In the bustling world of affordable smartphones, Realme has been a top player, and now, with the Realme 12 Pro, they’re keeping up their game in 2024. Building on the success of the Realme 11 Pro series, these new models bring significant improvements, especially in design, display, and camera quality.
Among the flood of budget phones in India, the Realme 12 Pro shines with its camera setup. While many in its price range offer basic secondary or tertiary cameras, often just for depth or macro shots, Realme takes a different route. The Realme 12 Pro stands out by including a telephoto lens, something rare in smartphones under ₹30,000.
In this review, we’ll see if Realme’s decision pays off and if the Realme 12 Pro is worth it for those looking for an affordable yet feature-rich smartphone. So sit back, grab a cup of coffee, and dive into the Realme 12 Pro review.
Realme 12 Pro Review
Realme 12 Pro Key Specifications
- Display: 6.7 inch OLED 120Hz
- RAM: 8GB
- Battery: 5000mAh
- Camera: 50 MP Primary, 32 MP 2x Telephoto, 8 MP ultrawide, and 16 MP selfie camera
- Storage: 128GB & 256GB
Build & Design
The new version keeps the old design but adds some nice touches to make it look better. The leather back feels fancy and gives a good grip, so you might not need to use a case, though it does add a bit of bulk. But, there’s a trade-off; the leather attracts dust and can get messy with oily fingers, so handle it with care.
They’ve kept the golden seam and added a cool textured metal ring around the camera, claiming it’s inspired by luxury watches, giving it a classy vibe.
Even though it’s similar, the new blue color and small changes make it look fresh and appealing. The curved edges and lightweight design make it easy to hold and use with one hand. The buttons are clicky, but the haptic feedback could be better.
Overall, considering the price the design is very good.
Display
The display of the Realme 12 Pro is pretty much the same as its predecessor. It’s a 6.7-inch curved OLED screen with a 120Hz refresh rate, 950 nits peak brightness for HDR content, and up to 240Hz touch sampling rate. Nowadays, even mid-range phones like this one come with impressive displays, so the difference between flagship and mid-range displays is hardly noticeable for the average user.
The colors on the screen are vibrant, with good contrast. Sometimes, apps like Instagram might appear a bit too colorful, but you can switch to natural colors in the settings. Dark areas look deep black, and bright parts look excellent. However, the screen isn’t very bright in direct sunlight, likely due to its maximum brightness support of 800 nits. By default, the color tone is set to cold, but you can change it to warm in the settings for a more comfortable viewing experience.
The refresh rate is set to Auto by default, meaning it switches between 60Hz, 90Hz, and 120Hz depending on the content. When scrolling through apps like Instagram or Google Discover, it usually sticks to 60Hz or 90Hz instead of 120 Hz. For a smoother experience, you can set it to default to 120Hz in the settings. There are also other phones in the market that has good display quality as well.
How’s The Camera Quality?
So guys as per our research, we came to know that the Realme 12 Pro is designed with two pillars considered and those are Design and Camera and as mentioned above the design of this smartphone is almost unbeatable at the price range it is being sold so it comes down to the camera and whether it lives up to the hype or not! Lets find out.
The developers have included a new camera array in the Realme 12 Pro which consists of a 50 megapixel OIS enabled Sony IMX882 primary camera, a 32 megapixel Sony IMX709 telephoto camera with 2x optical zoom, and an 8 megapixel ultrawide shooter and honestlly, it indeed is a huge upgrade over the previous year’s camera setup.
Primary Camera
As indicated by our tests, we can confidently say that the primary 50MP camera does a great job at caputuring photos during daytime. There’s an impressive amount of detail, pretty subtle dynamic range, and slightly contrasty colours. The shadows do get crushed a bit in some scnearios, but its not gonna be a major issue.
2x Telephoto Camera
So the 2x telephoto camera is surely great and great with potraits and for daylight pictures however, as indicated by our tests, the quality of the 2x Telephoto Camera isn’t too good in low light and that is most probably because of the lack of OIS.
Ultrawide Camera
Unfortunately, the ultrawide camera could’ve been better as the dynamic range is indeed poor with the shadows in particular taking a serious hit to quality. Apart from this, we absolutely have no compains and issues with the 16 MP selfie camera and you’re getting a staggering camera performance in a smartphone under 25,000.
Overall the camera quality of the Realme 12 Pro is surely robust for the price range it is being sold and that is expected as this smartphone is designed to provide a staggering camera quality to the users.
Battery
The Realme 12 Pro’s Battery capacity and charging speed is still the same as its predecessors and after conducting experiments with it, we have to say that the battery is surely good enough for one day usage with moderate usage. Furthermore, our team did some 4k video loop tests on this smartphone and it lasted almost 12 hours which is impressive.
Look guys, this is an Android phone and not an iPhone so you can surely expect it to feature an all day powerful battery. We performed another test to see how long it takes for the Realme 12 Pro to fully charge from zero and it took this phone about 52 minutes to get fully charged with included 67 W charger. It is surely fast, so you’re gonna have absolutely no issues with the battery. Now let us discuss about the performance.
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Performance of Realme 12 Pro
The Realme 12 Pro runs on the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 chip with 8 GB RAM and 128/256 GB of fast storage offering smooth performance for everyday tasks and gaming. However, occassionally freezes while gaming were noted, which the company should address with a software update. On the bright side, the phone remains cool even during long gaming sessions. It scored impressively on AnTuTu benchmarking.
The realme UI 5, based on Android 14, provides a visually appealing interface, although there is some pre-installed software that can be removed or disabled. Realme promises two major OS updates and three years of security updates, ensuring longetivity of the device.
Freuquently Asked Questions
When was Realme 12 Pro launched in india?
The Realme 12 Pro series was launched on January 29 2024.
How much RAM down the Realme 12 have?
The Realme 12 comes with an 8GB if RAM.
Is the battery of Realme 12 Pro good?
Yes! the battery of Realme 12 Pro (5000mAh) is surely good and the smartphone will last a whole day with moderate usage.
Conclusion
This was it for this review and now the question arises, is the Realme 12 pro worth purchasing? alright, so even tho the performance of this smartphone is a bit poor we still believe that it is a good option for people who’re looking for a good smartphone under ₹25,000 however, if you want high end performance then you can go for other options such as the POCO X6 Pro etc.
As alwassy if you have any queries then feel free to let your heart out down in the comments and our team will get back to you as soon as possible till then stay safe!