The Indian smartphone market is very competitive, especially in the budget segment below Rs 15,000. In India, the majority of users can not afford smartphones above the Rs 20,000 mark, and the Rs 15,000-market is one of the most popular segments in India. Given the level of competition, smartphone makers in the country keep updating their offerings in the range, in order to attract the largest chunk of buyers that are looking to get the best products within their set budgets. Realme is one of the most active brands in this segment and is competing for the title of the most popular budget smartphone maker with the likes of Xiaomi, Vivo, Samsung, Motorola, and more in India.
Realme has come up with its latest Realme 9i budget smartphone that is priced at Rs 13,999 onwards in the country. The smartphone was launched today and comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 chipset, paired with up to 6GB of RAM, a 90Hz display, and a 5,000mAh battery. The Realme 9i comes with many features that its competitors in the market do not offer. Now, I have been using the Realme 9i since the past few days and today I will tell you what I like about the smartphone, what I don’t like, and if you should spend your Rs 13,999 on the Realme 9i. Let’s begin:
DESIGN
In terms of design, the Realme 9i looks pretty good. The smartphone comes with a flat hole-punch display. The back panel on the Realme 9i has a finish that looks gloss but feels more textured on the touch, and comes with a stripes pattern. We got the Prism Blue colour option for our review, which is a shiny sky blue color. It looks good and does a good job at preventing fingerprint smudges, but doesn’t do away with them completely. Much better than the fully-gloss fingerprint magnet back covers we have seen on many devices. The smartphone has a rectangular camera module with two big camera lenses placed vertically, and a third, smaller lens next to the bigger lenses.
The Realme 9i is true to Realme’s current design language and looks very similar to other offerings from the manufacturer. So much so that many may not be able to differentiate this from the more premium Realme GT Neo 2, if both are in a case. The only difference is the single flash, an AUX port, power button-mounted fingerprint scanner, and the SIM tray’s placement. All in all, it is a safe design approach from Realme and has worked well like other smartphones from the company.
DISPLAY
The display is quite nice. It is a 90Hz refresh rate panel, something we don’t get to see much often in this segment. The LCD display has a 2412×1080 resolution and comes with 180Hz touch response rate to make the experience even smoother. The display is also bright enough for all kinds of environments including bright sunlight. During my usage, I quite liked the experience that the Realme 9i provided. It felt smoother and faster than most of the competition, and that is mainly due to the higher resolution and the 90Hz refresh rate. The colours are also accurate and watching videos on YouTube is a nice experience. Of course, it is an LCD panel so don’t expect an iPhone Pro-level picture quality, but it does the job pretty well.
PERFORMANCE AND BATTERY
Now since this is our first impressions review, we haven’t got the chance to test the Realme 9i to its limit, but during my brief usage, I mostly felt good about this phone taking up every task that I throw at it – be it playing games, watching content, using the camera, using two apps in split-screen, or just the normal social media scrolling. This phone will not slow down with your average usage, or even during heavier tasks like gaming. It is yet to be tested with something that I have found almost every Android phone to struggle with – making and editing an Instagram Reel, but I feel confident that the Realme 9i will do that also pretty well. Of course, since even Snapdragon 888 phones with up to 12GB RAM have also given up while making Instagram Reels, so I will not have very high expectations in that area, but just the fact that I feel confident is good in terms of performance.
The battery on the Realme 9i is also pretty decent. I had unboxed this smartphone over the weekend (January 16-January 17), and till the time of writing this first impressions review (Monday, January 18), I still have not put it on charging. It has easily given me over 2 hours of screen time over the course of these two days, and the smartphone still has enough juice to last the whole day. It is to be noted that it did not come out of the box at 100% battery, so that is good.
CAMERA
The camera on the Realme 9i is just average. It clicks sharp and accurate photos, but they get hazy very quickly once a user zooms in. Realme seems to have toned down the AI overprocessing, but it is still very much there. The images from the front camera also feel slightly overexposed. Again, this camera is to be put to a more stringent test to be able to give you a clearer idea as to what to expect, but it is pretty good within this price range and it will be pretty good to capture all those family gathering photos and photos with friends for your social media.
VERDICT
The Realme 9i is without a doubt, one of the most feature-packed budget smartphones out there. It really does hold its own with the smooth display and long lasting battery. The design very clearly gives away the fact that it is a Realme smartphone, but that is how it is meant to be. The back panel is not very prone to fingerprint smudges, but it looks good. Overall, it is a good experience and if you are spending Rs 13,999 on this smartphone, you will not be disappointed one bit.
