Realme C30 review: a nice-looking budget phone that’s a bit of a mixed bag

Name: Realme C30
Item: Realme C30
Rating: 7
Author: Kshitij Pujari

Published On: June 28, 2022

Review Summary

Expert Rating
★
★
7.0/10

Brands like Realme, Xiaomi, and Infinix are all strong names in the budget smartphone segment in India. Realme in fact, has already revealed some new devices this year under its C series called the Realme C35 (review) and C31, and both have proven to be stellar offerings in the budget arena. Now Realme has revealed a new addition to the lineup in the form of the Realme C30, undercutting both the devices. Here’s a more detailed look at whether it makes sense to buy the device for its asking price of Rs 7,499.

Table of Contents

Verdict

The Realme C30 uses a micro-USB instead of Type-C, misses out on a fingerprint scanner, and doesn’t impress on the camera front. That said, it scores high on a few aspects and does feature a good design, comes with a decent display and offers above-average performance… making it a smartphone worthy of consideration.

The lowdown

It’s been a while since I saw a single camera sensor on a smartphone’s back, but that said, the phone does look quite good. The build is standard polycarbonate with a textured stripe design on top of a sky-blue finish. The phone does not feel particularly heavy in my hand at just 185g, which is good, since the C30 houses a large 5,000mAh battery. Unfortunately, it uses an outdated micro-USB slot which hampers fast charging capabilities and wired connectivity, both of which have shifted to USB C on almost all modern-day smartphones.

As for the display, you get a 6.5-inch HD+ LCD panel that refreshes at 60Hz. The brightness levels touch 400nits which is easy on the eye when the device is used indoors but not so much in outdoor sunny conditions. A waterdrop notch houses the selfie camera with sizeable bezels on all sides of the display. Colours and contrast levels are generally muted but for the budget audience, the screen’s reliability in delivering media content is sufficient.

The single camera on the back is an 8MP sensor with f/2.0 aperture. The details are washed out in most photos and exposure is overblown. Colour levels are undersaturated and dynamic range remains visibly absent. However, the focus and shutter speeds were quicker than I expected, which is a definite plus point. Night shots were also devoid of detail, which is to be expected at this price point. Selfies from the 8MP front camera were in the acceptable range provided there is a lot of light. Suffice to say, if you are expecting better camera performance then perhaps you should consider spending a bit more.

Performance-wise, the device runs on the Unisoc Tiger T612 chipset which is based on a 12nm manufacturing process and has a Cortex A75 performance core at the helm. For a sub Rs 10,000 phone, the device performs at acceptable levels. Benchmark results are not very high nor is the CPU efficiency. Anything other than medium to low-level tasks would not ideally be suited for the device. In terms of BGMI gamepplay, the highest frame rate setting applicable was Low (24fps) which makes it evident that the C30 isn’t suited for high-end gaming. The phone comes with up to 4GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 32GB UFS 2.2 storage which can be expanded to 1TB using a microSD card slot.

The single speaker unit on the bottom is decent-sounding and thankfully there is a 3.5mm headphone jack slot alongside. The use of a micro-USB port instead of Type C is a bummer, as mentioned earlier. There’s also no fingerprint sensor for authentication. 4G works fine on Jio’s Noida network and I faced no issues with the microphone or the earpiece. In terms of software, the phone operates on Android 11 Go, a stripped-down version of the regular Realme UI. It is decent enough for normal usage but does have the usual bloatware problem.

On the battery side of things, the 5,000mAh pack allows the Realme C30 to last for the entire day without a hitch. As the chipset itself is not very resource hungry, the phone offers great standby times, lasting nearly 40 hours on just five percent of battery. However, the charging speeds are not that great at 10W, taking upwards of three hours to juice up the battery.

Final verdict

At this price point, you can also consider the Redmi 10A which offers a better smartphone experience at just Rs 500 more. The Realme C30 is a decent overall device though, mainly lacking on the camera side of things. It offers a sturdy, rigid and lightweight design with a good in-hand feel, and performance levels are acceptable as well.