realme 9i Review – the budget friendly realme 9 family member

Here’s my realme 9i review which is now out in the market with SRP 11,700 featuring 6.6 inches LCD display, Dragontrail Pro Glass, 50MP triple camera system, 16MP front camera and more!

realme 9i Unboxing

Design

The realme 9i has everything other members of 9 series have. The screen size is 6.44 inches, the right side has the standard power button, the left side has the volume rocker, the bottom houses the USB charging port (Type C), headphone jack and speaker. The front camera is positioned in the side and follows the punch hole design.

The back has a nice semi-matte finish and a nice polish to it but at the same time still a potential to become a magnet for smudges and fingerprints but other than that, it still looks pretty good.

Display

There are a few key differences between this model and the realme 9 Pro+. For starters, the screen protector here is Dragontrail Pro Glass rather than Gorilla Glass 5 which was used on the Pro+.  Its still good to protect your phone from scratches and such.

This phone features a 90hz refresh rate that you can toogle. In my case I preferred it to run continously but I’ll leave it up to you on how you want to use the phone.

UI and UX

The realme 9i still runs on Android 12 and with the Realme UI 2.0. Here’s a look at the home screen…

And here’s a look at the storage for the phone out of the box…

Swipe up will bring up the apps gallery, swiping down will bring down the notifications and settings bar. Swiping to the left will bring you the Google section.

 

Camera

Main camera is 50MP + 2MP macro + 2MP depth. Here are some sample shots inside a mall.

For the videos, the only output you can get is 1080p@30fps.

The front camera or selfie camera has a 16MP lens and can shoot 1080p@30fps videos as well. Check out the selfie on this smartphone.

Gaming

I was apprehensive when it came to gaming with the realme 9i but it turns out its also a great phone for gaming. The Snapdragon 680 processor attached here is pretty good and when you combine it with the 6.6 Full HD display, you’ve got above average performance.

Sound

Thanks to the stereo design for the smartphone, you have a balanced and ok sound quality. One little concern here is that lack of bass but its hardly discernable when streaming videos or music on the phone.

Battery

The realme 9i’s battery is where I can really write home about. The smartphone features a 5000 mAh battery with 33W fast charging capabilities.

This comes in handy when you need a rough-and-tumble smartphone that can last a day. Again realme’s deal here is to provide a smartphone that looks and feels premium while still performing quite well. And so far, not one of the variants of the realme 9 family have stuttered when it comes to battery. In fact the 9i pushes the envelope a little further.

 

Final Thoughts:

For the price point of Php11,700, the realme 9i is a pretty solid get. It found a way to actually provide what we got with the realme 9 Pro+ while at the same time dropping the SRP. The quality of the materials and hardware they changed up may not be up to what the premium version is but it certainly does the job from the camera to the display and even the UI/UX.

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