Realme's Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra rival is launching in February

Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra
Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra (Image credit: Samsung)

While the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra is the best phone we've tested (at the time of writing), its days in that position might be limited. The Realme Race series, including a Pro model, are coming and their launch date has been confirmed for February.

This comes from Chinese social media site Weibo, where the company's president Xu Qi Chase confirmed the phone will be coming 'after the Spring Festival'. In 2021 the Spring Festival, another name for the Chinese New Year, falls on February 12, so we could see the phone launched immediately after that.

Realme already confirmed a few Realme Race Pro specs to TechRadar, so we know a bit about the phone (including that it's set to rival the top Samsung Galaxy S21 model), but we still need to hear a price, and features of the non-Pro phone too.

Samsung has competition

We haven't tested the Realme Race Pro, so can't say for sure if it's going to rival the Galaxy S21 Ultra in all ways, but the specs imply as much - it has a 6.8-inch 160Hz screen, 125W charging, a top-end Snapdragon 888 chipset, and more.

It could seem bizarre placing the top device from smartphone top dog, Samsung, against an unseen smartphone from little-known Realme, but it's indicative of change.

Realme is getting bigger in the smartphone world. According to CounterPoint Research, Realme had a 0% share of the smartphone market until the beginning of 2019 - now it's up to 4%. In that same time Samsung has hovered around the 21% mark, while dipping occasionally.

Other than Xiaomi, Realme is the only smartphone company shown to have steadily grown over that period, showing it's slowly gaining in popularity in a way other phone brands aren't. So while it doesn't have the huge audience of Samsung, it's got momentum, and that's important.

So in the future we could be more closely comparing Realme and Samsung phones, and covering the new handsets the brand puts out.

Via PocketNow

Tom Bedford
Contributor

Tom Bedford was deputy phones editor on TechRadar until late 2022, having worked his way up from staff writer. Though he specialized in phones and tablets, he also took on other tech like electric scooters, smartwatches, fitness, mobile gaming and more. He is based in London, UK and now works for the entertainment site What To Watch.

He graduated in American Literature and Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. Prior to working on TechRadar, he freelanced in tech, gaming and entertainment, and also spent many years working as a mixologist.