Realme 10 Pro+ 5G Review: Has This Realme Phone Lost the Mid-Range Crown?

Realme 10 Pro+ 5G is the latest smartphone from the Chinese smartphone manufacture to launch in India. The company launched the successor to the Realme 9 Pro+ 5G on December 8, with a new design and changes to its internals. With the Realme 10 Pro+ 5G, you get a curved AMOLED display with support for streaming HD content, which could make it an ideal entertainment device. How does the handset compare to its predecessor, the Realme 9 Pro+ 5G?

On this week's episode of Gadgets 360 podcast Orbital, host Akhil Arora talks to Reviewer Pranav Hegde and Executive Editor Jamshed Avari to learn more about Realme's latest mid-range smartphone that was launched in India earlier this month.

Pranav tells us that the Realme 10 Pro+ 5G has a new design on the rear panel that makes it look very busy, and that it is a fingerprint magnet. Thankfully, Realme has done away with the “Dare to Leap” branding on the rear panel, unlike previous models. This year, you'll only see the Realme logo at the back, he says.

When we discussed the Realme 9 Pro+ on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast earlier this year, we learned that the handset offered the best camera performance in its price segment, which isn't the case with its successor. Jamshed explains that thanks to inflation, if a phone manufacturer wants to sell the next version of their smartphone at the same price, they will have to make certain choices with the phone's hardware.

Pranav says that despite ongoing inflation concerns and supply chain issues, Realme has managed to keep the price the same as its predecessor at the cost of some features, such as optical image stabilisation and the 3.5mm headphone jack. Jamshed explains that the removal of the latter on any smartphone could be related to keeping costs down, offering better ingress protection, or improved battery capacity.

Realme 10 Pro+ 5G Review: If Looks Were Everything

The Realme 10 Pro+ 5G is one of the best smartphones in its price range, in terms of display quality, according to Pranav. He says that content looks great on the curved AMOLED screen, which comes with support for Widevine L1 for HD content streaming, even if it lacks support for HDR10+ content. He also didn't experience any “ghost touches” on the curved edges.

How does the Realme 10 Pro+ 5G fare in terms of performance? The handset is equipped with a MediaTek Dimensity 1080 SoC, which is the successor to the Dimensity 920 chipset. On paper, it seems like a big upgrade, Pranav says, but the difference in performance is only noticeable in the GPU department. You can check out detailed benchmark scores in our review linked above.

Between January and March, we can expect to see several new handsets launch in this price segment, starting with the Redmi Note 12 Pro series on January 5. We'll be testing out the smartphone, which is equipped with a 200-megapixel rear camera, once it is launched in the country. It will also be interesting to see how the Realme 10 Pro+ 5G fares against upcoming phones from Xiaomi, iQoo, and Motorola in 2023.

On the software front, the Realme 10 Pro+ 5G comes with Android 13 out-of-the-box, and will get software updates for two years. However, Pranav says the most disappointing aspect of this phone and Realme UI 4.0 is that it adds so much bloatware that you get lost when looking for something in your app drawer.

Realme 10 Pro 5G and 10 Pro+ 5G First Impressions: New 5G Champs?

Bloatware — or unwanted apps — weren't just cluttering the Realme 10 Pro+ 5G — Pranav spotted several apps with suggestive content showed to the user. Jamshed said that these apps were designed to incentivise users to make payments with suggestions of video chats or meeting people in real life. The apps also had strange descriptions, euphemistically designed to cover their intended purpose.

Pranav does point out that Realme was quick to respond to the concerns as soon as they were pointed out, blacklisting these apps with an update. Jamshed says that the question remains as to how these apps ended up on the phone in the first place — possibly due to a shift from human moderation to automated systems. While it is commendable that the company responded to the issue quickly, it should have never happened in the first place, he adds.

You can listen to all of that in detail and more in our episode by hitting the play button on the Spotify player embedded above.

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