Flagship phones are amazing. Not only do they boast of the bleeding edge for design, display, performance, and camera quality but the amount of bragging rights and street cred you get from flashing it in public feels amazing.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are budget lineups that, while may not be up-to-spec when it comes to the phone you lust over the most, are highly serviceable, practical, and sometimes can surprise with the level of quality they offer.
The realme C63 is one of those budget phones that aims to punch above its minuscule weight and price tag. Does it succeed in doing so and will it win the pound-for-pound belt amidst a sea of budget and midrange offerings?
A Familiar and Comfortable Design
The realme C63 might be on the edge of the price bracket, but its design certainly inspires hype. We’re certainly not comparing Apples to oranges here but we can appreciate the inspiration behind the design with some bits and pieces here and there to make it more distinct and sometimes even improve upon the inspiration.
The rear feature a familiar 3-hole camera design of which one is the main camera, a depth-sensing camera and a flash. I would have personally preferred a single camera piece but at least it floats in its own island, bordered by beautifully crafted chamfered edges.
The sharp boxy design, while crafted with polycarbonate and not titanium or stainless steel, makes it feel like a premium flagship. The volume rocker and power buttons are situated comfortably on the right side of the realme C63 giving easy thumb access as well as left hand access with the index finger.
The realme C63 gets a softer and more comfortable feel in hand despite the flat edges. The design does somehow feel sharp and far from ergonomic, but thanks, perhaps to the plastic construction and a tad rounder feel around the edges, it is much easier to handle than how the looks suggest.
Right below the realme C63, it gets a tad busy with the USB-C port, speaker grill, mic port and the most important feature of all, a 3.5mm headphone jack!
Why companies omit these from many midrange and flagship offerings is truly baffling, not only does it provide greater audio potential but for content creators such as myself, I like to have the option to plug in a nice microphone without having to compromise losing the USB-C port to charge or transfer data.
The rest of the phone is plain with another set with the left side carrying the dual-sim tray with microSD card slot and a completely blank top portion, no noise cancelling mics, not that we really expected any.
Remember when HD meant High-Definition?
The screen is the realme C63’s biggest giveaway to its budget intentions. While it does have a 6.75-inch screen with a 90Hz refresh rate, making on-screen movement more fluid than your typical budget-phones.
The 720×1600 HD+ LCD won’t win any awards. For the ppi-patrol, that gives us around 260 pixels per inch which is fine for regular content consumption. Netflix, YouTube and TikTok is fine on the large screen and the tear-drop camera layout on the phone’s center is certainly not distracting to say the least though a bit outdated, design-wise.
Brightness is not the realme 63’s strong suit at around 560 nits on High Brightness mode which puts it on par with many laptops and tablets in the market.
We know having high brightness can be useful outdoors but glare shouldn’t be much of a concern especially for customers at this price point. Finding a shade is definitely cheaper than forking up upwards of Php 58,000, right?
Eventually I got used to the screen’s brightness and resolution. I myself own a flagship phone and finding myself getting used to the HD resolution of the realme C63, learned how to dial down my own phone’s resolution itself. The human eye can only appreciate so much pixels after all.
Capable Daily Driver and Casual Gamer
One thing I found in the current crop of budget phones is that, a lot of today’s handhelds feel streets ahead of the phones with the same price tag 5 years ago.
realme has alwyas given us value for its devices and itd certainly caught up with today’s prosumer demands. The realme C63 feels quite snappy for its price with loading times between apps bearable and not at all infuriating.
Much of the horsepower rely on the Unisoc Tiger T612 processor. It’s an 8-core chipset manufactured using the 12-nanometer process which is a far-cry from flagships that feature 4-nanometers. In a nutshell, its transistors are much larger, being able to fit 4 times less than the current crop of flagships.
Typically the lower you can fit, the more efficient performance and battery life is. The processor inside the realme C63 however exhibits none of the drawbacks, and performs quite admirably especially in the battery department.
I used the realme C63 as my daily driver for the past week and never once have I felt the need to charge it within the day.
During top-ups, the included 45W super VOOC fast charger juices the phone by about 20% in just 10 minutes. At the end of the day, I still get around 30% even after some heavy video and picture-taking, using it as a dedicated wifi hotspot and in low-signal areas.
realme claims that the C63 with its mega 5,000 mAH battery can go from 0-100% in as quick as 1 hour and 20 minutes, and wholeheartedly believe that claim.
I was surprised at the gaming capabilities of the realme C63. One can call myself a casual gamer, and I play only one game, exclusively and that’s Call of Duty Mobile.
It’s quite resourceheavy, yet I was still able to easily play and at times even dominate with the realme C63. Granted it needs to run on medium graphics and frame rates, but the touch screen was fairly responsive and the gameplay kept me in the game.
The single-core Mali-G57, paired with 8GB of RAM which is expandable to 16GB thanks to the magic of Virtual Memory allowed smooth gameplay and kept the phone fairly cool unlike many “performance” phones
It Has a Camera
While the 3-hole camera setup at the rear suggests multiple focal lengths to play with, the realme C63, in essence only has 1 main camera — a 50-megapixel f/1.8 24mm equivalent camera.
It has Phase-Detect Autofocus, allowing fast and reliable focusing for both photo and video. Right next to the main camera lies the depth sensor, which helps with gathering optical data for improved depth-of-field or “blurry background” and the other is a regular old flash.
Personally I would have appreciated the design even more if it gave me just 1 hole punch for the camera, but at least there is a sense of symmetry to the whole affair.
The photos taken with the main camera are pleasing with a good amount of dynamic range. It pretty much takes the entire picture, and blows up all the details and drops highlights removing unwanted shadows and dark spots caused by uneven lighting. Thus is the magic of AI and computational photography.
I used the camera to take stills at my day job and the feeling of carrying one shooter with a single focal-range seemed liberating and constricting at the same time.
I wished I had a telephoto to further create compression or an ultra-wide to evoke drama but the singular 24mm freed me from these choices and allowed me to be more creative with my shots. There is an option for digital zoom, but I highly suggest leaving it alone.
Night shots are also interesting as, although details are all but gone from the final product, it creates a distinct vintage look, as if coming from a CCD camera.
The video capabilities of the realme C63 are limited as well, with a max resolution of 1080p and frame rates capped at just 30fps, I wouldn’t call it a must-have for creators especially due to the fact that it lacks any stability features OIS or electronic.
The front camera is also serviceable mainly for video calls or probably your regular TikTok livestreams, but at 8MP with an f/2.0 aperture and a tiny 1/4-inch sensor, it’s best you get a ring light for better results.
But we always have to circle back it its price, is the camera’s performance fair to what you’d be paying for? Yup, pretty much.
Value for Value
Apart from the standard offering, the realme C63 does have a ton of accessories and features that some mid-grade and flagship phones cannot offer.
Accessories are important in the ownership experience and at the same time make customers feel valued. This can be a lesson for the bigger brands out there.
Inside its box, we have a transparent case, a 45W superVOOC charging brick and the necessary capable to get the most out of the adaptor.
realme also promises up to 4 years of software updates to ensure seamless and fluid operation for years to come. The realme C63 also has an IP57 dust and splash-proof protection. With the recent rains that we’re having I was able to comfortably use it outdoors. Using the realme C63 on a motorcycle mount shouldn’t be a problem as well.
Priced at just PhP 8,999 and available in both Leather Blue and Jade Green, the realme C63 offers value for those on a tight budget.
Technology has come a long way the past decade or so. Features that have once only fared on flagships have now trickled down on to budget offerings too.
While budget phones still can’t hold a candle to more expensive offerings, they are essential in the market. And it’s nice to know that if one needs a phone on the cheap that they can game with, take decent pictures, last a good splash in the rain and can last the whole day, the realme C63 can be a viable and durable option.
