realme 14 Review – Debloat Before You Begin

Unboxing

Here we have the realme 14 in its signature yellow-colored box, which you’ll be greeted with a welcome message as soon as you lift the cover open. Taking out this small box reveals the phone itself, with more accessories down below.

Here’s the full list of accessories: 
– Quick guide
– Safety guide
– Type A 45W charger(NA, LATAM, Japan, Taiwan)
– USB-C charging cable
– SIM ejector pin
– realme 14 main unit

Walkaround

The front of the realme is the typical all-screen-plus-punch-hole layout, while the back features some extra bits of graphics to give its exterior some distinct look. The camera module houses two cameras – one primary 50MP sensor, while the secondary is unknown. We were unable to obtain any data, both internally and externally, about the nature of this sensor, which we can only assume is functioning as an auxiliary lens for the primary sensor.

What about the third camera on the right? Glad you asked – but that is in fact not a camera. It’s what realme describes as “Halo Ring”, which activates when you perform specific actions (i.e. enemy kills) in specific games, like Honor of Kings. It seems like the supported titles are very limited, given that we haven’t seen it light up at all during our testing.

The general layout on the sides shows the buttons all located on the right, with accented power button, along with SIM/microSD card slot located at the bottom. Despite being a budget smartphone, you won’t even find a headphone jack here – either you get a USB-C earbuds, or use wireless earbuds if you don’t want to rely on onboard speakers.

The realme 14 comes pre-installed with Android 15 (realme UI 6.0), and by default your lock screen will be rotating on every screen wake. You’ll have to disable this feature in the settings, and doing so requires going through a few rather persuasive prompts, which I’m not a fan of. (Dark patterns in UI design are just bad practices in general.)

Specifications

realme 14 (RMX5070, 12GB+256GB)

Full specifications available on product specifications page.

Form Factor & Build	Smartphone (candybar) Glass front (Mohs Level 5), plastic frame & rear
Chipset	Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 (4nm, TSMC N4P)
CPU	8-core (1X+3P+4E) Prime: Arm Cortex-A720 @ 2.3GHz Performance: Arm Cortex-A720 @ 2.2GHz Efficiency: Arm Cortex-A520 @ 1.8GHz
GPU	Qualcomm Adreno 810
RAM	8GB 12GB [As tested]
Storage	256GB UFS [As tested] microSDXC expansion support via secondary Nano-SIM slot
Display	6.67″ AMOLED 2400×1080 (20:9) 120Hz adaptive refresh rate 180Hz touch sampling rate (1500Hz peak) 600 nits typical brightness (2000 nits peak) 8-bit (16.7M) color 395 ppi pixel density
Audio	Stereo speakers No headphone jack (USB-C only)
Cameras	Rear: Dual cameras – 50MP (27mm wide, 76° FOV, 1/2.5″, f/1.8, PDAF, OIS) – Secondary camera specifications unspecified Front: Single cut-out camera – 16MP (85° FOV, 1/2.8″, f/2.4)
Biometric sensors	Fingerprint scanner (in-display optical)
Connectivity	Wi-Fi 6 (dual-band) Bluetooth 5.2 NFC not present
Cellular Networks	Dual-standby Nano-SIM 2G: 850/900/1800/1900MHz 3G*: B1/B2/B4/B5/B6/B8/B19 4G: B1/B2/B3/B4/B5/B7/B8/B12/B13/B17 B18/B19/B20/B26/B28/B38/B40/B41/B66 5G: N1/N2/N3/N5/N7/N8/N20/N26 N28/N38/N40/N41/N66/N77/N78 *3G network has been phased out in Malaysia.
Operating System	Android 15 (realme UI 6.0) Software support length unspecified
Battery	6,000mAh Li-ion silicon-carbon 45W USB-C wired charging Bypass charging mode
Ingress Protection	IP66/IP68/IP69
Colors	Mecha Silver [As tested] Storm Titanium Warrior Pink
Dimensions	163.15 x 75.65 x 7.97 mm
Weight	196g

Performance

System

The realme 14’s relatively new Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 chipset performs decently among the devices we’ve selected as the comparisons – the smartphone doesn’t exhibit significant difference in both of the system-wide benchmarks here. Still, we’ll have to look at each component in detail to see how it does in specific scenarios, so here goes.

CPU

In terms of CPU performance, the Arm Cortex processors within the Snapdragon chipset are not particularly fast in the grand scheme of things, and among the mid-range smartphones here we see the realme 14 placed in the middle – slightly faster than the likes of Exynos-powered Samsung Galaxy A35 and the POCO X7 featuring MediaTek chips, but also slightly slower than Snapdragon 7 models, along with more powerful Exynos chips.

GPU

Meanwhile, GPU performance vary quite a bit based on our 3DMark tests: the realme 14 once again is placed comfortably in the middle of the pack, notably ahead of Dimensity 7300 Ultra and Exynos 1380 powering the POCO X7 and Samsung Galaxy A35 respectively. Still, phones like iQOO Z9 with Snapdragon 7 Gen 3, and Samsung Galaxy A56 with the newer Exynos chip far outpaces realme’s GPU, while the Redmi’s Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 and Galaxy A55’s Exynos 1480 is neck-and-neck.

In terms of performance stability, the realme 14 perhaps just like most of the mid-range smartphones in this chart, achieving near-perfect stability at 99.5%. In practice, that means the device will not overheat and affect performance – in fact, we observed the device barely heats up even with AnTuTu benchmark thrown at it (which is one of the most demanding workload you should get on a smartphone).

Battery

One thing that perhaps surprised me the most is the power efficiency of this Snapdragon chip, or rather, the smartphone as a whole. You can genuinely leave the smartphone on standby for perhaps well over a week based on our observation, as it sips so little power when the phone’s locked. Even on active use, it fared very well in our battery tests, reaching 16 hours 46 minutes of runtime from a single charge.

User Experience

Software

From the get go, realme UI 6.0 starts with a randomized lock screen wallpaper that changes every time you unlock the phone, which some may like and some may not. You can disable this, although this is where I started to see some consistent patterns while using this operating system.

Some of the settings which realme doesn’t want you to disable easily will be put behind several hoops, some of which – like privacy settings – uses “dark patterns” to misdirect users into re-activating the tracking function. While you can disable them relatively easily though the initial setup, once you skipped this, going through each of them in the Settings app will be significantly more difficult.

There’s also a big tendency on realme’s part to suggest you apps to install in several parts of the operating system. In the setup process, you’ll be prompted twice to install its list of curated apps, and the App Market is especially aggressive at pushing users to install recommended apps. There’s a “Monthly Recommendation” for whatever reason, along with another curated list that it really wants you to install, and there’s even push notifications during normal use with all kinds of random apps – we’ve even seen several gambling-focused game involved.

Even if you opted out of app installs during the setup, there are still some already occupying spots in the app drawer, and the search function also required you to agree to its usage statement, which includes another advertising vehicle in the form of trending Shopee products, games, and apps.

My advice: read very carefully during the setup process, and try to disable the ones related to advertising or suggestion features. Regarding App Market itself, you’ll have to agree to the app statement in order to turn off the notification functionality, despite them already coming uninvited right after the setup; while you can’t uninstall it, disabling it is still possible through Settings.

Camera

Note: Unless otherwise specified, all photos in this section are captured at 4096×3072 resolution, scaled down to half resolution (2048×1536) for this article.

Before we discuss the camera performance of the realme 14, let’s start by talking a little bit about the camera interface. Specifically, the zoom buttons on the right edge of the viewfinder shows the scale of 1x, 2x, and 5x – when you actually tap (or drag) on it, the camera actually can digitally zoom up to 10x. We think we know why realme specifically omits the 10x option from the camera UI, and it’s probably have to do with post-processing.

As you can see in both examples, up until 5x zoom, the photo quality remain mostly consistent if you ignore the sensor noise; at 10x zoom, the post-processing seemingly gets haywire to the point that the resulting image is highly overexposed or looks washed out. Generally speaking, the camera in normal zoom levels have the tendency to oversaturate colors to the point it’s a bit unnatural to look at.

In night environments, exposure control can be a hit or miss, and color is also not quite consistent as I’d like. We have the examples above: for exposures, an illuminated sign taking up most part of the viewfinder is simple enough for the post-processing to figure out HDR, though if it’s just a small part of the image, HDR may not work as intended. In the second set of images of the lion head, we can see the 1x zoom sample having less saturated colors, while the 2x sample looks oversaturated.

Above are some of the photos we’ve taken for general reference.

Gaming

realme is fairly established when it comes to gaming-focused smartphones, so the feature set is expectedly quite solid in general. The dedicated panel is accessed via swiping from the upper part of the left edge, where it reveals the current power mode, brightness controls, Spotify playback, and many switches down below (which can be further arranged and customized). Some of the apps can also be launched right here, although the interface of these apps can get scaled down quite a lot.

On the subject of performance profiles, GT mode is said to kick everything up a gear by using the most aggressive touch sampling rate and gives more performance at the cost of battery consumption. However, we didn’t observe any performance improvements in GT mode, based on what benchmarks say – but at least the improved polling rate should give you a small bit of competitive advantage.

The Good

While the realme 14 is for the most part a budget-focused smartphone, it’s got some solid features to go for. Having a 120Hz display with an optional mode to increase touch sampling rate is certainly going to entice mobile gamers on a budget, of which the software takes good care of the gaming experience with the feature set it offers. If you’re looking for gaming-centric smartphone without breaking the bank, the realme 14 does a decent job at that.

Another standout feature of gaming-adjacent smartphones comes in the form of visual design. If one prefers a smartphone with some visual character, the realme has that too, while staying relatively subtle overall. Perhaps the one feature that will be highly appreciated among such users is its battery life – nearly 17 hours from a single charge is very good even by flagship standards.

The Bad

Let’s start by saying that if you’re buying this smartphone, expect full bombardment of ads and suggestions throughout the operating system. The sheer amount of ads I have seen during the use of this smartphone nearly drove my insane; and that’s not even mentioning a bunch of random games already found into the app drawer, somehow. Seriously, spend some time debloat the phone wherever you can before you start importing your data from your old device – it’ll definitely go a long way.

On the camera side of things, while the lack of a telephoto can be somewhat excused in this price bracket, the absence of an ultrawide camera will limit the flexibility of this smartphone’s photo-taking capabilities. The photo quality themselves also tend to oversaturate, which I’m personally not a fan of. Also, a small complaint on the speakers – while volume is solid, the audio quality leaves a lot to be desired, especially since there is no EQ tuning baked into the system to at least give users some control over how it can sound like.

Verdict

At RM1,299, the realme 14 is quite affordable, but there are clearly some sacrifices made to push this smartphone into this price bracket. If you’re mainly using it to game on the cheap, it should serve you just fine – just make sure to take time debloating the software before you begin setting it up proper.

Special thanks to realme Malaysia for providing the realme 14 smartphone for this review.