 5 Pro.

The phones are not your flagship killers based on the spec sheets. They are, to me, mid-range phones. Don’t expect these to outdo and outmatch any of the phones in the market that is equipped with the latest SoCs. They are both in a different segment of phones altogether.

However, the 5 Pro is being positioned as a gamer’s phone. I don’t think it’s for Triple-A titles though. Realme is partnered right now with Moonton. Moonton is the company behind the very popular Mobile Legends game. I’m not a mobile gamer so I can’t really say for sure how the 5 Pro performs. If I can get hold of a review unit, I can probably test it with other games that I know how to play. Until then, it’ll be more of how I imagine it to perform.

Outside of the gaming aspect though, I want to drive the phone to the edges in terms of how great it handles in-phone image and video editing. How does it perform if and when I load up a RAW file and start editing there? 
The phone’s tech specs are readily available at their official website. The Realme 5’s here and the 5 Pro’s here.

Realme had a media event recently here in Davao and I was able to get a short hands-on time with both phones. The first thing that I had to check out was the camera systems. The 5 Pro uses Sony’s IMX586 imaging sensor. And if we based it all solely on the tech sheet from Sony, there’s a fairly high expectation for high quality imagery from the Realme 5 Pro. I can’t say for sure about it yet given the very limited time I had during that media event with Realme. I’m curious how far I can push the sensor in the 5 Pro in terms of photography.

There’s a lot more to ask about these phones in terms of how it’s being positioned in the market. The bottomline, for me, here is whether it’ll be worth every peso by how it will perform.

Will it be a worthy buy for your hard-earned cash or are you better off checking out other phones?

I hope to find out myself so I can tell you.

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