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Battery life
- Fast charger included
- Lasts a full day comfortably
With a 4,045mAh battery and a power-efficient chipset, the Realme 3 Pro certainly has all of the necessary components to achieve great battery life - but as always success in this area requires software enhancements as well as the right hardware.
It is lucky then, that the Android overlay used (ColorOS) is so frugal. No matter the background process, the onboard battery manager does all it can to keep activity to a minimum in order to preserve power.
Taken to an extreme, this can limit how ‘smart’ a smartphone can be, as it can tend to restrict the receipt of notifications etc. In general, we found that this wasn’t the case, though users of the extreme battery saving modes might have a different experience entirely.
Running the reliable TechRadar battery test (a 90-minute video played on high brightness at full resolution from 100% battery over Wi-Fi) the battery dropped to 83%. This is a strong showing, if not quite at the level of some rivals, or the likes of the Moto G7 Power with its mega 5,000mAh power pack.
Across an average work day, with a 45-minute commute in the morning and in the evening, listening to music on Bluetooth and receiving various messages and calls throughout the day, we finished with 75% - 80% on average by 6pm, which is well within the boundaries of ‘acceptable’ performance.
Sweetening the deal considerably however is the inclusion of the proprietary ‘VOOC’ tech of which Oppo is quite proud.
Packed with the device comes a fast charger and an accompanying cable, and we consistently found that, armed with this, we could charge from 0-50% in around 30 minutes. Given the size of the battery pack, and that this is a budget device, that is seriously impressive.
In all, between the fast charging and the lengthy endurance of this device, it would make an easy fit into the lives of most.
Camera
- 16MP and 5MP rear-facing sensors
- 25MP selfie snapper
In a sea of 48MP snappers, the Realme 3 Pro stands out for offering what might seem to be a great deal less. With a 16MP and an accompanying 5MP depth sensor, it certainly doesn’t seem to be trying quite as hard as the competition.
As usual, perceptions often belie reality - and this is quite an interesting little handset when it comes to the camera department. The sensor itself is average, however the inclusion of the modern chipset has allowed Oppo to go all out with software tricks.
We have the usual 'HDR' mode, which stacks images taken at different exposures in order to improve saturation, detail and noise reduction, and a ‘portrait’ mode which blurs the background around your subject.
There’s also a ‘nightscape’ mode, which in low light combines several long exposures for a more pronounced effect, and ‘chroma boost’, which serves to make colors radioactive.
The app itself is easy to navigate and alter, being basically a direct clone of the app produced by Apple for the iPhone. Some settings are buried away in hard to reach places, but in general finding what you need is a simple affair.
For the price point, a lot of thought has gone into the execution of this camera, but does this bear out in its performance?
Somewhat surprisingly, yes. Again for the price point, this is one of the best cameras we have seen.
Detail is abundant in almost every shot, and auto HDR does an impressive job of tastefully recovering the highlights while maintaining a relatively contrasty look. By default, colors produced are on the nice side of saturated, while chroma boost does make things a little cartoonish (but all the better for social media).
Pleasantly, low light performance is also at the top tier for the price point, with the nightscape mode doing a better job than Xiaomi’s equivalent on the Redmi Note 7 to reduce noise in dark shots.
Crucially, it does this while also maintaining some semblance of detail and saturation - though it does not come close to rivaling the likes of the Google Pixel 3 with its special night mode.
The selfie snapper is 25MP in resolution and comes with an array of software filters, and the quality of shots produced is certainly decent.
