www.androidpolice.com Realme 9 Pro+ review: Playing it safe

Realme thrives in the mid-range segment with an ever-growing lineup that matches the likes of Xiaomi and Samsung. The Realme 9 Pro+ is the company’s latest bet to snag a bigger slice in this price bracket, which is getting increasingly competitive in markets like India. The phone checks a lot of boxes as it tries to appeal to a wide range of users. While the 9 Pro+ does get quite a few things right, it just doesn't go far enough.

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The Realme 9 Pro+ offers everything that you can expect from a phone of this class but without anything that stands out.

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Design, hardware, what’s in the box

I personally prefer muted colors for my phone’s back, but the Realme 9 Pro+ couldn’t be any further from that. The colorway I have has a shimmering green glass back, but you can pick it up in an even funkier chameleon shade or a more muted black color (pictured above). Looks can be subjective, but the phone itself is good to hold and has a nice heft, even though its frame is made of plastic. Most phones in this price range don’t claim an official IP rating but still include rubber gaskets around ports and the SIM card tray. The 9 Pro+ has none of those, so be sure to keep the phone away from water.

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The OLED screen used here comes with the trademark inky blacks and is a delight for watching videos. It’s a 90Hz panel while many phones in India like the Xiaomi 11i offer a 120Hz refresh rate, though, in real life, it doesn’t really make that big of a difference. On paper, the brightness levels seem low, but it isn’t that difficult to see the screen outdoors — though a slightly brighter display wouldn’t have hurt. Another peeve I have is the thick bottom bezel, making the 9 Pro+ look much cheaper.

Thanks to the OLED screen, you get an in-display fingerprint reader that is within reach and reasonably quick for an optical sensor. And like any typical stereo speaker setup on budget smartphones, the earpiece on the 9 Pro+ doubles up as the second channel. The pair sounds really crisp even at maximum volume, but they aren't the loudest I've heard in this segment. In situations when you really need that extra volume, you can use its 3.5mm audio jack to hook wired headphones if you still have a pair lying around.

The Realme 9 Pro+ comes with a 60W SuperDart charger in the box, along with a USB-A to USB-C cable, and a basic clear case.

Software, performance, and battery life

The 9 Pro+ ships with Realme UI 3.0, which is quite a bit lighter on bloatware — particularly on the European variant — than what we’ve seen before, but the variant sold in India still leaves some room for improvement. The software shares its core with the larger BBK ecosystem, with things like the personalization settings page and some first-party apps (Games, for example) are borrowed from Oppo and OnePlus phones. Its version 3.0 also gets a bunch of unique features; for instance, it natively supports streaming YouTube videos in the background — something you can otherwise only do with a YouTube Premium subscription.

Realme UI 3.0 is based on Android 12, and the company promises two major Android updates for the handset. This latest version uses a host of animations and transitions all across the OS — resembling iOS — to make the phone feel smooth. While these animations do help elevate your experience, they still cannot mask Realme’s poor software optimization. Even when the phone is running at 90Hz, you will notice some frame drops and choppy transitions while doing simple stuff like opening the Google Feed on the left-most home page. That extends to other parts of the software as well, where you’ll occasionally find that the phone takes a split second to take any action, like when opening the password manager after tapping the autofill prompt.

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The subpar software optimization is to be blamed for all these woes rather than the processor. The Dimensity 920 used on the 9 Pro+ is a capable chip, and despite my issues with choppy animations, the in-app performance isn't as badly hit. I faced little to no issues with the processor handling all the apps I regularly use. It even handles gaming pretty well, with no heating issues whatsoever, though it isn’t made for the ultra graphics settings offered in many top-tier titles. On my 8GB RAM variant, RAM management wasn’t a problem, though it could be a slight concern on the 6GB model.

Given the 4500mAh battery capacity, my expectations weren’t quite high. But to my surprise, the phone is incredibly power efficient, squeezing out 7+ hours of screen on time over a day’s use — both my colleague Manuel and I never went below 50% at the end of the day. With my light use, involving some work apps and social media, the 9 Pro+ was a solid 1.5-day phone with 6 hours of total screen time. You get a 65W charger in the box (a rebranded version of what you usually get with OnePlus phones) that juices up the phone at 60W, taking a little over 40 minutes to go from 8% to full. You can hit 50% with just 15 minutes of charge time, which is great for quick top-ups when you’re running low.

Camera

The Realme 9 Pro+ shares its 50MP primary camera sensor with pricier phones like the OnePlus Nord 2 and the 9RT. As a result, it takes some nice shots in daylight and retains a fair bit of textures even indoors. The colors in those pictures appear natural and don’t look overprocessed. Low light shots from the primary camera are also surprisingly usable with a decent amount of detail, though you must enable HDR to avoid overblown light sources. The night mode manages the dynamic range pretty well, but it doesn’t work consistently across scenarios and doesn't kick in automatically.

Even portrait shots from the main camera come out good, with decent edge detection and natural skin tone — provided you turn off all AI beautification features. It’s indeed a fun camera to use with all features baked into the camera app, such as background blur control, long exposure shots, and iOS-style image filters.

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The 8MP ultrawide camera matches the colors of the primary sensor quite closely. But its white balance is slightly off, and it loses detail due to its lower resolution. Over on the front, you get a 16MP camera that takes above-average shots with pretty good dynamic range and contrast. However, your selfies are going to look muddy when you zoom in, especially around finer details like beards, and the edge detection for portrait shots is iffy.

Should you buy it?

Sure. Realme has played it safe with the 9 Pro+, checking all the boxes that matter without trying to stand out in any area. From the 90Hz OLED display to solid performance, everything seems good enough for the price point, leaving very little to complain about. The phone does make a few compromises to make the package affordable, but none of them are deal-breakers. Had Realme worked a little more on optimizing the software, the 9 Pro+ could’ve hit the home run.

A good thing about this price point is that you get a whole bunch of options from multiple brands. The recently launched Xiaomi 11i gets you a very similar package, though you’ll have to live with Android 11 on that phone. Google is still selling the good old Pixel 4a in India, while the Samsung Galaxy A52s could also be a nice alternative, but they both cost a little more. For that kind of money, you can also pick the OnePlus Nord 2, which has the same main camera as this Realme phone with a beefier processor.

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