Realme X2 Pro: A Silent Beast
One of the most unsung heroes of Indian Smartphones
After a long time, I saw a perfect ‘extremely’ value for money smartphones that checkmarks almost all the necessary requirements and luxuries too. It is none other than Realme’s First Flagship with SuperVOOC 50W Charging and one of my most favorite Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 855 Plus, a beast in itself.
What’s inside the Box
- The smartphone itself.
- Charging Adapter (50 W SuoerVOOC)
- USB-A to USB-C cable
- TPU case
- SIM ejector tool
- Quick start guide
Design
Realme X2 Pro’s design is the same as the design of Oppo Reno Ace and it is the same in dimension, ports, speaker grill everything (I even use a Reno Ace Cover :P).
The back panel with the curved rear glass creates an ergonomic feel in the hand, and thanks to the flat front glass, accidental touches are minimal. The phone itself is very easy to grip for 2.5D curved glasses and it doesn’t feel like it’s going to fall out of the hand in a hurry. It has Gorilla Glass 6.0 at back. On a similar note, the right-side mounted power button, and left-mounted volume buttons are very tactile and provide a crisp feel, with no wobble. On the front, it is firing a dual stereo speaker the beautiful FHD+ Super Amoled Display with a waterdrop notch.
Display
- 6.5 Inch Display
- Resolution: 2400 x 1080 (20:9)
- Waterdrop Notch
- 402 PPI
- Super AMOLED Panel
- Fluid AMOLED 90 HZ Panel
- Gorilla Glass 5
- Brightness: 500 nits & 708 nits at Max Auto
At over 480 nits, the Realme X2 Pro’s display gets surprisingly bright, making outdoor viewing easy as pie, even on the rare sunny days here in England! As for sharpness, I found the X2 Pro to perform admirably, providing more than adequate detail in all scenarios tested, including reading fine text from a zoomed-out article, viewing a website on Desktop Mode, and more such unorthodox scenarios.
Software & Specifications
The device came with the ColorOS 6.1 from Oppo but got the update of Realme UI within a couple of months. As of December 2020, it runs on Realme UI 1.0 based on Android 10. Though some reviews say that the device would stop on Android 10 but from some tweets of Madhav, CEO of Realme India we came to know that it will be getting the Android 11 stable update on first or latest by the second quarter of 2021.
Overall the feel of Realme UI is quite good. It needs some changes like fixing the notification bar for notifications in night mode, little more accurate performance of the Auto-Brightness Sensor. But these are nitpicking, not like a deal-breaker or something.
Realme X2 Pro is a proper flagship which means it uses Qualcomm’s top-end processor — the Snapdragon 855+ SoC. This is the same chip used in several mid-range flagships such as the Asus ROG Phone 2 and the OnePlus 7T. It’s a slightly souped-up revision of the original Snapdragon 855, with higher clock speeds for the single fast CPU core and the GPU.
For storage, it uses the UFS 3.0 storage standard. Realme also says it has used a new tactile linear vibration motor for more nuanced haptic feedback, and a vapor chamber cooling system for the CPU. Other specifications include dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 5, support for three satellite navigation systems, and all the expected sensors.
The Realme X2 Pro lacks expandable storage. It can accommodate two Nano-SIMs, and dual 4G VoLTE is supported. You also get an optical in-display fingerprint sensor and customizable unlock animations. Face unlock is supported and works well even in low light. The X2 Pro offers NFC and contactless payment options, although the latter isn’t of much use here in India since services such as Google Pay don’t use it. You can use it in some Visa Payments having touch to pay feature and can share your content in real-time with the Android Beam feature that comes with NFC.
Performance
The powerful processor in the Realme X2 Pro allows it to handle heavy games and multitasking. I tried heavy titles such as PUBG Mobile and Call of Duty: Mobile, both of which ran just fine with the visuals cranked up. COD Mobile reached 92 fps at the peak which is excellent, to be honest. Games such as Rayman: Adventures can also take advantage of the 90Hz display. The phone did get warm when we were playing games, but not to an uncomfortable extent. Benchmark numbers were pretty solid too. We got a score of 4,59,562 points in AnTuTu, while the T-Rex test in GFXbench returned 60fps.
Battery & Charging
The X2 Pro has a 4000mAh battery, which was dependable. On average, we easily got about a day and a half of runtime on a single charge. This would dip when we were testing the camera heavily or playing a lot of games, and even then we got through a full day comfortably. In our battery loop test, the Realme X2 Pro ran for a total of 14 hours and 49 minutes, with the screen set to 90Hz.
To be honest, I was a bit disappointed with the Screen on Time but that disappointment was compensated by 101 percent with its out of world Charging. With the bundled SuperVOOC 50W charger, we managed to fully charge the battery from zero in only about 31 minutes. The good news is that you’re not just limited to Realme’s proprietary charging standard, as the X2 Pro also supports Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 3.0 and USB Power Delivery for relatively fast charging.
Cameras
The Realme X2 Pro uses the same 64-megapixel f/1.8 primary camera as the Realme XT, but with different companion sensors. The 2-megapixel macro camera has been ditched for a more useful 13-megapixel telephoto camera. This is capable of 2X optical zoom, 5X hybrid zoom, and a total of 20X digital zoom. There’s also an 8-megapixel wide-angle camera with an f/2.2 aperture and a 115-degree field of view, and finally a 2-megapixel depth sensor. There’s no optical stabilization on any of the cameras, but you do get electronic stabilization for video.
Primary Lens
The Primary camera is a 64 MP Lens with Samsung’s very own GW1 Sensor and f/1.8 aperture with a 1/1.72 sensor size that helps in comparatively less brightened scenarios.
The primary sensor captures 16-megapixel oversampled photos by default. Under good light, our samples looked detailed. Colors were vivid and HDR did a good job of balancing the exposures of light and dark areas. Objects to the sides of the frame exhibited noticeable grain but objects in the focus area didn’t have this issue. You can shoot at the full 64-megapixel resolution if you need a higher degree of zoom later on. Portrait mode worked well too, with good edge detection.
Telephoto Lens
The telephoto camera is a 13MP sensor with an f/2.5 aperture. It is a 5P lens with the support of 5X Hybrid Optical Zoom and 20X Hybrid zoom.
Ultrawide Lens
Realme X2 Pro has an 8MP 115° Ultrawide Camera with an f/2.2 aperture. It is a 5P lens.
The ultra-wide lens is a mixed bag. The level of detail is satisfactory, and I think the snapper does okay in general but not as impressive as the Primary Sensor at any cost.
Portrait Lens
And last but not the least, the 2MP Portrait lens with f/2.4 aperture. Portraits taken with this phone are awesome! In this mode, the main camera resolves a lot of detail, it produces natural skin tones, and the edge detection is excellent. Even with a more complex background and insufficient lighting, portraits come out pretty nice. These are some of the best portraits around, especially considering the price point of the Realme X2 Pro. There’s also a bokeh slider that’s set to 60% at default, and as you go more aggressive on the background blur, the software tends to make more mistakes.
Nightscape
Regular photos taken at the night can be easily contrasted to photos taken with the Super Nightscape. Colors get a slight boost, and highlights and shadows are restored. The photos are noticeably improved tonally with an admirable Dynamic Range. Depth is well maintained as compared to regular mode. The night mode photos also look sharper, but there’s a caveat.
Upon closer inspection on a computer screen, imperfections start to pop up. There’s noticeable oversharpening, and some small details look rendered out of thin air. Keep in mind that those imperfections can be spotted only on the big screen. When looking at the images on the phone or on social media, Nightscape seems pretty competent. It’s also a step in the right direction as far as Realme’s Nightscape goes. It’s the best iteration tested on a Realme so far when compared to past models. It just needs a little more work to become competitive
Ultra Macro
There’s a dedicated macro mode, but instead of having a macro lens, the handset uses the autofocus ultra-wide snapper, which can focus from as close as 2.5cm from the subject. The detail is excellent, the autofocus is blazing fast unlike other phones in this segment and it does a pretty good job even when light is limited.
Front Camera
Realme X2 Pro has a 16M front camera, supports four in one & a super nightscape mode too. Even without autofocus, selfies look pretty nice — detailed, with a wide dynamic range and natural-looking skin tones.
I tested it in low-light conditions and in an extremely dark room, too. The Nightscape does its job pretty well, and photos look like they are taken with the flash turned on (we didn’t have any lights on). It’s safe to say that Nightscape photos are sharper, and they restore the subject’s face in the dark and capture surprisingly natural skin tones.
Videos
Thanks to the powerful SoC, the Realme X2 Pro can shoot up to 4K 60fps videos. Video quality was good in daylight, and image stabilization worked decently well, even at 4K. With Ultra Steady enabled, the view from the primary camera is cropped heavily, and it shoots at 1080p 60fps by default. The stabilization was once again decent but not great, as minor jerkiness was still noticeable. Videos shots using the wide-angle camera had decent detail and was also stabilized.
Slow-motion video is available at 480fps and 960fps, besides the standard 240fps. Higher frame-rate videos are recorded at 720p, so image quality was quite average. The phone can only shoot short bursts at 960fps.
The X2 Pro needs a lot of improvement when it comes to video recording in low light. Whether at 1080p or 4K, there was lots of noise and artefacting in dark areas. We also noticed some unnatural artefacting around light sources, and the stabilization caused a very evident shimmer when we walked. The wide-angle camera shot considerably darker footage, due to its narrower aperture.
Verdict
The Realme X2 Pro is a great offering at Rs. 29,999. You essentially get most of the features of a Flagship, barring the leaner software, at a much more affordable price. The higher-end variant is still good value, as even at Rs. 33,999 for the 12GB RAM version, it’s still better priced than many Flagship Killers.
Of course, this phone isn’t without its shortcomings. It does heat up quite a bit when playing heavy games and with extensive camera use. We didn’t find the selfie camera to be particularly impressive, and low-light video performance, in general, could be better. Apart from these issues, there’s a lot to like about the X2 Pro. You get excellent build quality, a vivid 90Hz display, a top-of-the-line processor, and a versatile set of cameras with a useful zoom function, in favorable lighting of course. Let’s not forget the dual stereo speakers, super-fast charging, and the fact that you still get a headphone jack, unlike 7T or others in this Segment.
Overall, the Realme X2 Pro makes an excellent choice in the Flagship Killer Segment, if you’re looking for that level of design and performance but didn’t want to spend so much.