Realme 5 and 5 Pro hands-on review

Realme 5 Pro hardware

Unlike its sibling, the Realme 5 Pro stayed the same as its predecessor. It kept the screen size at 6.3" with similarly-sized bezels. The teardrop notch is 30% smaller, though, so it's less obtrusive.

It's an LCD panel as before with 1080p+ resolution. However, it uses Gorilla Glass 3+ - an older version of the Corning glass, while the Realme 3 Pro had GG5 (which boasts increased drop resistance).

Realme put a lot of work into making the phone splash resistant. It used a combination of glue, a rubber gasket and rings to secure internal components and make sure that no water seeps through the USB or headphone jacks, the card slot or any gap between the frame and the back cover.

We're curious why Realme isn't claiming proper water resistance - most IP68 rely on a similar setup with rubber gaskets and rings around the holes in the frame. So, definitely don't dunk the phone in water, but Realme may be underselling the water-resistance of the handset.

The new phone is thicker than the 3 Pro - 8.9mm vs. 8.3mm. And at 184g total, it's 12g heavier too. However, the battery still has the same capacity of 4,035mAh.

The good news is that it now charges over USB-C. And this is VOOC 3.0 charging we're talking about here, it delivers 20W of power (5V 4A). This is the same combo that we saw on Realme X (the 3 Pro had VOOC 3.0 but it used a microUSB port instead).

Also on the bottom is the 3.5mm headphone jack (Realme has never made a phone without a jack).

The loudspeaker grille is off to the side and it boasts Dirac Power Sound tech, a collaboration between Realme and Dirac that optimizes the audio quality from the speaker while reducing distortion.