After establishing itself in India, Realme has now begun its expansion into other markets including Southeast Asia. Malaysia is part of the expansion as well even though the company which is a sub-brand of OPPO has yet to reveal its plan for our market.
Being such a young brand in the industry, the company only has a handful of products at the time being. Among them is the Realme 2 and Realme 2 Pro which made its regional debut during a launch event in Jakarta yesterday.
After the launch event, we took some time to mess around with the two phones to get a feel of what they’re like in our hands.
Realme 2
The Realme 2 is as per what we have said before: its resemblance to OPPO A3s is rather uncanny. It’s certainly nice to hold in your hand, and since it’s pretty light, you can certainly hold it on your hands for extended periods of time. However, the native resolution on its display is only HD+.
Being a midrange phone, it is not surprising that the Realme 2 comes with a Micro-USB port. While the USB Type-C is getting more and more common, having a Micro-USB port certainly makes it easier to get a replacement charging cable if you lost the one that came in the box. And in what seems these days as a massive bonus, the 3.5mm jack sits right next to the USB port.
Round the back, the diamond-cut design makes it so that each ‘cut’ reflects light like an individual piece of glass. This makes for quite the spectacle when you’re twisting the phone around under a bright light, but beyond that, there’s no real merit to this cosmetic quality. It’s a novelty, sure, but any beauty points it brings to the table is sure to get stale quickly.
Round the back, the fingerprint sensor sits at the stereotypical spot. It’s not necessarily a bad thing – it’s a tried-and-tested spot to place it after all. But up top, we see a characteristic that is sadly not going anywhere any time soon – the camera bump. While it doesn’t protrude as badly as most others, it’s still a cause for concern.
These days, phones with such a bump will sometimes come with a soft case in the box, so that the camera doesn’t turn into a scratched mess whenever you put the phone on a table. Let’s hope it’s the same with the Realme 2 when it comes to our shores.
Realme 2 Pro
Moving on to the Realme 2 Pro, the user experience is pretty much the same as the Realme 2. It handles the same and feels very similar in hand although there is still one major difference between them: the teardrop-shaped display notch.
Since it’s smaller, it felt rather less in-your-face and at the same time, the screen does look marginally better than Realme 2 as well. This likely due to the fact that because it’s a Full HD+ display.
The familiar Micro-USB port and the 3.5mm jack can be found at the bottom of the phone, alongside a fingerprint sensor that is located on the phone’s back. It’s also more circular, which is aesthetically more pleasing in my opinion.
But more egregious than before is the camera bump. While the one on the Realme 2 was just a slight bump on an otherwise flat surface, the one on the Realme 2 Pro is pretty noticeable. Without fancy design on its back, the phone looked rather stale when viewed from certain angle although this is less apparent on the Blue Ocean and Ice Lake version of the phone.
As mentioned earlier, the arrival date for Realme 2 and Realme 2 Pro in Malaysia is yet known at the moment. We’ll keep you posted we hear more from the brand.
