Realme C33 Review: Is It Better Than The Competition?

While most innovation happens in the high-end smartphone segment, most people in the world end up buying affordable smartphones. Realme has introduced a bunch of affordable smartphones—Realme C30s, Realme C33, and Realme Narzo 50i Prime—over the past few days. Two months ago, we reviewed the Realme C30 and were pretty impressed with its performance. Now, I had a chance to test the Realme C33. It is a successor to the Realme C31 and brings a better rear camera. After using the smartphone for a couple of weeks, here’s our Realme C33 review.

Realme C33 Review: After Two Weeks With The Phone

Contents In The Box

1. Realme C33
2. 10W Charging Adapter
3. USB Type-A To MicroUSB 2.0 Cable

Design & Build Quality

As expected from a phone that’s priced below the ₹10,000 mark, the Realme C33’s body is made using plastic. It’s well-built, though, and it looks attractive. It has a shimmery pattern on the rear.  When light hits the Realme C33’s back panel, it glitters. Not everyone might like this design, and some might call it gaudy. It is designed for the younger crowd, and they might appreciate the shimmering design. If you are not someone who likes such designs, you can opt for the Night Sea colour variant of the phone as it looks more understated.

The dual cameras on the rear protrude individually, and they protrude quite significantly. So, the phone wobbles on a flat surface. Moreover, since there is no protection for the camera lens, it could get scratched if you handle the phone without care. You should use a case if you know you are not careful enough with your phone. There’s no IP rating, so you should be careful about using it in the rain or on a beach.

The flat sides of the phone make it easier to grip the device. The power and volume buttons are placed in comfortable positions. The power button also doubles up as a fingerprint reader, but it feels wobbly and a bit mushy. I’ve come to expect better from Realme as they’ve made some really well-designed phones in the past, even in the affordable segment. One area where the Realme C33 surprised me is in terms of weight. It feels lightweight for its size.

Display

The 6.5-inch IPS LCD display is big enough and offers decent image quality and brightness. It has HD+ resolution, and there are a few instances where you can notice some pixelation and lower detail resolving. But to most people coming from affordable phones, this would be a fine display. It’s bright enough and has good viewing angles. The touchscreen response is good, too.

One area where I think Realme could’ve done better is in terms of screen protection and surface smoothness. Since the company is mum on the type of screen protection panel it has used on the Realme C33, I think it’s a plastic panel because it doesn’t feel smooth and its surface resists swiping a bit. This is one area Realme can improve upon with its next phone. 

Audio

The phone has a single loudspeaker. It is loud enough for general use, but don’t expect it to sound rich. The speaker is tuned for vocals, so it’s thin on bass and treble.

There’s a 3.5mm headphone jack, which is something that has been disappearing from high-end and even some mid-range phones, so there is at least one advantage of buying an affordable phone. The device doesn’t come with wired earphones, though, and you’ll have to either use existing ones or buy newer ones.

Cameras

One of the key marketing points of the Realme C33 is its 50MP primary camera, an upgrade from previous-generation affordable Realme phones. It has a 0.3MP depth sensor, which I think is completely unnecessary. Chipsets and software these days are competent enough that they don’t need a secondary camera or depth sensor to capture images with a background blur effect. The phone also has a 5MP selfie camera on the front.

Rear Camera 

The main camera captures decent images when there is enough ambient light. The noise is controlled well, and the colours are mostly realistic. Some images look a little dull, but nothing to complain about, especially for the price. The dynamic range could’ve been slightly wider. The shadows are sometimes underdeveloped. It’s above par for the price, though. It’s when you zoom in and pixel-peep that you notice that the details are on the lower side, especially in things like leaves and grass.

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Portrait images captured using the Realme C33 look quite unnatural as the blur effect is applied across the image (except for the subject) with an equal amount of blur. Plus, most of the dynamic range is lost. The highlights are blown and light sources (and even the sky) is overexposed. So, we would say that refrain from clicking portrait images.

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In low-light conditions, the camera fails to focus quickly. Plus, the images have a lot of noise, and the details are quite low. Even when you activate Night Mode, there is not much improvement to the overall noise and dynamic range. In fact, the details are lower in images shot using the Night Mode.

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Video Recording

The videos shot using the Realme C33 are below par in terms of details. The dynamic range is quite narrow, and the camera sometimes struggles to focus even in daylight. There’s no image stabilisation, so the video looks quite shaky if you’re walking while recording videos. The videos look like they are shot in 720p resolution and upscaled to 1080p. In low-light conditions, the videos are downright unusable.

Front Camera

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The 5MP selfie camera is quite low resolution for the price. And it can record videos at just 720p resolution. Many other phones offer 8MP selfie cameras with 1080p video recording. The still images had a surprising amount of details for the resolution. Still, we would say that the selfie camera on this phone could’ve been better. Portrait shots from the front-facing camera also have the same issues we saw with the rear-facing camera’s portrait mode.

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Performance

The Unisoc Tiger T612 is a mid-range chipset that powers the Realme C33. It is the same chipset that powers some other affordable Realme phones, including the Realme C30, Realme C30s, Realme Narzo 50A Prime, and the Realme Narzo 50i Prime. The Unisoc Tiger T612’s specifications are similar to the MediaTek Helio G85, with two Cortex-A75 high-end CPU cores and six Cortex-A55 power-efficiency CPU cores. It has the Mali-G57 GPU for graphics processing and a 4G LTE modem.

As a successor to the Realme C31, we would’ve liked to see a more powerful processor in the Realme C33. The chipset, which is paired with 4G RAM and 64GB storage, performs okay-ish. While it’s not snappy, it doesn’t cause any major stutters or lags. Most things open quickly and work well. Even under heavy duress, 

While the phone isn’t built for gaming, it can handle most popular games without a major performance drop. However, you need to be generous with the graphics settings. I played simple games like Alto’s Odyssey and heavier titles like Call Of Duty Mobile, and both ran fine. In comparison, the Redmi 10’s Snapdragon 680 chipset performs twice as fast in games, and that’s something to consider even if you play games casually.

CPU Benchmark Scores

• Geekbench 5.4.4 Single-Core CPU Score: 343
• Geekbench 5.4.4 Multi-Core CPU Score: 1405

GPU Benchmark Scores

• 3DMark Wild Life Stress Test Score (Loop 1): 418
• 3DMark Wild Life Stress Test Score (Loop 20): 422
• GFXBench Car Chase ES 3.1 (On Screen): 9.1FPS
• GFXBench Car Chose ES 3.1 (Off Screen 1080p): 5.1FPS
• GFXBench Manhattan ES 3.1 (On Screen): 17FPS
• GFXBench Manhattan ES 3.1 (Off Screen 1080p): 8.7FPS
• GFXBench T-Rex ES 2.0 (On Screen): 34FPS
• GFXBench T-Rex ES 2.0 (Off Screen 1080p): 23FPS
• GFXBench Aztec Ruins Vulkan Normal Tier (On Screen): 8.3FPS
• GFXBench Aztec Ruins Vulkan Normal Tier (Off Screen 1080p): 4.6FPS

Storage & RAM Benchmark Scores

• Storage Speed (Sequential Read): 535.68MB/s
• Storage Speed (Sequential Write): 210.34MB/s
• Storage Speed (Random Read): 15.38MB/s
• Storage Speed (Random Write): 38.97MB/s
• Memory Speed (Copy): 3.83GB/s

Software

The Realme C33 runs Android 12 out of the box with Realme UI S on top. It’s a toned-down version of Realme UI but more feature-rich than Realme UI Go Edition that’s present on some phones like the Realme C30. Realme has promised two major Android OS updates and three years of security updates to the phone.

The software looks like a mix of Realme UI and Android UI on Pixel phones. It has a very simple app launcher with very few options and features. It’s similar to the Pixel Launcher, but it’s too basic. There’s a persistent clock and weather widget that you can’t remove. And there is no option to change the styling or size of icons on the home screen or the app drawer.

Plus, the phone comes pre-installed with a bunch of bloatware (unnecessary) apps, including Hey Fun, ShareChat, DailyHunt, Josh, Moj, Public, Spotify, LinkedIn, Amazon, Facebook, PhonePe, and Snapchat. Fortunately, you can uninstall most of them.

I would’ve liked to see a full-fledged version of Realme UI, but at least it’s better than Realme C30 and Realme C30s’ Realme UI Go Edition based on Android GO.

Battery Life

The phone takes around 3 hours to charge from zero to 100%, and that’s a lot. Realme should’ve at least used 15W fast charging, which would’ve reduced charging time to less than 2 hours.

On a single charge, the Realme C33 will last anywhere between 1 and 1.5 days, depending on your usage. I expected a slightly longer battery life owing to its HD screen, but I guess that’s the price you have to pay for a 12nm chipset. In comparison, some phones that come with a 6nm chipset (like the Redmi 10 with Snapdragon 680) offer better power efficiency and longer battery life.

Is The Realme C33 Worth Your Money?

So, should you buy the Realme C33 if your budget is around the ₹10,000 mark? Well, it wouldn’t be our outright recommendation. The phone looks good, has a decent processor, alright primary camera quality, and long battery life. However, its screen could’ve been better, and the video quality is not up to the mark. More importantly, the phone comes with the age-old microUSB port, while many other phones around the same price feature a USB Type-C port.

With all these disadvantages, we would recommend the phone only to those who want a good primary camera for capturing still images, an up-to-date version of Android, or a flashy design. Some rival phones like the Redmi 10, which carry the same price tag, have faster processors and better front-facing cameras. Even the similarly priced Narzo 30A has a better processor, a better front-facing camera, a bigger battery, faster charging, and a USB Type-C port.

If you can spend ₹1,000 more, you can get the POCO M4 Pro with a 90Hz AMOLED display with Gorilla Glass 3 protection, a faster processor, better front and rear cameras, stereo speakers, faster charging speed, and a USB Type-C port.