Realme 15 Pro Review: The Mid-segment’s do-It-all device!

Much like many high-end features, it is safe to say that Artificial Intelligence (AI) has made its way to the mid-segment as well. Artificial Intelligence has now become the highlight on many mid-range smartphones, basically replacing what multiple cameras once used to be. This stands true for the recently launched Realme 15 series too. While the phone (launched alongside the Realme 15 and the Realme Buds T200) comes with very good specs for its price, it is safe to say AI was front and centre in its positioning. But will this blend of specs and AI help the phone survive in a highly competitive price zone?

Realme 15 Pro Appearance and design: Cuts a sleek, smart figure

As the front of most smartphones has become very routine, the back is usually what helps one not only identify the phone, but also decide whether the phone looks good enough.

The Realme 15 Pro comes with a curved display, channeling older Samsung flagship designs, and although flat displays are getting more popular, this curved display gives the phone a premium feel. The display, which is called the 4D Curve+ display, curves ever so slightly around the sides without flowing out too much over them, and is surrounded by wafer-thin bezels. There is a punch hole notch that houses the camera in the middle of the top in the middle. But it is the back of the Realme 15 Pro that makes it distinct. As opposed to the big round camera unit on its predecessor’s back, the Realme 14 Pro+, the Realme 15 Pro brings a squoval camera unit on the top left side of the back.

The camera island is transparent, almost as if made of glass, and blends seamlessly into the back of the phone. There are three color options in the device: Silk Purple, Flowing Silver, and Velvet Green. We received the Flowing Silver color, which comes with shiny flowy patterns that give it a slightly marble effect. Although the back has a glossy finish, its texture hides smudges or scratches well. We barely ever felt the need to wipe the back of the phone. The white is offset very impressively with a gold accent around the three camera sensors, and the same shade is on the frame of the phone, giving it a metal look and feel, even though it is carbonate.

The left side is plain, while the right is home to the volume rocker and the power/lock button. The top carries an IR sensor while the base holds the SIM card slot, the Type-C port, and the speaker grille. The phone is impressively sleek for the big battery (more about which later) it houses – it is 7.79 mm slim and although quite tall at 162.26 mm, it weighs 187 grams, which is relatively light for its size. Although it is tall and does take both hands to use the phone properly, the phone in no way feels bulky, and it sat very comfortably in the palm of our hands. It comes with military grade certification and an IP69 rating, making it a tough bird that can survive even a fall in the water.

Realme 15 Pro Gaming and multimedia performance: Sheer display magic master

The Realme 15 Pro is the first phone to come with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 processor in India, a notable step up from the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 processor that powered its predecessor. This is backed by up to 12 GB LPDDR 4X RAM and up to 512 GB UFS 3.1 storage.

With that set up, the phone smoothly sailed through our everyday tasks. Whether it was texting, taking pictures, Web browsing, or social media scrolls, we did not face any hiccups along the way. The story remains the same with multitasking, too. We relentlessly jumped from one app to another, switching between a dozen apps, even at one point, and the phone handled all of it gracefully. The Realme 15 Pro also handled casual gaming very well. Games like Subway Surfers, Candy Crush, and Temple Run 2 were all a delight. The phone even manages to handle high-end games. Tweak the settings a bit, and games like Genshin Impact, BGMI, and Call of Duty play well on the device. That said, this is certainly not a gaming phone and is at its best in the regular usage and casual gaming zone. The Realme 15 Pro handles pressure well and does not heat up in the process either. It is safe to say, it keeps its cool.

Making gaming delightful is the phone’s beautiful 6.8-inch AMOLED display. It is protected by Gorilla Glass and comes with 1.5K resolution, 144 Hz refresh rate, and a whopping 6,500 nits peak brightness. It has HDR10+ support and has five different modes you can choose from– Vivid (default), Natural, Pro, Cinematic, and Brilliant. The display is vibrant, colorful, and quite bright, making consuming content on the device a real delight. Having said that, the curve on the display did cause a few accidental touches (our constant beef with curved displays). Taking the multimedia experience up a notch are the stereo speakers on the device, which deliver clean and loud audio even on maxed-out levels.

The in-display fingerprint scanner is swift and works very efficiently. We did not face any call drop issues with the device either, making it a very good everyday and multimedia device.

Realme 15 Pro Cameras: An impressive 50-megapixel trio

The Realme 15 Pro brings three 50-megapixel cameras to its photography table: one on the front and two on the back. The main sensor on the back is a Sony IMX896 with OIS, accompanied by a wide-angle sensor. There is actually a third sensor on the back, but Realme has not added any information about what it does or its megapixel count. This setup is accompanied by a dual LED flash.

The main sensor is the star of the Realme 15 Pro camera show, delivering beautiful, rich in detail, and colorful shots, especially in well-lit conditions. The colors reproduced lean towards the warmer side than natural, but the photos actually look very pleasant. The main camera is very consistent too, a trait we really appreciate, and also has an impressive dynamic range. Its low-light performance is equally remarkable, with the camera managing to retain a large amount of detail even as the lights dim down. AI can boost colors a bit more than what is required, but photos turn out quite clean. You can take this performance a step ahead by turning on Night mode, which managed to give us slightly more realistic colors in comparison and preserved a lot of detail too.

The camera handles portrait shots decently. It can struggle to separate the subject from the background and mix up edges a bit, but it creates good (albeit a little artificial) bokeh around it. There are a number of other modes like Pro, Hi-Res, AI Landscape, Pano, Street etc, that add a bit here and there but are not very exceptional, apart from Underwater mode which is designed for the phone to take better images and videos under water and is available on both rear and front cameras – you can thank the IP68/ 69 rating for it. The ultrawide sensor is a handy addition and delivers slightly more natural (read dull) colors in comparison to the main sensor, but details delivered are not as sharp, and it also lacks autofocus. All three sensors support 4K video recording at up to 60 fps and deliver impressive results, especially when captured from the main sensor, thanks to OIS.

The front-facing camera is another star. It delivers a great amount of detail while managing to reproduce natural skin tone. It does not overly smoothen skin by default, although that is something one can achieve through certain modes.

Realme has also doused the device with AI smarts, calling the phone “AI Party Phone.” A number of these AI features are centred around its cameras. One of the most noteworthy AI features on the device is AI Edit Genie, which can take commands in both text and voice (in English as well as Hindi) to edit your photos as you desire. It can remove or add objects, change seasons and background, amongst other things. It can also study an image and suggest improvements. That said, processing these images takes a lot of time, often delivers inconsistent results, and needs a strong Internet connection to actually work. Other AI features include AI MagicGlow 2.0, which ensures natural skin tone, AI Glare Remover, which we think is self-explanatory, AI Party mode for low-light photos, and AI Eraser.

Realme 15 Pro UI and battery: Cluttered interface, long-lasting battery

The Realme 15 Pro comes with Android 15 out of the box with Realme UI 6.0 on top. The brand promises two years of major Android updates and 3 years of security updates, which is a little on the low side, considering its segment, but it is believed to be considering extending this even as this review is being written. Realme UI, while functional, can appear crowded to many. The phone comes with a considerable amount of bloatware, which can be uninstalled but can still be overwhelming for new users. In its defence, the brand has added a number of multitasking features on the phone like Split-view, live alerts that have a very iOS-like design (like forming a pill-shaped notch around the front camera), and sidebar apps.

As the Realme 15 Pro is being marketed as an AI Party Phone, there are a ton of AI features in the UI too. The basic ones, like Circle to Search, AI Writer, and Google Gemini, are all present on the device. There are also features like an AI Gaming coach that can help improve your gaming skills, AI Reply Suggestions, and AI record summary. While the phone behaved well for the most part, we did find the gallery app to be slightly laggy on more than one occasion and faced a few app crashes and odd bugs while using the device. We are hoping Realme will soon sort these out with an update.

Battery is an area where the Realme 15 Pro really shines. In its slim frame, the phone houses a 7,000 mAh battery, which comes with 80W fast charging support, and there is a charger in the box. The phone can last a day and a half comfortably, even for users who are glued to their phones all the time and use their phones for everything. For those who take it a bit lightly, it can manage to survive even for two days on a full charge, which is huge. Charging it back is a swift process, too. The phone can get up to 50 percent charged in less than half an hour. That said, getting it from zero to full takes about an hour and 20 minutes. But even that is not bad, given the mammoth size of its battery.

Realme 15 Pro Review Verdict: Faces competition, but stands tall

The Realme 15 Pro comes with a starting price of Rs. 31,999 for its 8 GB/ 128 GB variant, with an 8 GB/ 256 GB version costing Rs 33,999, the 12 GB/ 256 GB one retailing for Rs 35,999, and the top variant, 12 GB/ 512 GB, priced at Rs 38,999. This puts it in the extremely competitive zone that lies between the premium mid-segment and budget flagships. The likes of iQOO Neo 10R, OnePlus Nord 5, and Poco F7 come with much better processors in that price range, and then there is the Nothing Phone (3a) Pro, which has a less powerful chip but compensates with excellent cameras for its price. But what the Realme 15 Pro has got going for it is the fact that it gets the basics right brilliantly: its display is beautiful, the battery is gigantic, it cuts a smart figure, it is AI forward, and it has a good (enough) processor with impressive cameras. The very fact that it can make its presence felt in the face of such competition shows how good a device it is. Definitely a contender for those wanting a versatile phone in the Rs 30,000 – Rs 35,000 category!

Buy Realme 15 Pro