Both the frame and the back panel of the smartphone are made of plastic, but Realme traditionally made sure that the back finish was not too boring and interesting light reflections appeared on it . In Polish stores, Realme 8i will appear in the purple and classic black editions presented in the photos.
Photo: Piotr Kwiatkowski / Komputer ŚwiatThe island of cameras, characteristic of the "eight" line, houses only three modules this time - a standard 50 megapixel one for measuring the depth of the scene and a macro with a resolution of 2 megapixels. Therefore, the wide-angle module is missing in this configuration.
On the right side of the frame, the manufacturer placed a switch with an integrated, capacitive fingerprint reader. This is a reliable solution, but as a person who often uses the smartphone with his left hand, I would prefer the scanner to be half or even a centimeter lower. When we hold the phone in the right hand, this problem is negligible.
Photo: Piotr Kwiatkowski / Komputer ŚwiatOn the left side of the frame there are volume control buttons and a card drawer. At this point, Realme should be praised for using a tray that can accommodate both two Nano SIM cards and an additional microSDXC memory card.
Photo: Piotr Kwiatkowski / Komputer ŚwiatThe top of the housing has been left undeveloped, so Realme 8i has no additional microphone. The only one is located at the bottom of the frame, along with the only speaker (it plays not very effectively, but also does not generate excessive sound distortion), a headphone jack and a USB 2.0 type C port.
In the set with the phone we get: an 18 W charger, a USB cable, a card drawer ejector and a silicone case with covers for the USB socket and the headphone socket. Some people will enjoy these additional protections (the smartphone's housing is not waterproof), but on the other hand, the plug of the port underneath the USB plug can be a nuisance when connecting the charger every day.
Photo: Piotr Kwiatkowski / Komputer ŚwiatGo back to the table of contentsRealme 8i - technical specification, performance, battery
The heart of the device is the MediaTek Helio G96 chipset. This is a system dedicated to popular smartphones, inside which work two Cortex-A76 cores (2.05 GHz), six Cortex-A55 cores (2 GHz) and a dual-core Mali-G57 MC2 graphics chip. This means that in the Polish edition, the smartphone also has 4 GB of RAM (LPDDR4x) and 64 GB or 128 GB of memory for data (UFS 2.2). Compared to the Realme 7i model, the manufacturer added the missing NFC module. We also get a dual-band Wi-Fi 5 card and a Bluetooth 5.2 module.
This is the detailed specification of the new Realme 8i and, for comparison, its predecessor - the Realme 7i smartphone.
| Realme 8i | Realme 7i | |
| Chipset | MediaTek Helio G96 | MediaTek Helio G85 |
| Working memory | 4 GB | 4 GB |
| Storage for data | 64GB or 128GB (UFS 2.2) | 64GB or 128GB (eMMC 5.1) | < /tr>
| LTE/5G | yes / no | yes / no |
| Dual SIM | yes | yes |
| Memory card slot | yes | yes |
| Screen | 6.6 inch, 120 Hz LCD, 1080 x 2412 pixels, 400 ppi | 6.5 inch, 60 Hz LCD 720 x 1600 pixels, 269 ppi |
| Screen protection | AGC Dragontrail | tempered glass |
| Fingerprint reader | yes (on the side of the housing) | yes (on the back panel) |
| Card Wi-Fi | dual band, Wi-Fi 5 | dual band, Wi-Fi 5 |
| Location | GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou | GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou |
| NFC | yes | no < /td> |
| Bluetooth | 5.2 | 5.0 |
| Battery | < td>5000mAh6000mAh | |
| Charger included | 18W | 18W |
| Inductive charging | no | no |
| USB | < td>2.0 type-C2.0 type-C | |
| Infrared port | no | no |
| Operating system (at launch) | Android 11 (realme UI 2.0) | Android 10 (realme UI 1.0) |
| Camera - standard module | 50 MP, f/1.8, PDAF, 26mm equivalent focal length, 1/2.76" sensor | 48 MP, f/1.8, PDAF, 26mm equivalent focal length, 1/2" sensor |
| Camera - wide angle module | no | 8 MP, f/2.3, FF |
| Camera - tele module | no | no | Camera - other modules | 2 MP macro, for measuring the depth of the scene | 2 MP macro |
| Front camera | 16MP, f/2.1, FF | 8MP, f/2.0. FF |
| Headphone Jack/Speakers | Yes / Mono | Yes / Mono |
| Dimensions and weight | 164 x 75.7 x 8.9mm (10.5mm with protruding optics), 192 grams (212 with case included) | 164, 5 x 76 x 9.8 mm, 209 grams |
| Case material (frame/back panel) | plastic / plastic | plastic / plastic |
| Waterproof housing | no | no |
| Price | 899 zlotys (4GB / 128GB), 849 zlotys (4GB / 64GB) | 599 zlotys (4GB / 64GB) |
In everyday use, the MediaTek Helio G96 chipset is doing well, especially if we evaluate it in the category of smartphones costing less than PLN 1,000. With Realme 8i in hand, we can also easily play popular Android games, as long as we don't have any e-sports expectations for them (the FHD + screen throws the dual-core graphics system used in new 3D games quite a challenge). However, the phone does not show a tendency to thermal throttling.
The graphs below show Realme 8i's performance against the competition in popular performance tests.
Photo: Piotr Kwiatkowski/Computer World Photo: Piotr Kwiatkowski/Computer World Photo: Piotr Kwiatkowski/Computer World Photo : Piotr Kwiatkowski / Computer World Photo: Piotr Kwiatkowski / Computer World Photo: Piotr Kwiatkowski / Computer World Photo: Piotr Kwiatkowski / Computer World
The smartphone has a battery with a standard in this class, but also a solid 5000 mAh capacity. In everyday multimedia use, it is enough for about a day and a half of work. However, the issue of charging the smartphone with the included network adapter (18 W) looks a bit worse. A full cycle from zero to 100 percent will take just over two hours.
Photo: Piotr Kwiatkowski/Komputer ŚwiatGo back to the table of contentsRealme 8i - screen and image quality
When constructing the Realme 8i model, the manufacturer decided to focus on a 6.6-inch screen LCD from BOE factories. The panel has a resolution of the FHD+ class (1080 x 2412), can refresh the image with 120 Hz smoothness, in the upper left corner it has a hole for the front camera, and it is protected against damage by the valued AGC Dragontrail glass, which, however, has not been covered this time as a saving measure Unfortunately, the oleophobic layer facilitates cleaning.
The organoleptically assessed image quality is good. The colors are intense, suggesting the screen's support for the DCI-P3 wide color gamut, but also too cool. Viewing angles, as for an LCD panel, turn out to be wide, but both the contrast of the image and the readability of the image in strong sunlight definitely do not match OLED panels.
Photo: Piotr Kwiatkowski / Komputer ŚwiatPeople using video streaming services on a smartphone will be pleased that Realme 8i is compatible with Widevine L1 security, i.e. allowing you to watch content in HD quality. The worse news will be that the smartphone does not support the display of HDR content.
Realme 8i's screen has three refresh modes - Auto Select (Default, Adaptive), Standard (60Hz) or High (120Hz).
Let's start with the Standard settings this time, which should display an image with a constant refresh rate of 60 Hz. And it almost does (for home screens, menus, applications), because ... the screensaver works at 120 Hz, and in turn videos displayed in full screen in the YouTube application are played at 60 Hz, 50 Hz or 48 Hz (I did not find some convincing rule for this refresh chapter). Interestingly, exactly the same happens in the Auto Select and High modes.
In the Auto Select setting, the screen starts at a maximum refresh rate of 90Hz (except for the screensaver, which is still at 120Hz), which appears for about 3 seconds each time you touch it, then drops to ... 30Hz. In games (Asphalt 9, Brawl Stars, PUBG Mobile) the smartphone still works at 60 Hz.
High mode behaves exactly the same as Auto Select (also adaptive), but instead of 90 Hz this time we have 120 Hz refresh at the same times.
When it comes to the quality of the displayed image, the smartphone screen can operate in two settings - the default Vivid and Delicate. In each of them, we also have a screen color temperature slider, which allows you to modify the color tone / white temperature.
Vivid Mode
The gamut chart proves that the BOE screen used in the smartphone is quite robust, as it can display colors from the wide, Hollywood DCI-P3 color space. However, the colors are too cool (the white temperature is 7802 K), which means that the average DeltaE 2000 error is as much as 4.61 (optimally below 2).
Photo: Piotr Kwiatkowski/Komputer ŚwiatColor gamut and graph of white temperature in the brightness scale for the default Vivid screen modeLuckily, we have the already mentioned slider called Screen color temperature, which allows you to modify the temperature range from 8821K (maximum setting Colder) to 6586K (maximum setting Warmer). It still differs slightly from the standard 6500 K, but if we care about the neutral tone of the colors seen on the screen, we should immediately move the slider to the right. At this point, we will reduce the average color error of DeltaE 2000 to a very good level of 1.83. It is definitely worth taking advantage of this opportunity.
Photo: Piotr Kwiatkowski / Komputer ŚwiatzywykorThe maximum brightness of the image available with manual adjustment is an average of 398 cd/m2. The black level in this case is 0.386 cd / m2, which means that the contrast of the displayed image reaches a slightly shocking value of 1034: 1. When working in the auto-brightness mode, the Realme 8i screen may shine temporarily stronger in strong ambient light - up to 489 cd / m2. However, this still does not ensure good readability of the LCD panel in sunlight.
Gentle Mode
Gentle mode narrows the range of displayed colors to the requirements of the sRGB Internet color space. What is surprising, however, is that the default color tone is just as far from ideal as the default Vivid mode. We can use the screen color temperature slider again, but with such good possibilities to calibrate the Vivid mode, using a narrower sRGB range does not make much sense.
Photo: Piotr Kwiatkowski/Komputer ŚwiatColor gamut and graph of white temperature in the brightness scale for the Delicate screen mode Back to the table of contentsRealme 8i - cameras and the quality of photos and videos taken
The heart and basically the only module of the main camera of Realme 8i that is important from the user's point of view is the standard one (the phone is not equipped with a wide-angle module). It has a resolution of 50 megapixels, which may evoke some associations with this year's flagship smartphones. Of course, the camera of the popular Realme 8i could not receive the same matrix as them. Realme therefore used a new, but relatively small (three times smaller than in the flagships mentioned) Samsung ISOCELL JN1 sensor (1/2.76", a single pixel of 0.64 microns). It works with bright f/1.8 optics and uses autofocus based Unfortunately, the camera was not equipped with optical image stabilization, although its electronic substitute is active during filming. Meanwhile ... the older Realme 7i had a wide-angle module in its camera.
Photo: Piotr Kwiatkowski / Komputer ŚwiatIn addition to the standard module, the Realme 8i camera also has a scene depth analysis module and a toy wide-angle macro module with a resolution of 2 megapixels and a fixed focusing distance of 4 centimeters.
The front camera placed in a hole cut in the screen has a resolution of 16 megapixels and a lens with a brightness of f/2.1 without an autofocus system.
Photo: Piotr Kwiatkowski / Komputer ŚwiatDaily photos
I was a bit worried about the quality of photos from such a small matrix as the Samsung ISOCELL JN1, but daytime frames taken at the default resolution of 12.5 megapixels (Tetrapixel matrix, i.e. the "Samsung" version of the Quad Pixel system) turned out to be really solid. You can grumble a bit with slightly turned up colors, but the quality of detail and the exposure parameters used are good. But ... in the shadows there is clearly not pleasant, though still fine-grained, electronic noise (see the facade of the Roofed Palace in the middle photo below). This is the price we pay for a tiny, compact sensor with image pixels as small as 0.64 microns - a little less light and noise.
Photo: Piotr Kwiatkowski / Komputer ŚwiatDay photos from the standard module (click to enlarge)Digital zoom
In the Realme 8i's camera interface, you will find checkboxes for tele 2x and tele 5x modes. Both of these settings, however, are nothing but digital zoom. Its maximum available level is 10x.
Already photos taken at the 2x setting have the typical digital zoom softness of detail. However, it will not be a big problem when evaluating it in zoom out. I am a bit more disturbed by the artificiality of the color of the sky appearing in all test frames, which was not present in the photos without digital zoom.
Watching the frames with 5x and 10x digital zoom in 1:1 scale, in addition to the optimistic cyan sky, we now also have details in the style of soap and jam. However, such photos will still be suitable for social networking sites or MMS.
Photo: Piotr Kwiatkowski / Komputer ŚwiatDaytime photos with 2x digital zoom (click to enlarge)Photo: Piotr Kwiatkowski / Komputer ŚwiatDaytime photos with 5x digital zoom (click to enlarge) Photo: Piotr Kwiatkowski / Komputer ŚwiatDaytime photos with a maximum digital zoom of 10x (click to enlarge)Night photos
The Realme 8i camera surprisingly handled the Ultra Night mode with night shots of the illuminated city. They are well exposed, have attractive, warm colors, although spotlights look a bit artificial.
Photo: Piotr Kwiatkowski / Komputer ŚwiatNight photos in the Ultra Night mode from the standard module (click to enlarge)Digital zoom
Night photos with digital zoom keep the colors attractive, but there is a noticeable increase in the level of electronic noise. This means that the Realme 8i camera will certainly not be a master of night photos in really weaker available light. Of course, as in the case of daytime photos, zoom significantly reduces the quality of recorded details, and the lack of optical stabilization forces us to adopt a very stable body position in such photographic moments.
Photo: Piotr Kwiatkowski / Komputer ŚwiatNight photos in Ultra Night mode with 2x digital zoom (click to enlarge)Photo: Piotr Kwiatkowski / Komputer ŚwiatNight photos in Ultra Night mode with zoom digital 5x (click to enlarge)Bokeh effect
The Realme 8i camera received a dedicated module for analyzing the depth of the photographed scene. In the case of photos with a less complicated main subject (photos of a statue), the effects of the virtual background blur technique are quite good (although the camera needs to get close to it at a relatively short distance to calculate this effect and even here subtle inaccuracies can be seen). However, less obvious and more complexly shaped foreground objects will make such cut-off errors more numerous and more noticeable.
Photo: Piotr Kwiatkowski / Komputer Światphotos with software added bokeh effect (click to enlarge)Macro module
Wide-angle macro module with a resolution of 2 megapixels and without the autofocus system ... we already know perfectly well that its presence in the camera can be safely omitted and considered only as marketing. It does not provide a good approximation (despite shooting from a distance of 4 centimeters), or a good photo resolution (1600 x 1200 pixels), or a good background blurring effect (important for macro photos), or even the correct image geometry. To make matters worse, by holding the smartphone so close to the photographed object, we will often cover the light with it (see the right side of the photo below on the left). Therefore, dreaming of a macro shot from the Realme 8i camera, it will be much better if we use the standard module and digital zoom in the 2x-4x range (the effects of such a procedure are shown in the two photos below from the right).
Photo: Piotr Kwiatkowski / Komputer ŚwiatFrom the left - photo taken with the macro module of the Realme 8i camera, photo of the same object taken with the standard module with 2x digital zoom and 4x digital zoom (click to enlarge)Video
Rated on a smartphone screen, both daytime and nighttime movies will make a solid impression. However, they only have Full HD resolution and 30 frames per second. As a consolation, however, we are left with the fact that even with this maximum quality, the digital image stabilization works, and the digital zoom works quite smoothly.
When assessed on a 1:1 scale, films shot during the day turn out to be good - the quality of details and their colors do not disappoint (for Full HD resolution). Night movies, however, have a much lower quality of recorded details, although they will still be enjoyed when viewed in a zoomed-in (smartphone screen).
Back to table of contentsRealme 8i - test summary
Realme 8i is an interesting smartphone. For a reasonable price, we will get a plastic, but interesting looking housing, a very solid 120 Hz LCD screen displaying colors from a wide DCI-P3 space, sufficient performance of the MediaTek Helio G86 chipset for the moment, a decent battery and without a wide-angle module, but it checks well camera both during the day and at night. The Realme company shows us once again that it has a knack for constructing devices to mix up the mid-range market.
In assessing the attractiveness of Realme 8i, however, an obligatory comparison to its predecessor - Realme 7i (PLN 599) immediately comes to mind. By choosing Realme 8i, we gain on the attractiveness of the workmanship, on the quality of the screen, a lot on performance and we get the NFC module missing in Realme 7i, but we also lose the wide-angle module in the camera and 1000mAh on the battery capacity (5000mAh vs 6000mAh). On the other hand, PLN 250 of the current price difference is not a walk in this segment of smartphones.
Photo: Piotr Kwiatkowski / Komputer ŚwiatCompared to the full version of Realme 8 (PLN 829 - yes, yes, now it is cheaper than the new Realme 8i), when buying Realme 8i we get similar performance (applied in the eight MediaTek Helio G95 has a slightly stronger graphics chip), an AMOLED screen instead of an LCD, a better camera, additionally with a wide-angle module and faster charging (30 W vs 18 W). Here, therefore, Realme is clearly shooting a market suicide.
During this market clash, however, there may be another own goal for Realme - thanks to Realme Narzo 30 5G. It costs PLN 899 (4 GB / 128 GB edition), so exactly the same as the Realme 8i phone with the MediaTek Dimensity 700 chipset that supports 5G networks. In terms of performance, the two designs will be very similar to each other.
Another, natural market competitor for Realme 8i is the Redmi 10 smartphone belonging to the Xiaomi stable. In this case, Realme 8i wins in terms of performance (MediaTek Helio G96 vs MediaTek Helio G88) and price (it is PLN 50 cheaper), but loses lack of a wide-angle module in the camera and stereo speakers. For some users, they will be worth the extra cost.
All this shows that today it is not enough to construct an interesting smartphone of the popular class, because older, sometimes even better (companies have been ubiquitously looking for savings for some time now), and today cheaper models can be very serious enemies of the new one. And answering the question asked in the introduction - Realme actually delivered a strong blow, but ... this time there was no knockout.If our test helped you choose a smartphone, we will be grateful if you use the links we have prepared during the purchase. They lead to verified and safe offers in online shops. Using the link supports the functioning of the editorial office and does not affect the price you will pay for the phone. Successful shopping!
