Realme X2 Pro in for review

From aggressively priced entry-level devices to a true flagship in less than two years' time, Realme's journey is unlike any other smartphone company in recent memory. Initially, an Oppo offshoot, the young brand has quickly built its own identity in arguably the most competitive market in the world - India. After rising to prominence and growing at unparalleled speeds in terms of market share, Realme expanded its presence to China this past May and made its way to Europe later in June.

At the time of writing, the Realme X2 Pro is the culmination of the brand’s efforts in pushing the boundaries in what a flagship experience is and having received a review unit we are already putting it through the usual set of tests.

Let’s quickly run through the key specs. You get a 6.5-inch FHD+ Super AMOLED with a 90Hz refresh rate, Snapdragon 855+ and quad-camera setup with a 64MP main cam. Sounds almost unbelievable for a phone that starts at €399.

In addition to that, there’s a 4,000 mAh battery with 50W SuperVOOC charging, dual-glass design and an in-display fingerprint sensor. In short, it's giving phones that cost twice as much a run for their money.

Perhaps the waterdrop notch on the front is not optimal, given that the midrange Realme X featured a cleaner pop-up solution. As with any phone that aims to bring a lot of features on a tight budget, Realme had to cut some corners which is understandable.

Another downside is that the entry-level variant with 6GB RAM and 64GB storage comes with the slower UFS 2.1 storage while only the upper spec’d ones benefit from the faster UFS 3.0 speeds. The design of the Realme X2 Pro is nothing out of the ordinary but the phone does feel solid and has the heft to back it up, weighing in at 200 grams. Our unit comes with the Neptune Blue paint job which is quite vibrant and has a sleek purple tint.

In our brief time with the X2 Pro, we noticed that ColorOS 6.1 which is Realme’s skin of choice on top of Android 9 feels toned down and more responsive compared to previous offerings. It’s also nice to see that Realme kept the headphone jack despite omitting the microSD slot.

Our review team is already hard at work with the Realme X2 Pro full review so expect that to arrive in the coming week. As usual, we'll have a video breakdown shortly after that.