Oppo Realme 1: Budget smartphone with impressive design, sleek performance

This was fast! Moments earlier, I had set up the face unlock feature of Oppo’s Realme1, and lo and behold, the phone unlocked in a jiffy. The phone looks sleek and sexy with the “Diamond Black” back sporting a curious angled pattern, which reflects light at different angles. While the back is a fingerprint magnet, it does look cool.

The phone booted up fast and the touch interface was butter smooth, probably because of the 6GB of RAM and the Mediatek’s octa-core Helio P60 processor. In the limited time I used it, gaming and browsing was fast and without lags, even with multiple apps open in the background.

There’s 128GB memory onboard, so there’s no problem with those big games. I played my favourite NFS titles and Asphalt 8: Airborne without a hitch.

The selfie camera, with its various beauty modes and filters, looks set to satiate any selfie addict. Plus, the pictures came out quite well in the time I used it; the single-camera primary setup also clicked decent pictures indoors and I look forward to using this extensively outdoors.

The smart assistant reminded me of my regular iPhone screen, and the feature I liked best was step tracking, which is accurate enough to push any casual

Oppo’s ColorOS, built on top of Android 8.1, didn’t feel bloated, while the clone phone feature is a godsend for people maintaining two phone numbers. Calls from this device were as good as the network allowed it, while WhatsApp video calls stood out because of its powerful selfie cam.