The Realme 10 was launched in Malaysia with much fanfare recently, with this budget smartphone being called “The Terminator”. It is hard to imagine such a device being touted as a flagship killer or segment performance king. What is there to terminate – mediocrity?

Here’s a look at what this MediaTek-powered smartphone is able to offer.

Design

Arriving in Clash White and Rush Black, the Realme 10 is as generic as it gets. In fact, if you were to place it side-by-side with the Realme 9i from last year, you might be forgiven for thinking they are one and the same, based on their camera placements alone.

Perhaps Realme figured out that retaining the same design language lends a sense of continuity for fans of the brand.

The back panel touts what Realme dubs a “Light Particle” design that features a sparkly finish with corrugated light effect when viewed from an angle. Not quite flashy, though it does make a detour from the mundane.

With a polycarbonate glass used for the back, going for Clash White makes more sense since fingerprints are less visible.

You can lay the Realme 10 prone on a flat surface without it wobbling since there is no camera bump behind. There are also no curved edges on the handset, making it less slippery and easier to tote around.

Measuring just 7.95mm thin and tipping the scales at 178g, it is surely a joy to carry on public transport while watching videos.

A USB Type-C port at the bottom allows you to connect a charger right next to the speaker grille, plus – a pleasant surprise for many – a 3.5mm headphone jack as well! This is a welcome addition considering how most smartphones have been phasing it out in recent years.

A volume rocker and power button that doubles as a fingerprint scanner are on the right side of the handset, while the left hosts a dual-SIM card tray that also carries a microSD memory card slot.

There is no 5G support, so you will have to make do with 4G connectivity at most. The “ultrabook speaker” is more a gimmick than anything else, as pumping audio out at maximum level does grate the ears.

Display

You get a 6.4-inch (16cm) Amoled display at Full HD+ resolution with a 90Hz refresh rate and up to 1,000 nits brightness. While 90Hz is old- hat by now, it is still smooth when scrolling through social media feeds and long emails.

Colours are sharp and vibrant right out of the box, and since this is a Widevine L1-certified display, you will be able to view HD videos on platforms such as Netflix.

Those who are used to thin or virtually nonexistent bezels will be disappointed with the Realme 10. The punch-hole camera is located on the top left side of the display, while the relatively thick chin might be a damper when you binge on your favourite series.

Performance & software

The Realme 10 is powered by the octa-core MediaTek Helio G99 SoC, a tried-and-tested chipset that has been around for a few months already on entry-level and selected mid-range devices.

You will find the Realme 10 capable of handling everyday tasks with aplomb. Even if you were to crank it up a notch by multitasking, the G99 chipset is able to keep up with your pace.

There’s not much significant heat buildup when playing games for an extended time, which is a good thing, although some thermal throttling may kick in.

Malaysia gets the 8GB RAM model that is mated to 256GB of storage space. The amount of RAM can be increased virtually to 16GB by allocating another 8GB from the internal memory.

As for expandable memory, the microSD card slot lets you carry around an additional 1TB, which is useful if you tend to download files for offline viewing. UFS 2.2 storage is used here, which is par for the course for a smartphone in its class.

It is disappointing to see Realme include the UI 3.0 skin that is based on Android 12, considering the Android 14 developer preview was released earlier this month. The Realme 10 is far behind the update curve in this department compared with Android industry leaders.

There are also plenty of pre-installed apps to contend with when you pick up the Realme 10. Thankfully, most of them can be uninstalled.

Camera

Most cameras, even entry-level ones, work great under good lighting. However, it does not make sense for smartphone manufacturers to pad up the technical specifications with a 2MP B&W lens that is pretty much useless. You are better off cropping a segment of an image taken with the 50MP primary camera.

This camera boasts a 77° field of view and f/1.8 aperture, utilising pixel-binning technology to save photos in 12.5MP resolution. You can always disable pixel binning to capture full 50MP shots if you wish.

Sample shots under bright sunlight carry plenty of detail with decent contrast and dynamic range levels. It is recommended you disable the AI mode since colour saturation tends to be more aggressive when enabled.

Zoom-wise 2x is available, but since it is not lossless zoom, the image quality is less than ideal.

Flipping the phone over to the front, a 16MP selfie camera is located in the upper left punch-hole. Selfies look decent under adequate lighting conditions.

Battery life

A 5,000mAh battery keeps the Realme 10 going, and is charged via its proprietary 33W SuperVooc fast-charging standard.

It takes slightly more than an hour for it to hit 100% from empty, which should be more than enough to last the average user an entire day with juice to spare until the next morning. In any case, you can easily give it a quick boost while you take a shower or enjoy a meal.

Realme has thrown in the charging brick alongside a USB Type-C cable to get you started right out of the box.

The bottom line

The Realme 10 is a capable, everyday workhorse that performs most menial tasks well. It should not let you down if all you do is surf the internet, scroll through social media feeds, and snap reminder photos once in a while.

While you can play games on the Realme 10, do not expect to crank up the graphics settings all the way to the maximum as its deficiencies will show up all too eagerly.

The lovely display and decent battery life make up for its shortcomings. However, software support and camera performance continue to be a pox, not only here but on most budget smartphones.

It would be nice to see Realme up its game when it comes to software and security updates. It’s also about time the industry dropped the pretty much useless 2MP camera!

With an asking price of RM999, the Realme 10 is competitively priced for what it offers. However, is it the class-leading “Terminator” as touted? Not quite, but you can be sure that it’ll be back in the guise of the Realme 11.

Edwin Kee dreamt of being a pro-gamer only to have circumstances mould him into a programmer in a past life. He has since moved on to write about consumer electronics and other topics.