Realme is best known for its affordable yet well-specced smartphones and a rather maverick attitude when it comes to design. But today, we're not taking a look at a new smartphone, no. Today is all about Realme UI 3.0, the brand's latest operating system based on Android 12.
Design
As we said, Realme always puts great emphasis on design, and with Realme UI 3.0, it's more of the same.
The icons have been slightly tweaked to look more three dimensional, as compared to the previous version. Of course, they're still minimal and colourful, but they do look a little better than before.
Moreover, the user interface has been made to look more clutter-free, so buttons are larger and well-spaced, and the entire experience looks more fluid than it ever has. In fact, since Realme UI is based on ColorOS, it wouldn't be wrong to say that everything looks quite similar to what we recently saw on the Oppo Find X3 Pro, that was running ColorOS 12.
Also watch: Oppo ColorOS 12 Review: Top Features!
Now like ColorOS 12, you get plenty of new personalisation features, including what Realme calls the Smart Theming Engine, which lets you set the colours of your interface to whatever you like. You can even have them select colours from a Wallpaper, so that whenever you change it, the colours of the interface will change to match.
Apart from this, there's also the ultimate personalisation feature called Sketchpad AOD. It's been inspired by the Canvas AOD on OxygenOS 11, and lets you turn a picture of yourself into a custom wallpaper for the always-on-display.
There's also Floating Window 2.0, which allows you to turn apps into, well, floating windows for better multitasking. You can enable this from the Smart Sidebar, or you can swipe up from the bottom, and push the app into the upper part of the screen. This only works on supported apps though, and while the native Videos app and Netflix work fine for playing videos in the background, apps like YouTube do not support this feature yet.
Privacy
When it comes to privacy, Realme has really upped its game with this new operating system.
First up, there's the Privacy Dashboard that Android 12 brings, which lets you monitor each app's usage, and what permissions they've used and at what point. You can change these permissions on the fly, and use the dashboard to see if any app is using features on your phone that you'd rather it not use.
You can also disable the microphone and camera completely at any time you want, but it's worth noting that while ColorOS 12 has quick toggles in the swipe down menu for this feature, in Realme UI 3.0, you're going have to do this in the Settings app.
Apart from this, you can erase private information captured on an image when sharing it, so as to not reveal the location, time stamp and camera model, and you can choose to give apps either your precise or approximate location.
Optimisations
Realme has also worked to bring a better user experience with Realme UI 3.0 in the form of optimisation.
Realme claims there's less memory fragmentation, and more utilisation, while apps launch 13% quicker due to smarter resource allocation. Moreover, memory usage is down by a claimed 30%, and battery life has been improved by 12%.
Overall, the interface does run quite smoothly, even if that is partly down to the 12GB RAM and Snapdragon 888 chip on this Realme GT.
Realme UI 3.0 Early Access Rollout
For Indian users enrolled in the Early Access program, Realme UI 3.0 will be pushed to Realme GT 5G devices in October 2021. The Realme GT Master Edition, GT Neo2 5G, X7 Max and Realme 8 Pro, will receive the update in December 2021.
Other devices including the X7 Pro, Narzo 50A, Narzo 30, and more, will get the update in Q1 next year, while the X7, realme 8 5G, Narzo 30 Pro 5G and realme 8s will get Reame UI 3.0 in Q2 2022.
Verdict
All in all, Realme UI 3.0 feels more polished and productive than the previous iteration, and we're glad that the brand has integrated quite a few useful features from ColorOS 12. Android 12's privacy enhancements have also been integrated well, making it one of the nicest skins to use out there.
