Realme's new €500 phone has a 120Hz display and a periscope camera

Realme has made no secret of its focus on the Indian market, but in a surprise move, the X3 SuperZoom is coming to Europe first this year. The new flagship was announced today at a launch event in Spain. The BBK Electronics brand said that Europe has become one of its most important markets and that's the reason it has decided to make the Realme X3 SuperZoom the first global launch for the company.

The specs on this thing are ridiculous. The X3 SuperZoom will turn a few heads with both a Snapdragon 855+ and 60x zooming. Big zooms are in this year, with Samsung going as far as 100x on its Galaxy S20 Ultra. The 5x periscope telephoto lens gives the Realme X3 SuperZoom a focal length from 16 mm to 124 mm, for smooth zooming from 0.5x to 60x hybrid zoom. Aside from the periscope telephoto zooming, there's also a 64-megapixel camera (Samsung ISOCELL GW1) and an 8-megapixel 119° ultra-wide-angle lens on the back. There's also a 32-megapixel and 8-megapixel ultra-wide-angle dual selfie camera on the front.

Taking a note from Google with its Pixel 4 astrophotography feature, the Realme X3 SuperZoom features a new 'Starry Mode'. It will take more than 10 ultra-long exposure photos in the maximum time of 32 seconds and then multiply them with a multi-frame synthesis algorithm. The brand says it can reproduce every detail of starry night by means of HDR and multi-frame noise reduction. We'll have to see for ourselves how well that works.

For performance, the Snapdragon 855+ is supported by an eight-core Kyro CPU and Adreno 640 GPU, clocked at 2.96 GHz. The base model has 12GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage. The X3 SuperZoom also features UFS 3.0+Turbo Write+HPB, NFC, and 30W Dart Flash Charge.

Realme is calling this a 120Hz display, but the 6.6-inch screen supports a 90Hz refresh rate and 120Hz sampling rate. The resolution is 2400 x 1080 FHD+. For software, you get Android 10 and Realme UI.

There's a lot to like about this smartphone, and for €499 you really can't complain about the hardware you are getting for the money. The X3 Super Zoom has the potential to be a real flagship killer this year, and could be a strong competitor to the Poco F2 Pro. Ours has just landed in our editorial office and we'll be back with a full review for you shortly.

New #realmeX3SuperZoom!

An unbeatable set of camera and specs.
- 64MP Quad Camera with 60X Super Zoom
- 32MP Dual Selfie Camera
- 120Hz Ultra Smooth Display
- Snapdragon 855+

Already in pre-sale for €499 the 12GB RAM + 256GB ROM version. 06/02 at https://t.co/nTmwFmkltk. pic.twitter.com/PK6EsbUU9Y

— realme Europe (@realmeeurope) May 26, 2020