realme 11 Pro+ Review: Good camera, attractive design

realme launched the realme 11 Pro+, the company’s top-end smartphone in the number series, in India last week.  This has the same display, similar processor and battery, but comes with new design, upgraded cameras, and the price has also increased. Is this the best smartphone to buy under Rs. 30,000? Let us dive into the review to find out.

Box Contents

• realme 11 Pro+ 12GB + 256GB version in Sunrise Beige color
• 2-pin 100W SuperVOOC fast charger (USB Type-A port)
• USB Type C Cable
• SIM Ejector tool
• Protective case
• User Guide and Warranty information

Display, Hardware and Design

The realme 11 Pro+ sports a 6.7-inch (1080 x 2412 pixels) Full HD+ curved AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate, 360Hz touch sampling rate and 394 PPI, same as the 10 Pro+. The display is bright since it has up to 950 nits peak brightness. It offers good colour output since it has 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, and the sunlight legibility is good as well. You can select from vivid, Natural and Pro screen colour modes.

The phone has a 2160Hz high-frequency dimming technology. In dark environments (brightness below 90 nits) where DC dimming can’t work, the phone will automatically switch to 2160Hz PWM dimming mode to maintain accurate colors on display with a more comfortable eye experience, said the company.

The phone also has HDR 10 support, which works for YouTube, but it doesn’t work with Netflix. You can enable video HDR boost from display settings, which increases the colors when playing SDR videos to make them look like HDR. There is also video color boost option.

The phone doesn’t have a notification LED, but this has an always-on-display that shows contextual info and notifications all day or as per schedule. There is also music playback option in the always-on-display with the Spotify integration. If you double-tap the AOD, the music player becomes an interactive panel with play, pause, and forward buttons. It also recommends 4 playlists you may like and also real-time food delivery updates.

The phone has ultra narrow bezels. Thanks to COP Ultra packaging technology, the phone has 2.33 mm ultra-narrow chin. The side bezels are as thin as 1.41 mm. It has X-axis linear vibration motor. It has Rainbow Two Strong glass protection, said the company.

The phone has a tiny punch-hole on the left that houses a 32-megapixel camera, an upgrade from the 16-megapixel camera in the 10 Pro+. Above the display, there is an earpiece on the top edge that doubles up as a secondary speaker. It has an in-display fingerprint scanner.

Coming to the button placements and ports, the power button is present on the right side along with the volume rockers. The dual SIM slot, primary microphone, USB Type-C port and the loudspeaker grill are present on the bottom. The secondary microphone is on the top. The phone doesn’t have an expandable storage.

Instead of a plastic back, the Oasis Green and Sunrise Beige colour variants of the phone features a lychee leather back and a lace-like strip that encircles its camera module and runs straight down to the bottom. This feels and looks premium. It has been designed by infusing inputs from the former Gucci prints designer, Matteo Menotto, said the company. The phone doesn’t have IP ratings.

Camera

• 200MP 1/1.4″ Samsung HP3 sensor, f/1.69 aperture
• 8MP ultra-wide camera with Sony IMX 355 sensor, f/2.2 aperture
• 2MP 4cm macro camera with OmniVision OV02B /  GalaxyCore GC02M1 sensor, f/2.4 aperture
• 32MP front-facing camera with Sony IMX 615 sensor, f/2.45 aperture

The camera UI in the realme UI 4.0 is familiar. There is Pro mode, Panorma, Macro, Flim, Slo-mo, Time-Lapse, Dual-View video, text scanner, starry mode and tilt-shift. There is Dynamic bokeh and Bokeh Flare portrait option for photos. You only get Bokeh Flare portrait option for video.  The rear camera offers 12.5MP output after pixel binning, and the front camera images are 32MP in size.

Daylight shots came out well, thanks to the 200MP sensor, and the dynamic range is better with auto HDR. There is AI mode which recognizes different photo scenes and automatically adjusts camera settings to make boost the colours. 2X and 4X are good good, thanks to in-sensor zoom that lets camera auto zoom and crop on a subject to keep it at the center of the frame. The portrait mode is decent and the 2MP macro camera is useless, so it is recommended to use 2X or 4X zoom with the normal camera.

Low light shots are good with a lot of details and less noise. The night mode is useful, but it takes a few seconds to process. There is also a pro mode in night mode for manual tuning. The front camera also does a good job in daylight. The bokeh shots good with decent edge detection.

Check out the camera samples

It can record videos in up to 4K 30 fps, slow motion 1080p at 480fps, 720p at up to 940 fps, which should converted, and the front camera can record 1080p 30fps videos. Portrait video mode is limited to 720p, but the Bokeh Flare portrait offers 1080p output. There is also AI mode and ultra-wide video shooting, but these are limited to 1080p 30fps.

There is OIS and EIS which does a good job. There is ultra-steady mode which is limited to 1080p 60fps. The ultra-steady max in 1080p 30fps uses the ultra-wide camera, and the final video gets cropped.

Software, UI and Apps

It runs Android 13 based realme UI 4.0 out of the box. It has Android security patch for April 2023. The phone should get 2 Android updates and 3 years of security updates, similar to other phones. relame UI 4.0 adds intuitive iconography, new card-style layout for the UI, 79 new face traits for Omoji, Smart AOD, Large Folders, dynamic homescreen widgets, Auto Pixelate, Private Safe, and the Quantum Animation Engine 4.0 improves the overall fluidity.

Apart from the usual set of realme apps and Google apps, it comes with Amazon Shopping, Snapchat, ShareChat, Dailyhunt, Josh, PhonePe, Moj, Public, Spotify, LinkedIn and more. These apps can be uninstalled, but come back once the phone is reset. There are also Hot Apps and Hot Games. The company at the time of 10 Pro+ launch said that it is taking steps to remove unsuitable app recommendations, but these are still there.

Out of 12GB LPDD4X RAM, you get 11.29GB of usable RAM, and about 7GB of RAM is free when default apps are running in the background. It also has DRE or dynamic RAM expansion feature, which uses the built-in storage as RAM. This has up to 12GB of additional RAM expansion. Out of 256GB, you get about 224GB of free storage. The phone uses UFS 3.1 storage, an upgrade from UFS 2.2 in the 10 Pro+ and we got sequential read speeds of, 1688.91 MB/s.

Fingerprint sensor and Face unlock

It has an in-display fingerprint sensor that unlocks the phone quickly, but it is not as fast as a physical fingerprint sensor. You can add up to 5 fingerprints. You can also use the fingerprint for app local and payments in apps. Furthermore, you can change the fingerprint animation and also disable it.

In the realme Labs, there is a heart rate measurement option that lets you use the fingerprint sensor for heart rate tracking. You can also save it, and it shows up in the history. The phone also has face unlock feature.

Music and Multimedia

YouTube Music is the default Music Player. It has have Dolby Atmos which works with headset and has customizable Smart, Movie, Game and Music modes. It doesn’t have FM Radio support. Audio through the stereo speakers is good without any distortion even in full volume. Audio through earphones is good as well.

This has Widevine L1, so that you can play HD content on Netflix and other streaming apps. It supports HDR content on YouTube, but this doesn’t work on Netflix.

Dual SIM and Connectivity

The realme 11 Pro+ has support for n1/n3/n5/n8/n28A/n40/n41/n77/n78  Network Bands in India. It has 4G Wi-Fi and VoLTE, with support for Carrier Aggregation on 4G. Other connectivity options include Wi-Fi 6 802.11 ax (2.4GHz + 5GHz), VoWiFi / Wi-Fi calling support, Bluetooth 5.2, GPS / GLONASS / Beidou. It has OTG support, doesn’t have NFC support. Moving on, the call quality is good, and we did not face any call drops and the earpiece volume was loud.

The realme 11 Pro+’s body SAR is 0.532W/Kg and head SAR is at 1.146/Kg, which is well under the limit of 1.6 W/kg (over 1 g) in India.

Performance and Benchmarks

This is the one of the first phones to be powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 7050 6nm SoC, which is just a rebranded Dimensity 1080 used in several phones. It has 2 x A78 CPUs clocked at up to 2.6GHz, 6x A55 CPUs clocked at up to 2GHz. It has Mali-G68 MC4 and up to 12GB LPDDR4X RAM.

The company didn’t mention if it has any cooling. The performance is smooth without any lags, and it also offers smooth gaming performance even in graphic intensive games. When you play graphic-intensive games like COD, BGMI and Genshin Impact, it gets a bit hot, but it doesn’t get too hot to handle. It reached maximum 45º in our testing indoors in Wi-Fi, which is almost the same as the 10 Pro+, but this might vary outdoors in 4G or 5G.

That said, check out some synthetic benchmark scores below.

realme 11 Pro has also been added since both have the same SoC and we have the same 12GB RAM version. This clearly shows almost similar performance to the realme 10 Pro+.

Battery life

Coming to the battery life, the phone packs a 5000mAh (typical) built-in battery, same as the predecessor. It lasts for a whole day with Wi-Fi, but with 4G or 5G and dual SIMs. I got about 6 hours of screen on time with over a day of use on Wi-Fi and in 120Hz. Since the phone has support for 100W SuperVOOC Charge, an upgrade from 67W, it can charge up to 50% in about 12 minutes and up to 100% in less than 30 minutes with the bundled 100W charger.

There is a new battery health option that shows the battery capacity. It also has battery booster and wise charging features.

Conclusion

At a starting price of Rs. 27,999 for the 8GB + 256GB, the realme 11 Pro+ is a minor yet important upgrade to the 10 Pro+ when it comes to the camera and has an attractive design while retaining the other things. Hope the company takes care of the bloatware, and had used a better cooling system for smooth gaming experience, which were also the concerns for the 10 Pro+.

Alternatives

The motorola edge 40 is a good alternative with a stock Android experience and a more powerful processor, if you spend more. If you can compromise in the camera, the realme 11 Pro with almost similar features, including the design is a good option at a cheaper rate.

Pricing and availability

The realme 11 Pro+ is priced at Rs. 27,999 for the 8GB + 256GB model, and the top-end 12GB + 256GB model costs Rs. 29,999. It is available from realme.com, Flipkart and offline stores from today, June 15th. It also offers Rs. 2000 discount on HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank cards.

Pros

• 120Hz Curved AMOLED display is brilliant
• Smooth performance
• Good cameras
• Attractive design
• Good battery life with fast charging

Cons

• Bloatware
• Heats up quickly on intensive gaming
• No NFC in the Indian version