Realme C55 smartphone review – Long runtime, fast charging

The realme C55 impresses at first glance with its angular look and rounded corners, so the phone also feels good in the hand. Our test device is kept in classic black, and the back looks like brushed metal. Despite the high-quality design, it is only made of plastic.

The glossy camera module looks a bit out of place here. The yellow color variant, called Sunshower, is even more interesting and features a back with iridescent colors. The phone looks quite light and slim, especially compared to the Samsung Galaxy A14 LTE .

The realme C55 is available in two storage variants: realme advertises significantly larger RAM, but it is partly virtual RAM for which the system uses a part of the significantly slower mass storage flash. Therefore, this virtual RAM should make apps that need a lot of RAM executable, but it will slow them down. Thanks to NFC, services like Google Pay can be used without problems.

The phone can accept two SIM cards, and there is also a dedicated slot for microSD. The reader proves to be a bit slow in our tests with the reference microSD Angelbird V60. The inexpensive realme C55 is a 4G smartphone and supports the most necessary frequencies for domestic use.

However, you should check carefully whether you can use the phone for mobile Internet in the destination country for further trips. Mobile reception was rather mediocre during our test period but never completely broke down in the inner-city environment. The mid-range phone also features WiFi 5, and the realme C55 achieved quite good and stable transfer rates of up to 384 MBit/s in our test.

Android 13 is preinstalled on the smartphone, the realme UI is above it, which changes the system quite a bit in some areas. The security patches are from July 2023 at the time of testing and are thus up-to-date. However, it is not known how long updates will be available.

You also have to deal with many preinstalled third-party apps that the manufacturer includes ex-factory. Some information appears around the front camera in a display inspired by Apple’s Dynamic Island. This is not always visible and pops up when you connect the charger, for example.

The 90 Hz touchscreen is very easy to use and offers a gliding surface. A fingerprint sensor is integrated on the right of the standby button, which unlocks the phone reliably after a short delay. Face recognition is also available.

However, it only works with 2D images and is thus susceptible to manipulation. With its 64-megapixel main camera, the realme C55 wants to be something very special. In fact, only 1/4 of the resolution is usually used, resulting in 16-megapixel shots with higher light sensitivity.

The full resolution can also be used in a special mode. Pictures from the main camera look colorful and also reasonably sharp at first glance, but you can see that details are only reproduced quite coarsely when you zoom in. The brightness could also be better, and the autofocus has problems in low light.

Overall, the camera takes decent pictures for its price range, but a wide-angle lens for more flexibility is missing. Videos can be recorded in 1080p with 60 fps at most. Here, the real-world C55 has an advantage over many other smartphones in its price range due to the higher frame rate and the associated smoother picture.

In fact, brightness adjustment and autofocus work quite well, and videos look sharp and colorful. The IPS screen has an extended FullHD resolution and gets reasonably bright with 469 cd/m². However, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 12 4G shows that an AMOLED screen is also possible in the price range.

The center of the screen in the realme C55 is much brighter than the side areas. The contrast ratio is OK, which results in reasonably bright colors, but we see some blue cast in the test with the spectrophotometer. Colors are rendered reasonably realistically.

The MediaTek Helio G88 is a typical SoC for the mid-range, and the real-world C55 also achieves good performance rates that do not stand out from the competition. The system usually runs smoothly in everyday use, but stutters cannot always be avoided in more demanding tasks or when several apps running simultaneously. We measured a maximum temperature of 47.

2 °C under a longer, permanent load. That is noticeable, but the temperature should usually be much lower in everyday use. The SoC throttles slightly after 20 runs of a demanding benchmark, but the performance drop is small.

The speaker is located at the lower edge of the smartphone. It can get reasonably loud, sounds quite solid and does not overdrive. Speech is rendered clearly, but instruments and vocals quickly blend into a poorly defined mishmash of sound in music tracks.

A 3. 5 mm port and Bluetooth are available for connecting external audio devices. SBC, AAC, LDAC and the most important aptX codecs are available for wireless sound transmission.

The realme C55 is fully charged again in just over an hour, even if the battery was completely empty. The phone owes this to its 33-watt charging technology and the included charger. This makes it one of the really fast-charging phones in the low-priced mid-range.

The battery life is also convincing in our WLAN test: 16:15 hours under medium load make the phone suitable for everyday use. The realme C55 is a fairly inexpensive mid-range phone with a high-quality, and if desired, even spectacular casing. It charges quickly and lasts for a long time, offers enough power for everyday use, and can also boast a stable WLAN.

The camera takes decent pictures for the price range and even has an advantage over similarly priced phones with 60-fps video recording at 1080p. The software is up to date, but you shouldn’t be bothered by the many preloaded ad apps. Furthermore, there is no guarantee how long updates will take place.

There is little to criticize about the realme C55: It is a rock-solid mid-range phone that takes nice photos. Overall, the realme C55 proves to be a really good mid-range phone, but it has to fight strong competition: The Xiaomi Redmi Note 12 4G has an AMOLED display, and the Honor X8a has an even better camera. In the US, the realme C55 with 128 GB of mass storage is available for approximately ~$199 on Amazon at the time of writing.

The phone with 256 GB of data storage is available for approximately $215 . .