Realme 9i launched in Vietnam on the 10th of January, and it is a budget phone from the brand with Snapdragon 680 chip. Now, this phone is coming to the Indian market as the company has officially announced the launch event on the 18th of this month. Compared to the Vietnamese market, we are not expecting any changes in the phone for the Indian market.
The main USP of this phone is definitely its SOC. It is rocking the Snapdragon 680 chip, and while it is a non-5G SOC, it is built on the 6nm manufacturing process. Moreover, the 9i is going to be the first phone in its price segment to offer this chipset. As the name suggests, this is an upgrade over the Snapdragon 678 chip that we have seen powering phones such as the Redmi Note 10. The chip features Adreno 610 GPU and Kryo 265 CPU.
Design-wise, this phone resembles the Realme GT Neo 2 a lot because it has the same design on the front and also the same camera module design. The only difference is that the GT Neo 2 is a high-end phone with a glass back, whereas the 9i is a budget phone with a polycarbonate build. Realme 9i has stereo speakers, a USB Type-C port on the bottom, a triple-card slot, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. There is a side-mounted fingerprint reader.
In terms of the specs, Realme 9i has a 6.6-inch LCD with a Full-HD+ resolution, 90Hz refresh rate, and up to 180-Hz touch-sampling rate. There are three cameras on the back where the primary shooter has a 50MP sensor with an f/1.8 aperture lens. There are two 2MP cameras as well, one for macro shots and the other for dept information.
The phone packs a 5,000mAh battery and supports 33W fast charging. Android 11 runs out of the box with Realme UI 2.0 on top.
Well, it is a successor to the Realme 8i of last year, which had the Helio G96 chip, a 120Hz LCD, a 50MP camera, a 5,000mAh battery, and 18W charging. That phone launched in India for ₹13,999, so we are expecting the Realme 9i to launch under ₹15000 as well.