From afar, the Realme C35’s bright Glowing Green hue might catch your eye – that is, unless you’re looking at the black version of the handset instead.
Up close this is a more standard-looking phone, with a USB-C port and 3.5mm headphone jack along the bottom, volume rocker on the left edge, power button with embedded fingerprint scanner along the right edge, and a rectangular camera bump sticking out from its plastic back.
The fingerprint scanner was a little temperamental to use; but we registered the same finger twice, which was a hack that got it to work.
In the hand, the phone proves a little annoying. Its generous size and flat edges create quite an angular device, which isn’t particularly comfortable to hold in the hand. As such, we’d recommend picking up a case.
Realme C35 display
6.6-inch FHD LCD screen
We were surprised by the C35’s FHD (1080 x 2400) screen resolution, since lots of budget phones opt for HD. It means you can use streaming services or play games at their usual resolution. Measuring 6.6 inches across the panel feels fairly big, with the surface area interrupted up by a small notch.
The resolution is impressive, but less so is the LCD tech and max brightness of just 600 nits. Admittedly, these are features of the price tier, but they do mean colors are less vibrant and the screen is a little dimmer than we’d like.
On occasion – not often, but sometimes – we experienced issues viewing the screen in brighter settings.
Realme C35 cameras
50MP main camera is good for colorful and bright snaps
Macro and depth sensor but no ultrawide or telephoto
Selfie camera is fit for purpose
A highlight of the Realme C35 is its main camera. This 50-megapixel f/1.8 unit uses the Sony IMX766 sensor present in quite a few phones, and it’s surprisingly competent.
It’s great for taking in light, which has two benefits: it picks up color well, and also captures more detail in low-light and night settings. Sure, you might not be taking iPhone-level night shots with the Realme, but we found the results surprisingly impressive for a phone at this price.
Thanks to this sensor, the Realme C35 is one of the best budget camera phones around – but it’s “one of” instead of “the” of two little issues.
Firstly, the other cameras are lacking. There’s a 2-megapixel f/2.4 macro and 0.3-megapixel f/2.8 depth sensor, but neither adds much to the equation. We’d have liked to see an ultra-wide camera to deliver some versatility.
Secondly, the lack of HDR – or anything even resembling it in the AI department – makes similar colors look indistinguishable in certain shots.
If you head into the camera app’s list of modes, you’ll find a fairly well-rounded selection including Night, Pro and Panorama. However, there are one or two notable absences. There’s no document-scanning mode, and you can’t actually take Portrait shots with the front-facing camera.
The selfie snapper itself is an 8-megapixel f/2.0 camera, and it’s totally fit for purpose, taking photos that are bright and clear. But don’t expect generous levels of detail or nuanced color reproduction – or a Portrait mode, as we’ve already mentioned.
One odd quirk – or possibly feature – of the camera app is that pictures looked far better once captured than they did in the camera preview. While we’re used to a degree of discrepancy, with the Realme C35 the difference was pronounced. At least the results were better, rather than worse.
Video recording goes up to 1080p at 30fps, which is fit for purpose any footage captured for social media.
Realme C35 performance
The ‘brains’ of the Realme C35’s operation is a Unisoc Tiger T616 chipset. If you know much about mobile tech, the name Unisoc will likely evoke thoughts of sluggish and stuttering phones; but we didn’t find the C35 to be too bad.
The handset was fairly quick to navigate, both for simple tasks such as scrolling between menus and when using social media apps and checking emails. Sure, that’s “budget phone quick”, as opposed to “premium phone quick” – but in our tests, the Realme neither crashed nor felt too slow to use.
This isn’t a phone for gamers, however. Top-end games will struggle to run on this phone, so don’t expect to boot up PUBG Mobile, ramp up the graphics to Ultra mode and expect to have a good time. If your gaming habits mainly involve Angry Birds, Candy Crush and Pokémon Go, though, you’ll be fine.
The phone comes with 4GB of RAM and either 64GB or 128GB of storage; if you want your phone to see you through some time with quite a few apps installed, we’d recommend opting for the latter. The C35 is only a 4G phone, but at this price that shouldn’t be a surprise.
Realme C35 software
Android 11 base
Realme UI laid over the top
Update schedule is unknown
The Realme C35 runs Android 11, with Realme UI laid over the top. This is mainly a design change, since many Chinese brands like to use their own forks of the popular open-source software. In the case of Realme UI, however, the menus actually look very similar to stock Android.
The result is a clean-looking menu layout, whether you’re on the main menu, app drawer or swipe-down-from-top Quick Settings list. Plus, there’s actually less bloatware (or pre-installed apps) than we normally see.
Note that Android 11 isn’t the newest version as of the Realme C35’s release – most phone brands are a little sporadic at updating their budget mobiles – so we’ll have to wait and see if Realme continues to support the device.
Realme C35
Realme C35 battery life
5,000mAh battery
Lasts for a day easily, and sometimes for two
18W charging is fairly slow
The Realme C35 comes with a big 5000mAh battery. As such, the combination of LCD 60Hz screen and the lack of 5G connectivity resulted in the C35 being one of the longest-lasting smartphones we’ve tested recently.
The phone easily waltzed through a day of use, and generally made it well into the second day, too. That included lots of social media, photography and the occasional extra app download.