Priced at Rs. 7,499, the Realme C30 is the most affordable smartphone from Realme this year. Find out more about it in our first impressions.

Realme’s original philosophy of ‘low price – maximum hype’ has evolved since its inception in 2018. Now, they are fighting against the big boys at prices above Rs. 50,000 with the Realme GT 2 Pro. To keep themselves grounded to the roots, though, they have launched a recent ultra-budget offering called the Realme C30.

There isn’t much buzz around it, and it’s perhaps one of the most utilitarian and affordable phones Realme makes at the moment. Priced at Rs. 7,499, it goes up against the Infinix Smart 6, Tecno Spark 8c and the Redmi 10A.

We have spent a couple of days with the Realme C30, and we have to say it does a bunch of things differently from the competition. Find out more in our first impressions.

There’s only so much you can do with the design of a phone when it’s priced so low, mainly because you’re so restricted by the choice of materials. Realme has tried something different here, with a corrugated finish at the back of the phone. It’s still plastic, but not one with a glossy finish. Instead, it has a grippy texture to it with a little bit of a metallic shimmer—the corrugation changes to a plain texture around the single 8-megapixel camera module. The ridged texture, along with grippy plastic, yields it a really solid feel in hand. It also acts as an excellent fidget because you can run your nails through it and make a satisfying sound. It can be therapeutic to you but not to those around you.

You get only two colour variants, green and blue. We received the latter, but we feel green would look better and unique.

The phone has a squared-off design – it’s 2022, and everyone wants to achieve that look. So, the metal frame is almost entirely flat with chamfers on the edges.

Despite packing a good battery capacity of 5,000mAh, the phone isn’t all that heavy, tipping the scales at 182g.

All buttons are placed on the phone’s right side, which is unlike Realme! They usually keep the volume rocker on the left and the right. The tactile feedback of the buttons is nice and resounding.

The bottom of the phone hosts a 3.5mm headphone jack, a mic hole, a Micro USB port (we haven’t seen that in a while) and a speaker grille. The left side houses a fully decked-out SIM tray with two nano-SIM slots and a microSD card slot. The top of the phone is clean, without any ports or grilles.

In terms of design, we quite dig the fact that despite using plastic back and frame, they have tried something unique. We are yet to see how durable it is against scratches and dents.

Flipping the phone reveals a 6.5-inch LCD display with HD+ resolution. It refreshes at 60Hz and has no fancy tech to make it smoother or brighter. Despite claiming an 88.7% screen-to-body ratio, the bezels are thick, especially towards the chin, but we didn’t mind that, considering the low price tag.

The display makes way for the front-facing 16-megapixel camera with a teardrop notch, but the curvature of it is not very intruding.

Under the hood, the Realme C30 packs a Unisoc T612 SoC clocked at 1.82GHz. This is paired with 3GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 64GB of UFS 2.2 internal storage, and you get no other storage or RAM options. If this is too little for you, you can insert a microSD card of up to 1TB capacity.

In terms of wireless connectivity, you get the bare basics here – 4G LTE, a WiFi antenna that only supports 2.4GHz and Bluetooth 5.0. There’s no FM radio that the Infinix Smart 6 and Redmi 10A offer.

All this runs Android 11 Go Edition tuned to Realme’s software. There’s a ton of bloat here, so Realme’s App Market and apps like PhonePe, Josh, JioSaavn and JioTV are pre-installed. You also get curated app folders called Hot Apps and Hot Games, and this was a bit concerning. While the latter has some legitimate games, the former displays some questionable looking apps. We hope Realme does something to keep a quality check on the apps recommended in this folder.

To charge the phone, you get a 10W power adapter that charges the phone via a Micro USB port. Other than this, you also get a SIM ejector tool, a getting started guide and a warranty card in the box, but no case.

From our first impressions, the Realme C30 is a reasonably priced, stylish ultra-budget smartphone. Unfortunately, we are yet to put the Realme C30 to test, so do stick around for our in-depth review.

Thanks for reading till the end of this article. For more such informative and exclusive tech content, like our Facebook page

Realme C35 vs Realme C30

Realme C30 vs Realme C31

OnePlus Nord CE 2 5G vs OnePlus Nord CE 2 Lite 5G

OnePlus Nord 2 vs OnePlus Nord CE 2 5G

Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro vs Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro Plus 5G

OnePlus 9 RT vs OnePlus 10R

OnePlus Nord CE 2 5G vs OnePlus Nord CE 2 Lite 5G

OnePlus Nord 2 vs OnePlus Nord CE 2 5G

Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro vs Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro Plus 5G

OnePlus 9 RT vs OnePlus 10R