Realme launches its mid-range Realme 6 series ahead of Redmi Note 9 Pro launch

(Image credit: Realme)

At an empty venue today, Realme unveiled three of its most-awaited products: the Realme 6, 6 Pro, and the fitness Band. As always, all of them are looking to be the best in their respective price segments.

Today’s event was supposed to be Realme’s most significant launch yet. However, they moved to an online-only format owing to the Coronavirus concerns in the country. The keynote started with a long preface explaining Realme’s new product naming schemes. In short, the Realme 6 is the successor to the 5 Pro (and not the Realme 5), and the Realme 6 Pro is supposed to succeed the X. With this change, both phones move to a slightly higher price point. India will be the first market for them, and will eventually make way to other Asian and European markets.

As for the phones, both of them now sport punch-hole displays with a 90Hz refresh rate. These are LCD panels, which also makes the Realme 6 series to move to side-mounted fingerprint scanners. The battery is rated at 4,300mAh on both, which can be charged from 0 to full in about 60 minutes with Flash Charge. Splash resistance also makes a debut. And as with all new Realme smartphones, they will run on Realme UI out-of-the-box.

Realme 6

The entry-point to its new mid-range lineup, the Realme 6 is powered by the MediaTek Helio G90T, along with 6GB or 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM. This combination should make it one of the best gaming smartphones in the segment. On the front, it has a 6.5-inch display with a hole-punch display at a Full HD+ resolution. There’s unspecified Gorilla Glass protection as well.

The other significant change comes with the cameras, like the Realme 6 moves to a 64MP quad-camera setup, consisting of a 64MP primary camera implementing the Samsung GW1 image sensor, followed by an 8MP ultra-wide shooter, a 2MP black and white portrait lens and a macro shooter. The selfie camera is a 16MP shooter.

In India, the Realme 6 is priced at Rs 12,999 for the base variant with 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, Rs 14,999 for the 6GB + 128GB variant and Rs 15,999 for the 8GB + 128GB model. Colour options include Comet White and Comet Blue. The first sale is on March 11 on Flipkart and Realme.com.

Realme 6 Pro

The elder sibling is the first smartphone in India to be powered by the Snapdragon 720G chipset and is paired with up to 8GB of RAM. It is a new octa-core processor fabricated at 8nm. It also makes it the first smartphone in India to be NavIC-capable from the get.

The Realme 6 Pro has a slightly larger 6.6-inch LCD panel with a 90Hz refresh rate and a dual punch-hole selfie camera. It includes a 16MP primary selfie camera alongside an 8MP ultra-wide shooter with a 105-degree field-of-view. The back, which is also covered by Gorilla Glass 5, has a quad-camera setup with a 64MP f/1.8 primary camera, an 8MP ultra-wide shooter, a 13MP 2x telephoto lens that can go up to 20x using a hybrid zoom, and a macro shooter that can focus on objects as close as 4cm. With this, the Realme 6 Pro is the first smartphone with a telephoto camera in this segment.

It also brings a bunch of new shooting modes such as Nightscape 3.0, which adds a Tripod mode for pulling the shutter speed to 15 seconds and an Ultra mode for even better low light performance. Realme did not mention how that will be achieved. On the video front, we get UIS on the front as well as back. To take things to the next level, the Realme 6 series also has a UIS Max shooting mode, which brings even better stabilization by shooting with the ultra-wide lens and cropping in heavily for compensation.

The Realme 6 Pro starts at Rs 16,999 in India for the base variant with 6GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 64GB of UFS 2.1 storage. The 6GB + 128GB variant is priced at Rs 17,999, while the top model with 8GB of RAM is priced at Rs 18,999. The first sale is on March 13. Colour options include Lightning Blue and Lightning Orange.

Aakash Jhaveri

Aakash is the engine that keeps TechRadar India running, using his experience and ideas to help consumers get to the right products via reviews, buying guides and explainers. Apart from phones, computers and cameras, he is obsessed with electric vehicles.