Realme 10 Pro+ 5G design
Unlike many phones launched in 2022, the Realme 10 Pro+ 5G has a curvy body, making it quite comfortable to hold. The company calls this look ‘HyperSpace Design. The phone is also fairly light at 173g and is 7.8mm thick. It comes in three colour options — Dark Matter, Nebula Blue, and HyperSpace Gold. Of the three, the HyperSpace Gold version, which the company sent us, looks the most flashy. The rear panel looks quite busy, reflecting multiple colours when light falls on it. You’ll see a prism-like effect in shades of blue radiating outwards from the two circular camera cutouts. The lower half of the phone’s rear panel has a glittery finish, which fades away as you move to the top. While this might be subjective, I think there’s too much going on in terms of effects and I would probably choose the black colour option for myself. The HyperSpace Gold finish also has a glossy back, making it a magnet for fingerprints and smudges.
As with most Realme phones, the power and volume keys are on the right, while the left is blank. The top houses one of the two microphones, whereas at the bottom, there is the USB Type-C port sandwiched between the dual-SIM tray and the primary speaker grille.
One highlight feature of the Realme 10 Pro+ 5G is its 6.7-inch full-HD+ curved-edge AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate. At the time of writing this, the Realme 10 Pro+ 5G is the most affordable smartphone in India with a curved-edge AMOLED display. I did not experience any ghost or accidental touches while using the phone for day-to-day tasks or while playing games, which are sometimes caused by a palm making unintentional contact with the active screen area. The bezels around the display are also very thin, including the chin.
Realme 10 Pro+ 5G specifications and software
The Realme 10 Pro+ 5G features a MediaTek Dimensity 1080 SoC with integrated Mali-G68 graphics. It packs a 5000mAh battery and supports 67W fast charging, but you get an 80W charger in the box, Connectivity options include dual 5G, a USB Type-C port, Wi-Fi 6, and Bluetooth 5.2. The handset supports eight 5G bands in India.
In terms of software, the Realme 10 Pro+ 5G comes with the Android 13-based Realme UI 4.0. This custom skin has what Realme is calling ‘Aquamorphic’ design. It has a card-style control centre, which I think looks quite organised. Realme continues to offer support for customisation, such as changing the wallpaper, icon shape and size, font, etc. There is support for Always-on Display (AoD), with integration for select apps such as Spotify so you can still control music on the standby screen. There are some security and privacy features as well. You continue to get Android 13’s Privacy Dashboard and indicators when an app is using the camera or microphone. OnePlus’ Shelf and Zen Mode have also made it to Realme UI 4.0.
Realme UI 4.0 allows users to lock specific apps with a password as an added layer of privacy and security. This essentially prevents others from opening certain apps when they have access to your phone. Also, there is a feature called Auto Pixelate, which attempts to blur sensitive information in screenshots. While this feature is not 100 percent accurate, you can manually pixelate content in a screenshot via the edit option. There are also other neat UI touches such as large folders, home screen widgets, etc.
These features are great and do improve the user experience. However, what annoyed me was the number of pre-installed apps. In addition you get even more recommendations while setting up the device. You have to deal with not only Realme’s own apps but also multiple third-party ones, such as Moj, Moj Lite+, ShareChat, Paytm, Josh, etc. Some of these might be useful for some people but I clearly am not a fan of the bloatware. The app drawer looks so cluttered that you will struggle to find an app you require at times. You can choose to uninstall most of these apps though.
Realme 10 Pro+ 5G performance and battery life
With a MediaTek Dimensity 1080 SoC under the hood, the Realme 10 Pro+ 5G can handle almost every task that you throw at it. This 6nm SoC can handle day-to-day tasks easily. I also played some games such as Call of Duty: Mobile and Asphalt 9: Legends on the Realme 10 Pro+ 5G and the experience was quite good. Call of Duty: Mobile ran at High graphics and Very High frame rate settings. You can choose to play at the Max frame rate setting but will have to be content with low graphics but I would rather have a balance. Surprisingly, the phone did not heat up even after playing games for more than 30 minutes.
Moving to benchmark tests, the Realme 10 Pro+ 5G scored 820 and 2,348 in Geekbench’s single-core and multi-core tests. These are marginally better than the Realme 9 Pro+ 5G’s scores of 818 and 2,316 points in the same tests. The Realme 10 Pro+ 5G scored 5,04,626 points in AnTuTu, which is lower than its predecessor’s score of 5,07,258. Should you be concerned? Not really, as these benchmark tests push the SoC beyond what’s likely with real-world usage, which in the Realme 10 Pro+ 5G’s case is much more than just passable for most use cases.
The phone’s 5000mAh battery can last a day on a full charge. In our HD video battery loop test, the phone’s battery lasted for 19 hours and 43 minutes, which is very close to the company’s claimed time of 20 hours. The Realme 10 Pro+ 5G took 1 hour, 1 minute to charge from 1-100 percent, compared to the claimed time of 47 minutes. The phone also took about 24 minutes to charge up to 50 percent as opposed to the 17 minutes claim.
