Realme 13 Pro+ 5G: A Comprehensive Review of the Latest Flagship Killer

Realme 13+ Review: Pros and Cons, Verdict | MySmartPrice

The Realme 13+ 5G is one of the most consistent performers launched by Realme. The numbered series from Realme has always been geared towards people looking for dependable phones at affordable prices. With the 13 series, the brand now seems to emphasise performance, an uncommon sight in the sub-25k price range. What sits next on their priority list is to package this performance in a striking design. Now, it begs the question: Does their new approach give them a fighting chance in a league, which has formidable players like the Motorola Edge 50 Fusion and the OnePlus Nord CE4? Let's dive in and find out in the review. The Realme 13+ is available via Flipkart, Realme's official website and retail stores. You will also get a cashback benefit of Rs 1,500. Here are the prices for all the variants: Since performance is the aspect on which Realme claimed to build this phone from the ground up, it is interesting to see the brand putting the money where its mouth is. The Realme 13+ is powered by Dimensity 7300-energy, which also powers phones like the CMF Phone 1 and the OPPO Reno 12 series. The placement of this chipset in the Realme 13+ raises eyebrows since it is tuned significantly for performance, unlike the other two smartphones. I played Call of Duty: Mobile and BGMI on the phone to test their gaming calibre, and here are my findings: Overall, it was quite adept at running these games at 90 fps, which wasn't the case with the CMF Phone 1 and Reno 12 series. However, note that to achieve 90fps you'll be required to enable GT mode from the overlay settings. The only other smartphone in the sub-25k range that offers 90 fps gaming is the Infinix GT 20 Pro. In terms of synthetic benchmarks, the Realme 13+ scores decent numbers but falls behind the similarly priced OnePlus Nord CE 4. In real-world usage, this phone didn't break a sweat during daily tasks like mindless scrolling on social media apps, binge-watching YouTube videos, or even gaming. Multi-tasking was also not a problem for the Realme 13+. The phone runs Realme UI 5.0, based on Android 14 and is jam-packed with a variety of customisation options. These include Quick Return, Smart Sidebar, and Quick Launch, among others. What you also get are preinstalled apps and the infamous duo of hot apps and hot games. These are also accompanied by a few spammy notifications. To keep your AI fix satisfied, the Realme 13+ comes with two AI features: AI Clear Voice for better call quality and AI Smart Loop for streamlining content sharing. The Realme 13+ is available in shades of Victory Gold, Speed Green, and Dark Purple. If you prefer phones that shimmer, the gold colourway is the way to go. If subtlety is on your list, then the purple variant should suffice. The finish on the back excels at hiding smudges, albeit being glossy. The build quality of this phone is something I can get behind. To begin with, the phone's weight is balanced. This trait gives off an impression of premiumness. It comes with an IP65 rating for dust and water resistance, which is appreciated. However, the Motorola Edge 50 Fusion offers much better protection against dust and water with its IP68 rating at a similar price. The phone features a 6.67-inch AMOLED display with 120hz refresh rate. It fared well in the brightness section. Indoors, I could watch content comfortably at half the brightness, as the screen was fairly bright. Outdoors, the screen was legible enough without requiring me to squint my eyes. Having said that, I had to adjust the device slightly to see the viewfinder in direct sunlight. I was also pleased by its picture quality since it was crisp. Having binge-watched numerous hour-long gameplays on YouTube, I can say that the colours were vibrant. Also, they were adequately saturated with on-point consistency. Out of the box, it supports Widevine L3 certification, meaning it can't run full HD videos on streaming services. It is 2024; even a budget phone like the POCO M6 Plus can play 1080p videos on Netflix. This is something Realme should have worked on, considering the display quality is more than adequate. The speakers were fairly loud, considering the phone's smaller footprint. It emits crisp and clear audio, somewhere around 80 per cent. Going beyond this threshold can imbalance the left and right channels' output. The Realme 13+ comes with a dual camera setup, even though the camera module might make it seem otherwise. In daylight, the primary camera is skilled at taking great photos with close-to-natural colours and ample details. On the flip side, it has a constant tussle with exposure, so you will mostly be in the dark about which photo gets it right. This particular issue is further amplified in low-light captures as well. If lucky enough, it can generate well-detailed images with accurate colours. To capture more light, it slows down the shutter speed, so a slight movement can cause a blurry image. Additionally, it has an issue with direct light sources, causing lens flare when photographed underneath it. The portrait mode on the Realme 13+ is plain vanilla. It lets you take good photos with accurate skin tone. While the edge detection is good, it is not quite precise enough. For selfie fanatics, it has a flair for taking detailed shots, but again, the exposure is hit or miss against the direct source light in general. The Realme 13+ packs a 5,000mAh battery. Courtesy of its massive size, the phone can last almost an entire day of capturing moments, casual gaming, and an unending cycle of reel scrolling. The phone lasted for 14 hours and 18 minutes in the PCMark battery test. That said, the OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite has endured for five more hours in our testing, despite costing relatively less. The phone can instantly juice up to 100 per cent in about 50 minutes using the 80W charger. It is worth pointing out that it used to randomly refuse to register its charger and charge only at lower speeds at the time of our testing. This could be an issue with our unit. If you are actively searching for a phone with solid build quality that also performs consistently amazingly in gaming while handling daily tasks smoothly, this phone is for you. Its 6.67-inch display is an added plus for its crisp picture quality. On top of that, the camera can take good daylight shots, and its reliable battery life with its speedy charging prevents you from worrying about running out of battery. However, you will be putting up with a few compromises: The phone can't play 1080p videos on streaming services; the exposure and portrait modes need patching up, and the UI can bug you with its spam notifications.

realme 13+ 5G Review: Balancing performance and battery life

realme launched the realme 13+ 5G, the company's latest smartphone in the number series, in India today. This has a faster SoC, upgraded cooling and faster charging, while retaining a similar display. Is this a worthy successor to the realme 12+ 5G smartphone? Let us dive into the review to find out. The realme 13+ sports a 6.67-inch (1080 x 2400 pixels) Full HD+ flat E4 AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate, 240Hz touch sampling rate and 394 PPI, same as the 12+. The display is bright since it has up to 2000 nits peak brightness. It offers good colour output since it has 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, and the sunlight legibility is good as well. You can select from vivid, Natural and Pro screen colour modes. The phone also has HDR 10 support, which works for YouTube, but it doesn't work with Netflix. The phone doesn't have a notification LED, but this has an always-on-display that shows contextual info and notifications all day or as per schedule. The phone has ultra narrow bezels side bezels, making it compact to hold. The screen has Panda Glass Protection. The phone has a tiny punch-hole that houses a 16-megapixel camera. Above the display, there is an earpiece on the top edge that doubles up as a secondary speaker. It has an in-display fingerprint scanner. Coming to the button placements and ports, the power button is present on the right side along with the volume rockers. There is nothing on the left. The Dual SIM slot, primary microphone, USB Type-C port and the loudspeaker grill are present on the bottom. The secondary microphone is on the top, along with a 3.5mm audio jack and the speaker vent. Compared to leather finish in all the models of the 12+, the 13+ has a familiar Victory Speed design with Speedy Curve design below the camera Deco. A golden shoulder line stretches from side to side, resembling a fast-paced racetrack, full of dynamism. Below, a lightning texture is simulated. The phone also comes in Victory Gold, and Dark Purple colours. It also has IP65 ratings for dust and splash resistance. The camera UI in the realme UI 5 is familiar. There is Pro mode, Panorama, Macro, Flim, Slo-mo, Time-Lapse, Dual-View video, text scanner, starry mode and tilt-shift. The rear camera offers 12.5MP output after pixel binning, and the front camera images are 16MP in size. Daylight shots came out well, thanks to the 50MP Sony LYT-600 sensor, and the dynamic range is better with auto HDR. Even though you can zoom up to 10X, the quality of the image might not be the best when you zoom in. 2x zoom is good for macro shots. The portrait mode is decent, thanks to the dedicated portrait camera, but this lacks an ultra-wide camera. Low light shots are good with a lot of details and less noise. The night mode is useful, but it takes a few seconds to process. There is also a tripod mode. The 16MP front camera does a good job. The bokeh shots are good, with decent edge detection. Check out the camera samples It can record videos in up to 4K 30 fps or 1080p 60fps, slow motion 1080p at 120fps from the rear camera, and the front camera can shoot 1080p 30 fps videos. Portrait video mode is limited to 720p. There is also ultra-steady video shooting, but it is limited to 1080p 60fps. OIS does a good job for the rear camera. It runs Android 14 based realme UI 5.0 out of the box. It has Android security patch for July 2024. The phone should get 2 Android updates and 3 years of security updates, similar to other phones. realme UI 5.0 offers improved self-developed technology for smooth performance, and enhanced safety and privacy tools. The File Dock feature enables collection, analysis, and sharing of global information through the Dock or other applications simply by making gestures. Flash Capsule provides convenient access to popular third-party services such as Grab, Swiggy, and Zomato directly from the device. Smart image matting lets you easily isolate and share subjects from your photos. It can separate subjects from similar backgrounds and recognize multiple subjects (up to 3). This doesn't have AI features that are available in the Pro and GT series. Apart from the usual set of realme apps and Google apps, it comes with several preloaded apps such as Facebook, Amazon, Snapchat, Spotify and more. These apps can be uninstalled, but come back once the phone is reset. There are also Hot Apps and Hot Games. Out of 12GB LPDD4X RAM, you get 11.18GB of usable RAM, and about 7GB of RAM is free when default apps are running in the background. It also has DRE or dynamic RAM expansion feature, which uses the built-in storage as RAM. This has up to 14GB of additional RAM expansion. Out of 256GB UFS 3.1, you get about 222.6GB of free storage. It has an in-display fingerprint sensor that unlocks the phone quickly, but it is not as fast as a physical fingerprint sensor. You can add up to 5 fingerprints. You can also use the fingerprint for app local and payments in apps. Furthermore, you can change the fingerprint animation and also disable it, and also enable quick launch option to launch apps directly from the lockscreen by holding the fingerprint. The phone also has face unlock feature. YouTube Music is the default Music Player. It has customizable Smart, Movie, Game and Music modes, but doesn't have Dolby Atmos. It also doesn't have FM Radio support. Audio through the stereo speakers is good without any distortion even in full volume. Audio through earphones is good as well. This has Widevine L1, so that you can play HD content on Netflix and other streaming apps. HDR works on YouTube, but not on Netflix. The realme 13+ has support for n1/n3/n5/n8/n28B/n40/n41/n77/n78 Network Bands in India. It has 4G Wi-Fi and VoLTE, with support for Carrier Aggregation on 4G. Other connectivity options include Wi-Fi 6 802.11 ax (2.4GHz + 5GHz), Bluetooth 5.4, GPS / GLONASS / Beidou. It has OTG support, but doesn't have NFC support. Moving on, the call quality is good, and we did not face any call drops and the earpiece volume was loud. The realme 13+'s body SAR is 0.797W/Kg and head SAR is at 1.103/Kg, which is well under the limit of 1.6 W/kg (over 1 g) in India. The realme 13+ 5G is powered by the latest MediaTek Dimensity 7300 Energy 4nm SoC that pack s4X Arm Cortex-A78 cores at up to 2.5GHz paired with 4X Arm Cortex-A55 cores. There is MediaTek NPU 655. The phone has a 6050mm² large 9-layer stainless steel vapor chamber cooling area to help keep the phone cool. We did not face any issues or frame drops in the graphic-intensive games like COD, BGMI and Genshin Impact. There is also 90 fps gaming in major titles, including BGMI, Free Fire, MLBB, and COD with GT mode. It reached maximum 43º in our testing indoors in 5G, but this might vary outdoors. There is Arm Mali-G615 GPU and MediaTek HyperEngine for gaming. In 3D Mark wild life stress test, it scored 98.8% which is good. The temperature increased from 33 to 37 degrees, which is not much, thanks to the cooling solution. That said, check out some synthetic benchmark scores below. Coming to the battery life, the phone packs a 5000mAh (typical) built-in battery, same as the realme 12+. It lasts for a whole day with Wi-Fi, but with 4G or 5G and dual SIMs. I got about 6 hours of screen on time with 2 days of use on Wi-Fi and in 120Hz. realme UI now shows screen on time only for the past 24 hours, and not full charge. This has 80W SuperVOOC Charge, an upgrade compared to 67W fast charging in the 12+. It can charge up to 50% in about 20 minutes and up to 100% in around 45 minutes with the bundled 80W charger, which is good. There is smart charging and an option to stop charging at 80% to improve the battery health. However, this doesn't show the battery health. At a starting price of Rs. 22,999 for the 8GB + 128GB, which is Rs. 2000 more than the predecessor, the realme 13+ balances the performance and battery life since it scores when it comes to performance without heating issues, thanks to the bigger VC cooling, and the battery life is good with faster charging. There is also IP65 ratings in the phone, which is an added advantage for a phone in the price range, and it also has the 3.mm audio jack which is being removed from most phones in recent times. However, it has the same display, and lacks the ultra-wide camera which was present in the realme 12+. There is Nothing Phone 2a with a better SoC, and ban unique design with glyph lights for the same price. If you spend a bit more, there is OnePlus Nord CE 4 with a bigger battery, and a faster performance. There is also the iQOO Z9s Pro in the under Rs. 25,000 range. The realme 13+ 5G is priced at Rs. 22,999 for the 8GB + 128GB model, 8GB + 256GB version costs Rs. 24,999 and the top-end 12GB + 256GB model costs Rs. 26,999. It will be available from realme.com, Flipkart and offline stores starting from September 6th.