Realme has launched its first phone Realme 9i in 2022. There are a lot of confusing things about the phone that I just did not understand if you compare it to Realme 8i it might be a downgrade, & this costs around Rs 14K And when you compare it to its competition, they are way ahead And when we look at Realme we know that they provide us with good phones It comes with a different yellow & black box. The case quality is good. The 33W charger was an upgrade, the 8i was 18W.
Look And Feel
If you like shiny & glossy phones, this phone is great. It’s a dust magnet! So make sure you use it only with the case, the case fits snuggly.
In-Hand Feel
The in-hand feel is different, I cannot say it feel great. It comes with all the ports & buttons. It has a 5000mAh battery. Its weight is 193 gms.
Ports And Buttons
The sim card tray at the left has a dedicated sim card slot, so you can fit 2 sim cards & an SD card.
Display
The display is the same as Realme 8i, 6.6’’ 90Hz refresh rate with IPS LCD screen But the Realme 8i had a 120Hz refresh rate. The bezels & chin are average sizes, the selfie cutout is slightly bigger.
Specifications
It has a Qualcomm SD 680 4G processor which can only support up to 90Hz But the good about the 90Hz refresh rate is the adaptive refresh rate which adapts to the activity you're doing. The processor is a 6 nm-based processor so it means it is power efficient. The 8i had G96, a 12nm based which was not so power-efficient. The Antutu score was 276201 of 9i, but the 8i(G96) had 340965. And you notice the difference while gaming as G96 was a better performer. The base variant is 4GB+64GB & the top variant is 6GB+128GB, the 4GB variant comes at Rs 13,999 The 8i had UFS 2.1 this comes in UFS 2.2 with LPDDR4X RAM.
The gaming experience was good, but you can play BGMI at medium-high settings only It has a 90% screen-to-body ratio so the video viewing is great, because of the LCD screen, the viewing angles are average. The quality of the stereo speakers is good and quite loud, you can binge-watch for 7-8 hrs without facing problems Because of the 6nm based processor, it has a 5000mAh battery with 33W fast charging.
Camera
The camera module looks like it has two big primary cameras But if you look at the setup the primary camera is 50MP, 2MP secondary, and 2MP tertiary sensor. I was disappointed because I've always said that The dynamic range of Realme phones is good, so when I compare there are much better Rs 15K phones. Also the ultrawide was a big miss, at Rs 15K there should've been an ultra-wide sensor. But the selfie sensor is much better with 16MP, which provides good skin tones and colors.
Connectivity
It is a 4G phone, there are already 2-3 under Rs 15K that provide 5G. Rest all the connectivity and sensors are available that you expect in a Rs 15K phone. You can also add up to 5GB of virtual RAM, which is debatable when it comes to actual usage.
UI
The Realme 9 series should've had Android 12 out of the box, you get Android 11 on realmeUI 2.0, which is upgradeable. There is still a lot of bloatware, there are around 15-17 preinstalled apps on the phone.
The Realme 9i is a downgrade compared to the Realme 8i, the UFS 2.2 & the 6nm processor. These are the only new things that are added, also the 2MP cameras were a disappointment & the performance was a slight downgrade. Also, the display is 90Hz not 120Hz, that is why in the beginning I said some of the things are not that great.
