What have years of smartphone testing taught me? Never just look at the brand

The brand is of course one of the main factors when choosing a new phone, but it is never a good idea to stay stuck on one manufacturer and not try another brand, perhaps due to prejudice. Of course, brands build up some status over the years, users perceive them in a certain way, and it often happens that when someone gets burned with a manufacturer, they don’t give them another chance. And that’s wrong.

Realme is slowly returning to the scene

The Realme brand tried to take all major markets, including ours, by storm around 2021 and it was quite successful. The company produced phones with an excellent price/performance ratio, offered interesting models and was predicted to have a great future. But then, just as quickly as it appeared, it disappeared and significantly reduced its activities outside of China.

Realme may have scored in terms of price/performance ratio, but the company has built a reputation as a manufacturer of cheap phones with not much software support. Yes, in terms of hardware, those phones were solid, but Realme had a very hard time shaking off the reputation of a rather second-rate Chinese manufacturer, and therefore failed in any fundamental way. So it would be easy to break the stick above this mark, but that would be a shame.

Realme has also recently worked on software support

Attempt to return

In recent years, Realme has been trying to return to its original places of business, and to a greater extent it is also returning to us. Does it make sense to give the brand another chance? Considering the latest phones, certainly yes, because the original advantage, i.e. an excellent price / performance ratio, remained and the manufacturer focused on other aspects. For example, for increased resistance, which he ignored for a long time.

The GT 6 model, which is also available on our market, boasts IP65 protection, which is still less than the competition, but at least something. The upcoming GT 7 model will then offer top IP69 housings as well as a high-quality construction with an aluminum frame, which Realme also overlooked in the past, and the brand has also moved significantly in terms of camera quality.

Support is key

Realme has also improved quite a bit in terms of support, which applies to the already mentioned GT 6 model and later. Currently, this manufacturer offers three major system updates and four years of security patches, which is still not quite enough for the top, but it is such a nice above average. We’ll see if we get the upcoming GT 7 flagship, which could be just the phone with a minimum of compromises that will get Realme back in the game.