Realme just announced the X50 Pro 5G, the latest and greatest smartphone from the Chinese brand. This is the company’s flagship device, so it packs the best specs and the latest features into something that aims to rival high-end offerings from the competition. Last year’s Realme X2 Pro won our Best of Android award. So what makes the Realme X50 Pro 5G stand out? Here’s everything you need to know!
The most premium Realme yet
Realme smartphones have followed a basic design formula for a couple of years, now. On the front, you’d typically find a water droplet notch. On the back, you’d ordinarily see a glass or shiny polycarbonate panel with funky colors and/or a pattern.
Realme has taken a different approach with the X50 Pro 5G.
Realme has taken a slightly different approach with the X50 Pro 5G. Upfront, you’ll find thin bezels, a thin chin, and a Galaxy S10 Plus-esque double punch hole. Like the Honor View 20, this punch-hole sits on the right side of the display. The rear glass on the X50 Pro 5G is matte and comes in two colors. There’s the Moss Green, which we have here, along with a Rust Red option. The colors are slightly muted when compared to outgoing models, and I think they make the phone feel more sophisticated.
On the left edge, you’ll find separate volume up and down buttons. On the right edge, there is a colored power button. On the top, resides a microphone. On the bottom, there’s a USB-C port, SIM card slot, microphone, and speaker. The buttons are clicky and tactile as they should be, and are positioned in just the right place for my hands. On the back, the matte glass is slippery and I imagine would be prone to falling out of your hands. This is contrasted with the surprisingly grippy aluminum rails that surround it. The device as a whole feels solid in the hand with a great sense of rigidity and tightness.
90Hz is here to stay
The Realme X2 Pro launched with a 90Hz display to match its competitors in the smartphone market. The X50 Pro 5G continues this with its 6.44-inch FHD+ 90Hz Super AMOLED panel. There’s a 180Hz sample rate to help the touch screen feel more responsive. Realme claims “1000+ nits brightness”, “105% NTSC”, and “100% DCI-P3” meaning that the X50 Pro 5G is out to compete with some of the best screens on smartphones in 2020.
The best cameras Realme has to offer
The X50 Pro 5G features 32MP and 8MP cameras on the front. The main sensor is an IMX616 with an 80-degree field of view. The second has a field of view of 105-degrees and features Realme’s Edge Deformity Correction function, which detects warping and corrects for it in software.
On the rear, lives a 64MP GW1 sensor with an f/1.8 aperture, an 8MP 119-degree camera with an f/2.3 aperture, a 13MP 2x optical zoom camera with an f/2.5 aperture, and a black and white portrait camera to aid with portrait mode.
The 13MP zoom camera is capable of 5x optical hybrid zoom and 20x hybrid zoom. There are no mirrors or prisms here like the Huawei P30 Pro or Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra, however. There’s also a new system for pinching to zoom called Smooth Zoom Technology. This aims to emulate the feeling of zooming a camera lens.
The front camera is able to shoot FHD video at 30 and 120fps. The rear has the ability to shoot UHD video at 30fps with UIS video stabilization.
Flagship specs
The Realme X50 Pro 5G sports a rather stout spec sheet with enough variants to suit many types of users. You can have 6, 8, or 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM, and either 128 or 256GB of UFS 3.0 storage. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 5G is the chipset of choice from Realme here, making it the most powerful device the firm has ever released. This puts it in the same performance ballpark as the recently released Galaxy S20 series, which comes with a far bigger price tag.
The 4,200mAh battery is typical of what we’d see in a phone of this size in 2019, which is to say that battery life should be pretty good, but not out of this world. However, with a whopping 65W charger in the box, the Realme X50 Pro 5G is certain to sit with the best of the best when it comes to charging speed. Curiously, wireless charging is not present on the X50 Pro 5G.
The software has shown to be a radical improvement over its predecessor.
The device will ship with Android 10 in the form of Realme UI, which has shown to be a radical improvement over its predecessor. This is thanks to the cutback in bloatware and a leap towards a cleaner design aesthetic.
The bits and bobs
There’s an optical in-display fingerprint scanner on the Realme X50 Pro 5G, which Realme claims allows for a 0.27 second unlock time. There is also a dual speaker setup utilizing the bottom speaker and the earpiece speaker for a hybrid combination. WiFi 6 is present, too, for a download speed of up to 9.6Gbps.
This device is using a vapor cooling system to keep the SoC cool during long periods of processing load. There’s also a tactile linear motor that’s designed to tighten and crispen up the feel of the vibrations and haptics. All of this should help the phone feel sophisticated and luxurious to help it stand out from other flagship killers.
The Realme X50 Pro 5G, as the name suggests, is a 5G smartphone thanks to its Snapdragon 865 5G SoC. The type being used here is sub-6GHz 5G connectivity. The 5G bands being used are as follows: n1, n41, n78, and n79. This makes the X50 Pro 5G very competitively priced given the rest of the specs on top of the 5G connectivity.
Pricing and availability
In India, the Realme X50 Pro 5G will start from Rs. 37,999 (~$528). Here’s the breakdown:
- 6GB RAM/128GB storage – Rs. 37,999 (~$528)
- 8GB RAM/128GB storage – Rs. 39,999 (~$556)
- 12GB RAM/256GB storage – Rs. 44,999 (~$625)
In Europe, the device will cost €599, €669, and €749 respectively, for the RAM/storage configurations listed above. That’s much more expensive than the Indian prices, and well above the cost of previous Realme flagships. The phone will be competing with the Poco X2, Realme X2 Pro, Redmi K30 Pro, and the Pixel 3a XL. The sweetener is that this phone has 5G connectivity. This phone puts top-shelf specs and 5G connectivity in the hands of the average user.
The Realme X50 Pro 5G will be available in India, Spain, China, Italy, Germany, France, Poland, UK, Czech Republic, Greece, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, and more.
That’s everything you need to know about the Realme X50 Pro 5G. Let us know what your thoughts are in the comments and stay tuned for our full review — coming soon!