New Peugeot 2008 showcases modern class and style at the 2022 MIAS

Peugeot Philippines continues on a growth trajectory under its new distributor, Astara, capping off the first quarter of 2022 with record retail sales, new dealerships, and the launch of the New Peugeot 2008 SUV.

The company announced overall retail sales for the first quarter increased 89% year-over-year.

The record Q1 performance was driven by the New Peugeot 5008 and New Peugeot 3008 SUVs, which were launched in January and February, respectively.

Peugeot Philippines also welcomed four new dealerships to its growing dealer network, bringing the number of dealerships across the country to seven.The new dealerships are Peugeot Alabang by Automotive Icon Inc., Peugeot Balintawak by the ANC Group, Peugeot Cebu by The Gateway Group, and Peugeot Davao by the Angcore Group.

All four dealerships are currently building their new showrooms, which are expected to open within the second half of the year.

“We continue to make progress with our plans since relaunching the brand in January, and this momentum is being driven by our line-up of global Peugeot vehicles that is allowing us to become a premium auto brand of choice for Filipinos,” said Raoul Picello, managing director, Peugeot Philippines. “Together with our growing dealer family, we remain fully committed to making the Peugeot brand accessible to more Filipinos nationwide, allowing us to better serve them and their needs,” Picello added.

True to its promise of revitalizing the Peugeot brand in the country by introducing new global vehicles, the company today launched the New Peugeot 2008 SUV as the fourth and latest vehicle joining its product line-up for the Philippine market.

The New Peugeot 2008 SUV

The New Peugeot 2008 SUV is a 5-seater compact, next-generation SUV and is the ultra-modern interpretation of an instinctive and versatile driving experience.

“The New Peugeot 2008 completes our SUV line-up for the Philippines alongside the New Peugeot 5008 and New Peugeot 3008. All three SUVs give Filipinos access to the unmatched experience that our Peugeot global SUVs offer, in three size options that meet the varying needs and lifestyles of our customers,” said Maricar Parco, Brand Head, Peugeot Philippines.

Breathtaking Design

Powerful and distinctive in style, the New Peugeot 2008 SUV is a sculptural and desirable vehicle that creates a breathtaking impression on the road. The balanced lines and overall
proportions are those of an SUV, with a recessed windshield that makes the bonnet more horizontal, creating a strong body.

The compact five-seater SUV sits well on its wheels, perfectly shouldered, strong and reassuring. The front incorporates a proud and straight grille, a carved bonnet and full-LED lighting technology with Peugeot’s iconic three-claw signature illumination. This is complemented by LED daytime “fang-like” running lights that fade under the full-LED headlamps.

The 17” Black Onyx & Diamond Cut rims add a robust styling to complete its sporty look.

Intuitive Driving Experience

On the inside, the Peugeot i-Cockpit — a world-first in its segment — offers flawless ergonomics around the driver for an intuitive driving experience, including a compact steering wheel for better grip and handling, a large 7-inch HD touch screen infotainment system, and an innovative 3D heads up instrument cluster. Information is placed in the driver’s line of sight and the Peugeot i-Cockpit 3D instrument cluster projects it like a hologram.

The indications are dynamic and animated as they get closer to the eye, thereby increasing reactivity by around half a second.

The spaciousness of the New Peugeot 2008 makes it a particularly versatile SUV. With a variety of storage spaces on board, you will be able to keep everything you need on a daily basis with you.

In addition to the traditional door pockets and the glove box, there is ample storage space under the front center armrest and more in front of the gear stick. The texture and materials of the cabin are meticulously detailed, skillfully combining noble materials and colors that give it a sporty yet fashionable vibe.

Top of the Class Power and Performance

The New Peugeot 2008 SUV is equipped with driving aids and safety features, such as Visiopark 1 180° rear view camera, Active Lane Keeping Assist, Driver Attention Assist, Blind Spot Monitoring, and Active Safety Brake. Other standard safety features include six SRS Airbags, Hill Start Assist, and Electronic Stability Program (ESP), which includes Anti-lock Braking System (ABS), Electronic Brake-Force Distribution (EBD) and Emergency Brake Assist (EBA).

It also comes with conveniences such as Advanced Keyless Entry (with Auto-Unlock & Walk Away Lock), Front & Rear Parking Sensors, Rear Camera, Roof Rails and Electric Foldable Wing Mirrors.

Powered by the award-winning 1.2L 3-cylinder turbocharged PureTech engine, the New Peugeot 2008 SUV delivers a robust 130 horsepower and 230 Nm of torque. The turbocharged engine is paired with a quick-shifting, six-speed automatic transmission.

The New Peugeot 2008 is assembled at the Stellantis manufacturing plant in Gurun, Malaysia. All vehicles built at the Stellantis manufacturing plant in Gurun undergo specific endurance and quality testing in Malaysia, to deliver best-in-class performance for local conditions and to meet the needs of customers in Southeast Asia. The New Peugeot 2008 has successfully endured 200,000 kilometres of testing in Malaysia’s diverse climate and environmental landscape.

An Award-Winning SUV

The New Peugeot 2008 was recently awarded Thailand Car of the Year accolades at the 2022 Thailand Car of the Year Awards, together with the New Peugeot 3008.

The Peugeot 2008 was named Best Petrol SUV under 1,200 cc and the Peugeot 3008 was awarded Best Petrol SUV under 1,800 cc, at the awards ceremony held in Bangkok last month.

“We are honored that two of our Peugeot vehicles, built here in South East Asia, are the recipients of such prestigious and notable awards in Thailand,” said Christophe Musy, Senior Vice President ASEAN & General Distributors at Stellantis. “There’s never been a better time to get behind the wheel of the Peugeot 2008 and the Peugeot 3008, to discover just what makes these award-winning SUVs so special.”

Pricing, Colors and Availability

The New Peugeot 2008 SUV is priced at Php 1,550,00 and offered in four colors: Amazonite Grey, Pearl White, Nera Black, and the model’s exclusive color Fusion Orange.

It comes with a manufacturer warranty of three years or 100,000 kilometers, whichever comes first, and periodic checks for every 10,000 kilometers mileage interval. Customers are invited to book a test drive by contacting their nearest Peugeot Philippines dealer.

Peugeot Philippines’s full vehicle line-up and customer test drives are now available at the Manila International Auto Show from April 7 to 10, 2022 at the World Trade Center, Pasay City. Visitors can expect to see the New Peugeot 2008 SUV together with the New Peugeot 5008, New Peugeot 3008, and Peugeot Traveller Premium at the Peugeot stand.

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realme C55 review: Redefining the C Series

04/21/2023

realme Philippines just introduced the realme C55 smartphone in the Philippines. It’s a midrange phone with a sub-PhP8K price tag but offers an array of features and capable performance. It also sports the new Mini Capsule similar to the Dynamic Island found on Apple’s iPhones.

With that affordable pricing, can it really deliver on its promises? We find out.

Unboxing

Let’s begin with the box. Not much has changed when it comes to packaging and you still get an all-yellow box and once you open it, you’ll be greeted and welcomed to the realme family.

Lifting and opening this smaller box reveals the usual manuals and guides in addition to its included jelly case if you want to add some sort of protection to your device.

What’s left in the box is the realme C55 unit and digging deeper will introduce you to the power brick and USB-C cable that supports SuperVOOC charging. More on that later.

Design

For the device itself, the realme C55 has a sleek and modern design with a well-designed back that’s available in two colors – Sunshower and Rainy Night. Even though the back panel is made of plastic, it still exudes that premium look and feel thanks to its rounded edges.

What we have here is the Rainy Night color and just like its name suggests, the back has these textures and patterns that look like showers of light rain pouring at certain angles. Looking at it could get trippy.

The phone feels comfortable in the hand, and the buttons are well-placed and easy to reach. All the buttons are on the right side with the volume rocker sitting above the power/lock button that also doubles as a fingerprint scanner. There have been a few fingerprint misreadings during our time but overall, it has been quick and responsive and had no major issues.

The left side houses its dual SIM tray and microSD slot for storage expansion. Meanwhile, at the bottom, you have an audio jack for wired headphones, its USB 2.0 Type-C port, and a speaker grille.

As for the rest of its back panel, there are two prominent camera sensors at the back namely a 64-megapixel main and a secondary 2-megapixel depth sensor. We’ll expound on the optics later on.

Display and multimedia

In terms of display, this phone comes with a 6.72-inch FHD+ IPS display with a resolution of 2400 x 1080 pixels. The display is bright and vibrant, and the colors are accurate. There’s a bit of chin at the bottom but the rest of the bezels are pretty thin but still a bit noticeable.

The realme C55 also features a 90Hz refresh rate, which makes scrolling and navigating through the UI feel smooth and fluid. I always turn set my phone’s refresh rate to the highest since scrolling just looks very fluid even though it depletes the battery faster. That’s what its fast-charging tech is there for, at least for me.

Using it when watching videos on YouTube or streaming TV shows and movies on Netflix, its large display makes for easy viewing. Although I would appreciate it better if it had stereo speakers rather than just one bottom-firing grille. But of course, that would bump up the price.

Camera

As mentioned earlier, the realme C55 has a dual camera setup on the back, which includes a 64-megapixel main camera, and a 2-megapixel depth sensor. Having the same main sensor as the realme GT Edition, the camera performance is impressive for its price point, with good color accuracy and detail in well-lit conditions.

Photos have a generally cool tone to them and dynamic range is actually good as it preserves details both in the dark and light areas for each shot even with HDR turned off.

One of the things I noticed, though, is that it sometimes struggles in focusing when taking photos of subjects up close. Usually, this is where a macro feature would come in handy, but that’s not present in this phone. Night Mode also works well and is able to get needed light into its sensor for a clear image at the expense of holding still for about 3 seconds on average.

Something that I missed shooting with a realme phone is its Street Mode which automatically applies Kodak-approved filters to produce more of those street-style vibe photos. But, this is the entry-level C series, after all, so we’re not complaining.

Video recording maxes out at 1080p at 60fps which is good enough for shooting reels. But since this phone isn’t meant to specialize in videos, we don’t have any complaints.

The phone also features an 8MP front-facing camera, which takes decent selfies. One of my observations, though, is that its night mode has the same long shutter approach so it wasn’t the best thing to use in low light with a large group of people unless they’re willing to keep still for about 3 seconds while the selfie camera lets more light into its sensor.

Performance

This midrange phone is powered by a MediaTek Helio G88 chipset paired with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage. This is the first time that a model from the C series comes with this RAM and storage combo.

In terms of daily usage, switching between apps is effortless and its realme UI 4.0 based on Android 13 makes navigation intuitive. The phone, in general, can handle your usual social media apps and even video editing software for creating short videos on TikTok or IG Reels, for example.

The phone also features a Mali-G52 GPU, which is capable of handling most games and apps. I did experience some frame drops when playing resource-intensive games like Genshin Impact. It’s quite understandable but I was still able to enjoy playing on the device and lags were not something I experienced on a regular basis.

Special to this phone is realme’s Mini Capsule feature that appears on top of the screen to show useful notifications. As of writing this review, it just displays the battery status that pops up when the battery is running low, charging, or fully charged. It can also alert you of your data usage when you’ve consumed more than 90% of your daily data usage limit.

realme says it will still add more features to the Mini Capsule via downloadable updates in the future.

Battery life

The realme C55 has a 5000mAh battery, which provides impressive battery life. The phone can easily last for a full day on a single charge with moderate usage and we were even able to use the phone as our wireless display for our DJI RSC 2 while shooting our video reviews.

The phone also supports 33W SuperVOOC fast charging, with claims that it can charge the phone from 0 to 100% in about an hour. This proved true during our experience and even just charging the phone for 30 minutes already yielded around 50% of battery life from empty.

For context, previous iterations from the C series could only charge up to 18W with their Quick Charging feature.

Price and conclusion

The realme C55 has a starting price in the Philippines of PhP 8,999 for the 6GB and 128GB model while the 8GB and 256GB variant that we have is at PhP 10,999.

Overall, the realme C55 is a solid midrange smartphone that offers good value for money. The phone has a sleek and modern design, a large and vibrant display with a high refresh rate, powerful performance, and a capable camera system.

The phone also has excellent battery life and supports fast charging. So if you’re looking for an affordable smartphone that offers good overall performance, the realme C55 definitely reinvents offerings from the C series and is well worth considering.

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