What is a performance?
SEASON 3 is out! Alright, let’s cut to the chase. We’ll be seeing how well the phone performs with… uhm, unfortunately only two games, one wouldn’t even open. It is lacking in storage and frankly we had a hard time playing both. Go back in 2016 and tell us that 64GB is no longer enough and that 4GB is just “entry level”, we would probably be confused.
The realme note50 sports a UNISOC Tiger T612 chipset. This chipset is manufactured on a 12nm process and is also comprised of an octa-core CPU of up to 2GHz frequency and a Mali-G57 GPU. Based on our tests, realme might have toned down the clock speed because it only goes up to 1.8GHz which is already low in an already underwhelming device.
The phone is quite snappy though when using it casually. Although we do feel alienated as we came from a phone with an OLED screen and 120Hz refresh rate down to just 60 again. It lagged at first but after it set everything up, the UI ran smoothly. As it should because this is already a toned down version of realmeUI. Applying updates took about a solid minute when coming from a fresh restart.
AnTuTu BENCHMARKS:
The realme note50 performed well in benchmarks, starting with AnTuTu. 238K is just what we expected of this chipset. Although the benchmark monitors above showed signs that the chipset throttled in the test. It quickly went down to normal but also started to rise in temperature again. This might not look good once we examine the CPU throttling test. It started with an initial temperature of 29.4°C and finished at 31.7°C which is surprisingly pretty good.
GEEKBENCH 6
From what we can gather on the benchmark results, we can say that the UNISOC Tiger T612’s performance is close to the Helio G85 as our Oppo A18 performed with a similar score. Not to mention, it uses the same GPU as well. So a score of 422 points single-core and 1355 multi-core is nothing out of the ordinary. The GPU is also pretty consistent for both renderers. However, OpenCL is naturally much more lightweight so it makes sense its score is also slightly higher than Vulkan.
CPU THROTTLING TEST:
Our realme note50 was tested in a cool environment in Baguio. It is also the most appropriate place to test the temps because we can easily notice how hot the phone can get under normal circumstances. Based on the graph above, the chipset throttled around 6 minutes in, consistent to what AnTuTu showed us but its temperature normalized quickly after that. Still, the chipset is pushing itself to its edge when it shouldn’t really have to, thus throttling is indeed a concern. The throttling test reported that the CPU throttled to 92% of its performance. This means it’s reducing more speed than expected. It’s safe to say that the chipset is not optimized yet, unlike the MediaTek Helio G85.
ACTUAL PERFORMANCE (MOBILE LEGENDS):
With how much bloatware inside this phone is, you would think that we might not be able to play one single game here. Well thankfully, the phone has enough storage to at least install and play one game. The game we decided to put on is everyone’s most played mobile MOBA in the Philippines: Mobile Legends (don’t worry, Wild Rift and Pokemon Unite are catching up).
Despite being a sub-4K phone, the game has its graphics settings set to Medium by default as well as having High Frame Rate enabled. The latter will allow the 90Hz refresh rate to be used fully. While Mobile Legends is not that demanding against the likes of Genshin Impact, Real Racing 3, or Diablo Immortal, it’s still worthy to note that the game is pretty heavy and can consume up to 10GB space.
The game surprisingly ran smooth with the default graphics settings. Although the screen resolution is pretty jagged, and pixels are much more noticeable. This would not have been the case with FullHD+ displays. Even during intense teamfights, the phone was able to keep a (mostly) consistently smooth performance.
If you’re an ML player, then thankfully a phone costing at sub-4K is more than enough to run it well, and that’s quite an achievement because we tested phones of a similar calibre before, and they failed to meet our expectations.
GENSHIN IMPACT:
As you can see, we don’t have a video recording of Genshin Impact because it pretty much ate all the storage left and the phone can barely run. Every time we do, the phone will restart from the menu screen. This is also the only game where we noticed how hot the phone can truly get when so much pressure is applied.
The graphics settings are set to the lowest but even that, the phone struggled to survive. The benchmark above suggest that realme or UNISOC secretly reduced the clock’s speed from 2GHz to 1.6GHz. Battery temperature also rose to 41.5°C while it was running.
When it does run, the phone can barely take it. We want to record its gameplay footage but AZ Screen Recorder corrupts every time. Its struggling to handle even basic graphics. The menu also lags but the phone can somewhat handle it.
There’s not much to say about its performance. We normally keep settings at its default values so virtual RAM is not enabled. This allows us to see the phone’s performance at its purest. Also, when we did turn it on, we did not feel any significant difference in performance and it just felt gimmicky. Stay tuned for the last part of this review where we will check out the sound quality.