Realme U1 launched in India with Helio P70 & 25MP front camera

Realme is on a launch spree as the company is launching a new phone almost every couple of months. It all started with the Realme 1 that launched in May this year and then, we got the Realme 2, Realme C1, Realme 2 Pro and today, the Realme U1. U1 is the first phone in the ‘U’ series, and the phones in the U series sit between the ‘Realme’ and the ‘Pro’ series. So, the phone is much better than the Realme 2 and slightly less powerful than the Realme 2 Pro.

If you have seen the Realme 2 Pro, you’ll hardly notice any difference regarding the overall design. One thing that makes the U1 different is the ‘Light Pillar Design’ on the back that, like Honor phones, reflects light in such a way that you get different patterns of light at different angles.

And yes, the back is not made up of glass. It is plastic like on the Realme 2 Pro. The company claims that compared to the real glass, the back panel of U1 is more durable and shatter resistant since there is a 13-layer micron-level coating on the rear.

The front remains unchanged compared to the Realme 2 Pro as the phone has the same edge-to-edge display with a dewdrop notch and a chin on the bottom. The micro USB port, 3.5mm headphone jack, and the speaker grill are placed on the bottom. The power button is on the right while the volume rockers are on the left. So, the ports and the buttons are also placed in the same way as on the Realme 2 Pro.

So, what’s changed? Well, the specifications are different. The display remains the same 6.3-inch Full-HD+ LTPS IPS panel with a resolution of 2340 x 1080 pixels and a 19.5:9 aspect ratio. The contrast ratio if 1500:1 and the brightness can go up to 450 nits. The display also has the Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection, so that’s nice.

The Realme U1 is powered by the all-new MediaTek Helio P70 processor which is the successor of Helio P60 and comes with some minor improvements. The phone scores higher than the Honor 8X on AnTuTu and scores around 145K. P70 is an octa-core 2.1GHz processor with 4X ARM Cortex-A73 cores and 4X ARM Cortex-A53 cores. There is ARM-Mali G72 GPU. The U1 comes in two variants – 3GB RAM + 32GB ROM and 4GB RAM + 64GB ROM. The storage is further expandable up to 256GB.

The Realme U1 comes with a dual camera setup on the back that includes a primary 13MP f/2.2 sensor and a secondary 2MP f/2.4 depth sensor. It is the same camera setup that we have on the Realme C1 so, that’s weird. Maybe the software has some tricks up its sleeves.

On the front, the Realme U1 has a 25MP Sony IMX576 sensor with f/2.0 aperture, pixel-binning technology, Night Shot Brightness and more. AI features like scene detection, Portrait Mode, Face Unlock, Beautify are all there.

The Realme U1 has a 3,500mAh battery that supports 5V/2A charging via the micro USB port. Android 8.1.0 Oreo runs out of the box with Color OS 5.2 on top.

As we already know, the Realme U1 starts at Rs 11,999 for the 3GB + 32GB variant and Rs 14,499 for the 4GB + 64GB variant. The phone is Amazon Exclusive in India and will be available in the first sale on December 5th.

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