Realme teases a key camera upgrade to take on the P30 Pro

Budget smartphone outfit Realme has shown off a quad camera smartphone that is packing a 64MP primary sensor.

There’s no name on the new phone yet, but we do know what camera sensor we’ll get. Realme’s smartphone will be packing Samsung’s ISOCELL Bright GW1 sensor, which is a 1/1.72″ sensor with a pixel size of 0.8μm. Factor in Samsung’s Tetracell technology, which implies 4-in-1 pixel binning as part of the process, it’s likely that for every click of your shutter you’ll get a 16MP image with a pixel size of 1.6μm.

If this confuses you, you’re not the only one. In short, all of these numbers add up to a camera that should, in theory, perform better in low light. Rather than a 64MP sensor churning out huge images, here the four cameras are all pulling together to make an image with great exposure, something the pixel binning excels at.

A lot of the final image quality will depend on the image processing that goes on behind the scenes, and in previous reviews we’ve been happy enough with the image quality on Realme devices: take a look at our review for the Realme 3 Pro, which has a much worse sensor, but still manages to bring its A-game in terms of photography.

The company are also boasting about their usage of AI for scene recognition and image work, so there’s even more to be enthusiastic about, even if I refuse to be drawn into a discussion of its objective quality before we have one in our hand to test, but if this phone also squats in Realme’s budget price bracket it’s going to be a hell of a contender.

The phone will launch at some stage in the second half of this year, although there’s absolutely no word at this stage on when and where in the world it will surface, so if you want a killer camera at a budget price, the best bet seems to be to cross your fingers and hope Realme’s newest addition launches over here at a great price.