After the successful launch of the realme 11 Pro 5G and realme 11 Pro+ 5G last August 2023. realme Philippines finally unveiled the realme 11, the latest addition to its 11 series model, thereby completing its lineup in the mid-range segment.
The realme 11 is priced at PHP13,999 but customers can score a better deal with its early bird discount of up to PHP2,000 OFF when they purchase exclusively during the first selling on realme’s E-store and official stores in Lazada, Shopee, and TikTok.
- realme E-Store: November 9, starting at 8PM, until November 17
- realme official Lazada: November 11, starting at 12MN, until November 13
- realme official Shopee: November 11, starting at 12MN, until November 17
- realme TikTok Shop: November 9, starting at 8PM, until November 17
If you decide to purchase the realme 11 in its offline stores nationwide from November 10-19, it comes with a FREE TechLife 4.5L See-Through Air Fryer worth PHP 2,799.
Now that you’re informed about the pricing and availability, let’s dive into our hands-on experience with the realme 11.
Design
The realme 11 will be available in two elegant colorways in Glory Gold and our review unit in Dark Glory shade.
The phone has an ultra slim form factor with a thickness of 7.95mm and weighs 178 grams which allows us to hold the phone comfortably even with just one hand.
Our unit has a sleek solid black color which exhibits a nice shimmer effect and subtle violet rays from the camera module when the light interacts with the cover panel as you tilt the phone sideways.
The rear panel is made of durable polycarbonate plastic material in a matte finish which helps hide those fingerprint marks and smudges.
One of the phone’s most visually appealing features is its circular camera module adopting the Glory Halo design. It incorporates the brand’s signature “luxury fluted halo” and “pit design” on the ring of the camera module which is similar to the dials of high-end mechanical watches. It adds a more premium touch to the camera ring of the realme 11.
A realme logo is placed at the bottom left.
The left edge houses the triple card slot that can accommodate two nano-SIM cards and an extra slot for storage expansion using a MicroSD card.
Towards the top on the right edge, you’ll find the volume rockers and the power/sleep button which also acts as a fingerprint reader. I like the placement of the fingerprint sensor, it’s convenient and accessible to my thumb, making the phone unlock faster.
The bottom edge holds the 3.5mm headphone jack, microphone, speaker grille, and a USB-C port.
On the top edge, it has another microphone.
The bezels surrounding the front display are thin, except for the bottom chin which is a bit raised.
The front camera has a punch-hole design placed at the top left corner.
Enhancing the durability of the realme 11’s display, it features a Corning Gorilla Glass 5, providing added protection against scratches and drops unto hard rough surfaces from up to 1.2 meters.
Rest assured, the realme 11 is a highly durable phone that has undergone over 320 stringent tests, which include the following:
- 4,000 booting and rebooting
- 500,000 times clicking the power button
- 100,000 times of clicking on the volume rocker buttons
- 20,000 times plugging and unplugging the USB cable
- Temperature tests at -40°C ~ 75°C for 300 hours Long-term high temperature and high humidity at 65°C, 95%RH in 21 days
Display
The realme 11 sports a 6.4-inch AMOLED display that bears a maximum refresh rate of 90Hz with resolutions of 1080 x 2400 pixels at 409 PPI density.
The phone also boasts of a 360Hz touch response for a swift and highly responsive interaction making it ideal for tasks that demand precision and quick touch input.
The screen can reach a peak brightness of 1,000 nits, maintaining excellent visibility indoors and providing a very bright display when used during nighttime. Under direct sunlight, the maximum brightness of the phone remains reasonably viewable, but for some users, reading content might be a bit challenging.
The 90.80% screen-to-body ratio makes it a compact device size and ideal for watching videos, playing games, and consuming multimedia content.
The colors of the AMOLED screen on this phone are vibrant, sharp, and good deep blacks offering an impressive picture quality. Watching any video content looks excellent on the screen from streaming platforms such as Netflix, Disney Plus, or VIU as well as YouTube videos.
You can widen the color gamut of the phone by turning the Video Color Boost on for more super color reproduction and visual experience.
To safeguard your eyes during prolonged use, the phone offers an eye comfort feature.
Hardware
Under the hood, the realme 11 is powered by a MediaTek Helio G99 octa-core processor with 2 cores of Arm Cortex-A76 clocking up to 2200MHz, and 6 cores of Arm Cortex-A55 up to 2000MHz.
The chipset is paired with an ARM Mali-G57 MC2 a good mid-range GPU.
The MediaTek Helio G99 is positioned as a gaming smartphone processor, known for its power efficiency and its ability to smoothly run most popular games.
It has 256GB internal storage with support for up to 1TB expandability via microSD, providing extra needed storage space for your photos, videos, apps, and games.
The phone comes with 8GB of memory, and with the virtual RAM expansion, it can be increased to a total of 16GB. You also have the option to expand the RAM by either 4GB or 6GB, avoiding unnecessary storage consumption. This feature enhances multitasking capabilities and ensures the smooth performance of the phone.
Sharing our benchmark scores of the realme 11.
- Antutu Benchmark: 416329
- GeekBench 6 CPU: 725 Single Core / 1940 Multi-Core
- GeekBench 6 GPU: 1407 OpenCL Score
- CPDT: 380.55 MB/s Write, 365.74 MB/s Read
- PCMark: 10108 Work 3.0 Performance
- 3DMark: 1362 Wild Life (8.16 fps)
For gamers, the phone features a Smart game sidebar that allows you to enjoy games with some additional functionalities such as checking or replying to messages, screen recording, voice changer, screenshot, touch optimization, adjusting brightness, and more.
But how does the phone perform when it comes to gaming? It’s quite solid! With the MediaTek Helio G99 processor, you’ll undoubtedly enjoy playing even some of the most demanding graphic-intensive games on this device, such as Call of Duty, Mobile Legends Bang Bang, PUBG, and more. For casual games like Subway Surfers, Candy Crush etc., the performance is exceptionally smooth, with no issues whatsoever.
The realme 11 supports biometrics with face unlock and a fingerprint scanner found on the side-mounted button which works great and it’s fast as well.
Though you have biometrics this is not as secure, you can add another layer of security on your phone with a lock screen password.
As for the audio quality, the realme 11 relies upon its bottom-firing speakers for external sound. It has an ultra-boom speaker mode an extra option to boost the volume to an even higher level up to 200%.
The sound quality of the phone’s speaker is pretty decent with clear vocals, and good mid-range but missing out a little bass.
For better sound performance, you can pair your Bluetooth earbuds or connect an external audio device to the 3.5mm audio port.
Camera
Now the optics of the phone sports a dual camera setup comprising a 108MP main camera and 2MP Portrait lens.
The main camera uses a Samsung HM5 sensor which supports Nonapixel Plus Technology for advanced pixel-binning. This image optimization process will help enhance photos to reduce noise and increase clarity, an advantage when shooting during low-light scenarios.
For selfies, the front-facing camera offers a 16MP lens with a beauty filter available on the camera app. The front-facing camera can shoot usable selfies in good light.
And speaking of the camera app, the interface is user-friendly with easy access to all the essential options required for you to set before taking your photos.
Opening the camera app, you’ll have six available shooting modes ready on the camera app with night, street, video, photo, portrait, and 108MP.
Clicking the more options will have more additional shooting modes with pro, pano, movie, slo-mo, time-lapse, dual-view video, text scanner, and tilt-shift.
On the top of the main viewfinder, you can toggle the flash, timer, AI, image size, and a collapsed menu for the settings along with the HDR mode.
The zoom switch offers convenient 1x and 3x zoom options right at your fingertips, and it can extend up to a maximum of 20x zoom.
Next to the zoom switch, you’ll find the Google lens, Retouch, and Color Filters.
The realme 11 offers a new set of in-camera filters under the Street mode with Tranquil, Crisp, and Cinematic for users to do more creative possibilities on their photos. This shooting mode features its very own watermark design and a DIS (Dynamic Image Stabilization) Engine to remove jitter motions and reduce blur when shooting outdoors.
Sharing our sample photos captured with the realme 11.
1x Photo mode, Outdoor, Sunny Weather
3x Photo mode, Outdoor, Sunny Weather
1x Photo mode, Indoor, Ambient Lighting
1x Photo mode added Flamingo Color filter, Indoor, Ambient Lighting
1x Night mode, Indoor, Low Lighting
Selfie, Outdoor, Sunny Weather
Portrait mode, Outdoor, Sunny Weather
10x Photo mode, Outdoor, Low Lighting
We opted not to use the night mode for this shot with the 10x zoom, resulting in a photo with reduced clarity, diminished details, and noticeable noise.
Night mode, Outdoor, Low Lighting
Our daylight shots from the realme 11’s sensor are simply outstanding. The photos produced plenty of details with good contrast and dynamic range. As for the colors, it looks vibrant and lively.
When shooting in low-light scenarios, the night mode can be helpful to capture decent photos especially night time. While the quality may appear slightly soft with some noticeable noise, there is still a commendable detail and good color reproduction.
You can record videos with resolutions of 1080p and 720p at 30fps.
The video mode will give users a convenient zoom switch options, starting with pre-set 1x and 2x zoom levels but extends up to a maximum of 10x zoom.
Software
The realme 11 runs on realme UI 4.0 based on Android 13.
The phone comes with several pre-installed apps, such as Agoda, Facebook, Lazada, LinkedIn, Shopee, Spotify, and TikTok. Additionally, it offers Google services and WPS Office, a free all-in-one office suite for doing any Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. Should you wish to remove any of the installed apps, you can easily delete them.
You can customize your phone by changing the wallpaper, themes, icons, font, and color palette.
The phone has an innovative Always-On Display (AOD) that offers a glimpse of essential information like time, date, battery status, notifications, and more. It conveniently displays music information and controls with a double tap on the screen. You can even have the freedom to personalize the AOD face design to suit your preferences.
Battery
The realme 11 is equipped with a large 5,000mAh battery and boasts the lightning-fast 67W SuperVOOC fast charging technology to quickly replenish your phone’s power in no time at all.
To power up your phone immediately, it utilizes the included 33W SuperVOOC fast charging adapter provided in the box.
In just 15 minutes, the battery charged up to 54%, and the next 15 minutes brought it up to an impressive 90% charge. It took us only 41 minutes, a mere 4 minutes ahead of realme’s claimed 45-minute charging time, to fully charge the phone from 0 to 100%.
In addition to the advantages brought by high-current direct charging, realme has its own charging algorithms for safety with a VCVT Intelligent Tuning Algorithm to accurately adjust the current and voltage. It also has a Dual Charge Pump Technology for lower resistance and generates less heat. They even added 38 levels of protection ensuring safe charging from parts used on the charger and up to the battery.
Going to the battery settings, you also have more options to optimize your phone’s battery such as a power saving mode, optimized night charging, performance mode, app freezer, and more.
What We Like
- Design
- AMOLED Display
- Expandable Storage Up To 1TB
- RAM Expansion
- MediaTek Helio G99 Processor
- Good Camera Performance
- Street Mode + New Color Filters
- 5,000mAh Battery Capacity
- 67W SUPERVOOC Fast Charging Technology
- 200% Ultra Boom Speaker
- Price
What We Want
- Ultra-wide Camera
- OIS
- 60fps
Conclusion
Overall, I think that the realme 11 is a great mid-range smartphone that delivers what it promises. The built-in chipsets offers good performance, a vibrant AMOLED display, great cameras, and impressive battery life with support for SuperVOOC fast charging technology.
We also liked the aesthetics of the realme 11, the captivating shimmer effect on the back panel paired with its Glory Halo design, it further adds a touch of premium elegance to the phone.
While the phone does have a few shortcomings, we still readily recommend it thanks to its attractive price point and the array of good features it offers.
Full Specifications – realme 11
- Price: PHP13,999
- Colors: Glory Gold / Dark Glory
- Screen Type: Super AMOLED
- Screen Size: 6.4-inches
- Screen Resolution: FHD+ 1080×2400 pixels
- PPI: 409
- Screen-to-Body Ratio: 90.80%
- Refresh Rate: 90Hz
- Touch Sampling Rate: 360Hz
- Brightness: 1,000 Nits
- Display Protection: Corning Gorilla Glass 5
- Processor: MediaTek Helio G99
- RAM: 8GB
- Storage: 256GB
- Rear Camera: 108MP Main Camera + 2MP Depth Camera
- Front Camera: 16MP
- Video: 1080p, 720p
- Battery: 5000mAh
- Fast Charging: 33W SUPERVOOC
- Operating System: realme UI 4.0, Android 13
- Voice Assistant: Google Assistant
- Wi-Fi: 2.4GHz, 5GHz
- Bluetooth: Bluetooth 5.2
- Frequency Bands: 2G, 3G, 4G
- Dimensions: 159.9 x 73.3 x 7.95 mm
- Weight: 178 grams
- Warranty: 1 Year
- In The Box:
- Realme 11 unit , 33W SUPERVOOC Adapter, USB-A to USB-C Cable, Warranty Card, Quick Guide, SIM Ejector Pin, and Protective Case
