Although Realme now has a well-developed portfolio for the European market with three smartphones, there are still no models available and popular in India. Directly below the Realme 5 Pro, which we had already tested, is the Realme 5, which is more Phablet oriented. And this one gets an upgrade now, under the name Realme 5S!
The Realme 5s has already been teased by Realme itself and details have now become known through Flipkart. The biggest upgrade is the Realme of the main camera: the 12MP sensor will be replaced by the Samsung GM1 48MP, which has become known to us through the Redmi Note 7. The rest of the hardware is shared between the Realme 5S and the Realme R5 – just a small facelift three months later.
6.5 inch HD+ display, Snapdragon 655, 5,000mAh battery and quad camera – the technical basis of the Realme 5 remains. The main sensor is now replaced by the Samsung GM1. For the Realme 5s this means even better pictures: the 48MP Samsung sensor works with the pixel binning principle, where 4 pixels are combined to one. The result is more detailed and brighter images.
The price of Realme 5 started at 125€, and the Realme 5S now costs 138€ with 4/128GB. It is available in the colors Crystal Blue, Purple and new Crystal Red – all with the hologram pattern on the back.
Let’s summarize it briefly: the Realme 5 now comes with a camera upgrade with the 48MP Samsung sensor instead of 12MP and will be launched as Realme 5s for the first time in India. For Realme an easy to realize model that boosts sales again. For India, the Realme 5s is made for you and the strategy to place many models in the range of 60 to 150€ is also known from Xiaomi: with three variants of the Redmi Note 7 and the additional Redmi Y3.
What about a global version, does Realme see a market in the lower middle class in Europe at all? Realme has now surprisingly announced that it will launch Realme 5 for Europe on 21 November – then we will also have more information about prices and storage configurations.
But to make the realme 5s relevant for us, the global version or at least China is missing. Until then you get an almost identical package with the normal Realme 5 in the Global Version. But if you want a better camera, you can also use the better Realme 5 Pro – or the correspondingly cheaper Realme 3 Pro.