realme 12 Pro Plus 5G Review

realme just brought its latest sub-flagship phone to more markets. The realme 12 Pro Plus 5G leads the brand’s latest number series, flaunting a couple of high-end features, a stunning and luxurious design, and a flexible camera system.

With a price tag of Php25,999, realme clearly has high ambitions for the number series — a line of products used to settle in the midrange category. In our realme 12 Pro+ review, we’ll see if it has what it takes to satisfy the premium midrange market. Let’s start.

realme 12 Pro Plus 5G Specs

Android 14, realme UI 5.0
Dual SIM, Dual standby
6.7-inch FHD+ AMOLED display, 2412 x 1080 pixel resolution, 394ppi
120Hz refresh rate
2.0GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 octa-core processor
Adreno 710 GPU
12GB RAM
512GB internal storage, non-expandable
32-megapixel front camera
50-megapixel (IMX890, OIS) + 64-megapixel (OV64B, periscope, 3x zoom) + 8-megapixel (ultra-wide) rear cameras, dual-LED flash
Under-display fingerprint scanner, Face unlock
IP65 dust and water resistant
Stereo speakers
No headphone jack
HSPA+, 4G LTE, 5G
WiFi 6, dual-band
Bluetooth 5.2
GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, QZSS, BDS
NFC
USB-C
Dimensions: 161.5 x 74 x 8.8mm
Weight: 196g
Colors: Submarine Blue, Navigator Beige, Explorer Red
5,000mAh non-removable battery, 67W fast charging

Design and Build Quality

As said earlier, the realme 12 Pro+ 5G is a premium device, and it’s definitely dressed like it. The colorway we have is the Submarine Blue with a premium vegan leather material that looks fancy and feels incredible to the touch. It’s also refreshing to see a device that’s not reflective (as most phones use shiny glass or plastic) and a not fingerprint magnet.

More than the leather-like material, we also like how fancy the camera island is. realme said it was inspired by luxury watches, and we definitely see it. The glass is symmetrically rounded and slightly curved, mimicking the face of a classic watch.

Surrounding the camera island are 300 triangular grooves that’s been precision-crafted. It feels really well made and you can feel the ridges when you slide your fingers on it.

Below the glass is a material realme calls the 3D Jubilee bracelet that runs across the rear panel. It has a light gold finish, which matches the ring surrounding the camera island and the frame of the device.

On paper, the realme 12 Pro+ doesn’t look like the thinnest and lightest smartphone around. But thanks to its curves and soft material, it does feel really comfortable to hold in the hands even for extended periods of time.

Those who have bigger hands like me might want to use the included clear case for extra grip. The unit is not slippery, but it adds a little bit of protection.

Of course, the case does a great job of protecting the device (as well as the IP65 water resistance), with enough protrusion to shield the curved screen and camera island. We just wish realme became more creative in designing the case as it looks a bit boring and doesn’t complement the design.

Nevertheless, the elegant leather-like material and design on the back as well as the curved display should be enough to convince most people that the realme 12 Pro Plus is indeed a premium smartphone.

Taking a tour, we have the curved 6.7-inch AMOLED display on the front. We’ve seen AMOLED screens with thinner bezels, but this one looks fine, especially with that punch-hole for the selfie camera.

On top, we have the secondary speaker and the microphones.

At the bottom, we have the SIM tray for two nano SIMs. No microSD card slot, though. It is next to the primary microphone, USB-C port, and the primary loudspeaker.

Left side is clean, while the right hosts the volume controls and the lock/power switch. The physical buttons feel fine to press. Not the best we’ve tested, but feels clicky, springy, and durable enough to last for several years.

On the back, we have the the cameras in a 2×2 layout. The top left one is the 50-megapixel main camera, next to it is the 8-megapixel ultra-wide, the bottom left is for the 64-megapixel periscope lens, while the fourth one is just a placeholder for symmetry. A pill-shaped flash is placed vertically on top.

Display and Sound Quality

The realme 12 Pro Plus 5G has a 6.7-inch FHD+ AMOLED display with a 2412 x 1080 pixel resolution, 10-bit color, 120Hz refresh rate, 240Hz touch sampling, 2160Hz PWM dimming, and 100% DCI-P3 color coverage. Unfortunately, no official HDR support, which is a little bit disappointing for the price.

It also has a ProXDR feature which you can access through a button on compatible images in the Gallery. It basically lifts up the shadows on the image to make it look more vibrant. Press and holding the button is actually for disabling the feature so you can see how the image will look like on other phones.

You can also customize the screen color modes, schedule the Eye Comfort feature that can automatically change the color temperature so it’s easier in the eyes, and switch between three different screen refresh rate: Standard (60Hz), High (120Hz), or Auto Select.

As you might expect, display quality is good, but nothing spectacular. It has the vibrancy and deep contrast of an AMOLED, with Widevine L1 support for HD streaming on Netflix and other platforms. It also has enough sharpness for reading long articles with small texts. However, the screen is a little dim outdoors with only 950 nits peak brightness.

For audio, we have super linear stereo speakers, Dolby Atmos support, and Hi-Res Audio certification.

The stereo speakers worked great. The stereo separation makes movies more immersive and is also great for hearing footsteps in shooter games. It also gets pretty loud, even without the novelty volume boost modes that other phones have.

Hardware and Performance

The realme 12 Pro+ 5G comes with a 2.4GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 4nm processor, which is a decent processor on its own, but not the best choice for a device at this price point. But realme tried to make up for it by including a flagship-grade 12GB of RAM (+4GB virtual RAM expansion) and a very generous 512GB of storage.

realme 12 Pro Plus 5G Benchmark Results

It may not have the best processor for the price, but during our tests, it still felt snappy. Apps open fast, scrolling through the interface and social media apps is smooth, and streaming content and video calls have no issues.

We did notice a slight delay when taking pictures, but nothing too big to worry about.

Gaming performance was also superb. Genshin Impact, one of the most demanding games on the Play Store, ran smoothly under the Lowest graphics settings with no overheating issues, giving you the option to increase the graphics quality if you want to. Just proceed with caution and know that it will be at the cost of frame rates and smoothness.

Less demanding titles like Call of Duty Mobile, PUBG Mobile, Farlight84, and Mobile Legends ran smoothly under High settings. Asphalt 9: Legends was also playable under the 60fps settings.

Game	Graphics Settings
Call of Duty: Mobile	• Graphics Quality: High • Frame Rate: Max
Farlight84	• Graphics Quality: Balanced • Frame Rate: Very High • Resolution: Medium
PUBG Mobile	• Graphics Quality: HD • Frame Rate: High
Genshin Impact	• Graphics Quality: Lowest (Default)
Mobile Legends: Bang Bang	• Graphics Quality: High • Frame Rate: High • HD Mode: On
Asphalt 9: Legends	• Visual Quality: Default • Frame Rate: 60fps

Software and User Interface

The realme 12 series runs on the latest Android 14-based realme UI. One of its key highlights is realme’s take on Apple’s Dynamic Island called Flash Capsule which shows a small window when you’re screen recording, has a timer running, and shows delivery status on select apps. Hopefully, much like Apple’s implementation, it will support more apps in the future.

An image cutout feature is also here called Smart Image Matting. You can press and hold a subject on the gallery and save or copy it to another file with ease.

Quick Share, Android’s replacement for Nearby Share, worked well in transferring and receiving files. We also liked how you can easily censor plate numbers, email addresses, and phone numbers with the built-in Pixelate feature on the Photos app. The AI feature could supposedly analyze what part of the image to needs to be blurred, but it’s a hit and miss. In the end, we end up manually blurring the images.

What we’re not a big fan of is the security risk scanner every time you download an app. While we do appreciate its security benefits, we wish it didn’t have to redirect us to a different screen while we’re doing something else just to notify us that the app is clean.

In addition, realme’s Lock Screen Magazine feature that loops different lock screen wallpapers every time you open the device, is annoying so we turned that thing off. There are a lot of built-in wallpapers to choose from from, and you can use your photos as well. You can also customize how fonts look, the icons, themes, and of course, the Always-On Display.

The fingerprint scanner worked seamlessly in my tests, albeit I barely got to use it as the face unlock was faster. I also liked the Quick Launch feature that gives you quick access to certain actions or apps by pressing and holding the fingerprint scanner. You can also instantly swipe to the action/shortcut you want before the icons even pop up. Pretty useful.

I also liked the Security and Privacy settings that have an easy-to-understand indicators if there are issues or threats that you should be worried about. It can even scan the device with a press of a button if you’re feeling something’s off. App Lock, Hide Apps, Private Safe, and System Cloner are also here.

Those who are always worried if their phone is running at its best can use realme’s Phone Manager app. It analyzes your system and, with a press of a button, lets you Optimize things like clear the memory, optimize privacy, and more.

There’s also an app called Games that shows a list of all the games installed and lets you interact with their respective communities. The app also lets you configure the Game Toolkit, which is a window you can swipe from the left of the screen so you can switch between gaming modes, show real-time FPS, media controls, disable notifications, optimize the network, and more.

We also saw some bloatware that cannot be removed. There’s an App Market that’s separate from Google Play Store. You also get two web browsers: one from realme and one from Google (Chrome). Fortunately, they barely make a dent on the device’s large 512GB of RAM. With six demanding games installed and a bunch of photos taken, we still have about 383GB to spare.

And in case the large 12GB of physical RAM is still not enough, you can use the RAM expansion feature to borrow 4GB, 8GB, or 12GB of virtual memory from the storage. The feature is set to +4GB by default.

The realme 12 Pro Plus uses Google Keyboard by default. The English (Philippines) layout includes the letter ñ in the second row. I appreciate the move as someone with that letter in the name, but I had to disable it immediately as the unusual layout led to a lot of typos.

I also like how the elaborate camera app compliments the camera hardware. There are a lot of features to go through, which can be overwhelming for beginners. However, the main Photo mode is pretty straightforward if you just want to point and shoot.

realme UI, much like ColorOS and OxygenOS, is one of the most complete interfaces in the smartphone world. Throughout the years, it has gotten better every new update.

Cameras

Now onto the main event. The realme 12 Pro Plus 5G boasts a 50-megapixel Sony IMX890 main camera with optical image stabilization and a focal equivalent of 24mm, as well as an 8-megapixel ultra-wide. Possibly its most interesting shooter is the 64-megapixel OV64B sensor sitting behind a periscope-style telephoto lens with a 71mm equivalent — a rare find on this price range. A 32-megapixel selfie shooter is on the front.

Shots from the main sensor are appealing, but definitely not the best we’ve seen in this category. The colors are eye-catching without being too much, the details are sharp, the contrast is fine, and the dynamic range is handled well.

Low-light shots from the main camera look fine, but could’ve been processed better. If you can, enable the Night Mode to make the images brighter, more colorful, and contrasty.

The 1x and 2x mode use the main 50-megapixel camera. You’d start using the 64-megapixel periscope lens on the 3x zoom. With the Portrait Mode enabled, you can take really stunning portraits with a lot of details, with clean and believable background blur.

You can turn the zoom dial up to 120x. The image is still passable but the crop resulted in heavy grains and noises. Also, the OIS already feels stiff on this one, which makes framing the subject a bit tricky. But with this level of zoom, you should really use a tripod if you want decent pictures.

Shots from the 8-megapixel ultra-wide is passable. It has enough details and the colors look realistic. Low light shots intensify the noises and grains, but it would look better when the Night Mode is enabled.

Finally, the 32-megapixel selfie camera does take great selfies. realme, along with OPPO and vivo, are known for their selfie cameras, so no surprises here. Photos look sharp but slightly struggle in low light. Skin tones look accurate and the background blur is believable. But as always, if you want better quality images, it’s better to use the main camera instead.

Battery and Charging

The realme 12 Pro Plus 5G has a 5,000mAh battery like most smartphones today. It is paired with a 67W fast charger — which is impressively fast, but a surprise downgrade from its predecessor.

In our tests, the realme 12 Pro+ provided excellent battery life. In PCMark’s battery loop test, it was able to last for around 16 hours before dropping to 20% from 100%. That’s a loop of synthetic workload with the connectivity features turned off, and the screen brightness and volume at 50%.

Meanwhile, in our YouTube video streaming test, it was able to last for about 19 hours and 30 minutes from 100% to complete battery dead. On the other hand, playing different demanding games for an hour only ate up 15.8% of battery. Overall, we can safely say that the device can easily last for up to two days for most casual users.

We also have the impressive 67W fast charging feature, which fully charges the device in just 50 minutes. That’s from a completely dead battery. Check the details of the test below:

15-minute charge: 0-39%
30-minute charge: 52%
45-minute charge: 96%
50-minute charge: FULL

Verdict

realme wanted to cater to the premium market when they created the realme 12 Pro Plus 5G. The result? They did a a pretty good job.

The incredible design screams nothing but luxury, the curved and colorful display is nice to the eyes, the speakers are great, the battery life and charging are very dependable, the chipset is snappy with a lot of room for multitasking and storing files, and of course, there’s the wide array of capable cameras for flexibility when shooting.

But it’s not without its flaws. For one, while the device did feel snappy most of the time, it lags behind some of the competition. The lack of HDR support and slower charging speed (versus its predecessor) are also disappointing. Lastly, we wish the low-light shots processing could’ve been better.

But if you want a smartphone with elegant design, good performance, plenty of storage, and long battery life, you can’t go wrong with the realme 12 Pro+ 5G.

realme 12 Pro Plus 5G pricing and availability in the Philippines

The realme 12 Pro Plus 5G with12GB RAM 512GB storage is available in the Philippines for a price of Php25,999. But for a limited time, it has an introductory price of Php21,999 from March 7 to 15, 2024. It’s available on Shopee, Lazada, and TikTok. You can also get it for up to 12-month 0% installment plans on Home Credit.

Pros

Stunning, premium, and elegant design
Good performance
Generous RAM and storage
Flexible cameras
Long battery life

Cons

No HDR
Competition have better chipset
Low-light shots could be better
Downgraded charging speed