realme is back with their latest offering with the release of the new realme 16 series. Here’s my realme 16 5G review with SRP of ₱25,999 featuring 7000mAh battery, 50MP main and front camera and Full HD AMOLED display!
realme 16 5G Unboxing
realme 16 5G – Design
There were a number of notable “W”s for the realme 16 5G. For starters, it’s very slim considering how much battery capacity it has. It’s slim and light, and you wouldn’t expect that it’s got a strong and promising performance as a daily driver. For your reference, the product weighs around 183 g with dimensions 158.3 x 75.1 x 8.1 mm. The smartphone also has dual SIM pack.
Nothing special, though for the build as it comes with an AGC DT-Star D+ glass as well as a plastic frame and a plastic back.
Speaking of the plastic back, there’s also a very camera-friendly small mirror or selfie mirror, which really helps when you want to use the rear camera / main camera to take selfies.
Lastly, the realme 16 5G comes with water resistance and dust resistance being able to resist high pressure water jets. You let your phone take a dip for up to 0.5m.
realme 16 5G – Display
This is one of the better parts of the realme 16 5G, the display comes with a 6.57-inch AMOLED Full HD with a 2372 x 1080 resolution. The brightness is also swell with hitting up to 4200 nits. It can get as bright as it can possibly be. The refresh rate is also a standard 120Hz, a notch up from the entry-level phones that usually have 90Hz.
realme 16 5G – Camera
The realme 16 5G‘s camera is really promising, but at the same time could have been done more if they made changes here and there, but alas, we have to work with what we have. In this case, we get a 50MP main camera AND a 50MP selfie camera. The main camera also comes with a 2MP lens that helps in taking macro shots and provides more depth to the output. The main camera can take videos at 720p @ 30fps and 720p @ 60fps, as well as 1080p at 30fps and 60fps.
Photos are hit and miss, to be honest, especially when your subject is a lot farther off. For this phone, zooming options are really limited to 1x (28mm) and 2x (58mm).
Another strong point is the phone’s front camera, which sports an insanely large 50MP camera that should be more than capable of taking solid selfies. You really can’t find anything wrong with selfie photos shot with the realme 16’s front camera. I had a lot of fun taking selfies too during the recently concluded Toycon Summer Prelude at Okada! Here are some samples.
One thing that I really didn’t like about the realme 16 5G is that it doesn’t have the ultrawide lens that is actually readily available with other smartphones that have been released this year, playing in the same price point. It would have really sealed the deal, but I guess that has to be given to the stronger siblings in the realme 16 series, including the Pro and the Pro Plus. There’s also no stabilization or OIS in this product so you might need to plan accordingly when you take your shots especially when you trying to shoot videos for TikTok or YouTube.
Oh, and night shots are hit and miss with this, so yeah.
AI Editing and Features
There are, however, a lot of options for you to choose from when it comes to AI editing and photo manipulation using the realme 16 5G including:
- AI Recompense
- AI Eraser
- AI Portrait Glow
- AI Ultra Clarity
- AI Perfect Shot
- Unblur
- Remove Reflections
- AI Glare Remover
- AI Landscape
There’s also AI Lightme where you can take a photo that you want to transform or use generative AI on and run it through some of the preset filters and get a completely new photo complete with retouched AI lighting.
The more useful AI features are also here with the realme 16 5G namely the ever-important AI Eraser.
You can also use the AI on the phone to have some fun with your photos including animating them into anime style or 3D style cartoons…
realme 16 5G – Battery
That other major reason to get the realme 16 5G? The battery! It’s classified as a titan battery and comes with a 7000mAh battery with fast charging up to 45W. This provides excellent dependability, especially when going out for summer vacations. This even helps in situations where you left your charger at home and only brought along the actual phone. You don’t have to worry that you’ll run out of juice before you get home because this can run for up to a day.
One small gripe that I might have with the battery and charging performance is how slow it is. Yes, there’s fast charging, but it’s not as fast as any of us would want it to be. Other brands can go for as much as 80W fast charging but here we are with the realme 16 5G stuck with 45W fast charging. So if this is something you are also looking into, here’s your spoiler alert.
realme 16 5G – Performance
Here’s a little sad news: the realme 16 5G, as it is, isn’t designed to do a lot. It’s really good when it comes to browsing through social media and playing light games thanks to the MediaTek Dimensity 6400 Turbo together with the Mali-G57 MC2 GPU. But that’s just about it. It can also perform some light editing for TikTok, but if you’re a fan of using your mobile phone to do massive edits, it might be best to transfer and work on your content through a laptop.
You won’t be left behind, however, in the OS department as it comes with the recent versions i.e. Android 16 and the realme UI 7.0. The phone also comes with the standard 8GB RAM and 256GB storage, which is also pretty basic for smartphones these days.
Gaming
As I mentioned earlier, the phone isn’t really built for gaming especially titles that can be taxing for hardware such as Genshin Impact, Wuthering Waves and the recently released Arknights Endfield. But the game can still run titles like Mobile Legends Bang Bang and Honor of Kings.
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