Realme P3 Lite Review: Durable and Battery-Powered

The new device protects user data with a side fingerprint sensor and a face scanner. Both are fast and accurate.

Overall, the realme P3 Lite is an interesting smartphone. It’s attractive, resistant to fingerprints, durable, and, above all, comfortable to hold. It weighs 196 grams and measures 165.8 x 75.9 x 7.79 mm. Considering its capacious battery, the model is compact. That’s a nice touch.

Display

Being a budget device, the realme P3 Lite features a compromised, but still decent, display. It’s built on a 6.67-inch IPS panel with an HD resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate. It also boasts a 1500:1 contrast ratio, 83% NTSC color gamut, 240Hz touch sampling rate, and 725 nits peak brightness. It’s also compatible with wet hands.

All of the above means the screen delivers smooth images with wide viewing angles and decent color reproduction. It also offers high responsiveness and good brightness. On a sunny summer day, you’ll still have to squint to see the image, but both indoors and outdoors on cloudy days, it’s perfectly legible. The only niggle is the low resolution, though pixels are visible if you look for them. If you don’t, the detail is quite adequate.

Display settings allow you to select a dark or light theme, activate automatic brightness adjustment, and enable eye protection mode. You can also enable video color enhancement, change the color mode, and change the refresh rate (Auto, Standard 60Hz, High 120Hz).

All of this is complemented by decent personalization options, including customization of the Pulse Light and AoD mode. The latter is a limited feature, meaning the screensaver fades after 5 seconds, but lights up again when you pick up the phone or touch the display.

Performance and OS

The realme P3 Lite is equipped with an octa-core Unisoc T7250 processor , an upgrade from the Unisoc T615. Built using a 12 nm process, it features two Cortex A75 cores clocked at 1.8 GHz and six Cortex A55 cores clocked at 1.6 GHz. The graphics are Mali-G57 MP1 with a frequency of up to 850 MHz.

Memory is available in two configurations: 4GB/128GB or 8GB/256GB. Storage and RAM performance are modest. On the plus side, the RAM supports virtual expansion up to 24GB, depending on the initial version, and storage can be expanded via a microSD card, for which the new model has a dedicated slot.

With this hardware, our hero scores 385,000 points in AnTuTu. This isn’t a high score, but it’s still sufficient for simple everyday tasks. The model operates quite smoothly, but occasionally hesitates for a few seconds. Considering the price of less than 10,000 rubles, the smartphone performs well in terms of performance.

The gaming capabilities are expectedly modest, so you’ll only be able to run simple titles like match-three, but the device doesn’t heat up at all.

The realme P3 Lite runs Android 15 with the proprietary realme UI skin. I covered it in my realme P3 Ultra review , so I won’t repeat it here.

On the positive side, I’d like to highlight frequent updates, a wealth of useful settings, support for Circle to Search and Google Gemini (access blocked in Russia ), and AI photo processing features. These include portrait enhancement and object removal.

The downside of the shell is the large number of unnecessary notifications (I recommend blocking them immediately) and a lot of pre-installed software from third-party developers.

Communication capabilities

The set of wireless modules is as follows:

• 4G for both SIM cards;
• Wi-Fi 5 with support for 2.4 and 5 GHz bands;
• Bluetooth 5.2 with SBC, AAC, AptX and AptX HD codecs;
• 360 degree NFC;
• GPS, Beidou, GLONASS, Galileo + magnetic sensor for direction display.

The modules operate flawlessly. Everything is stable, fast, and accurate.

The calling app boasts call recording, but notifies both parties beforehand. It also features blacklists and whitelists, unknown number recognition, VoLTE, and Wi-Fi calling.

The new model has a single microphone, but thanks to noise cancellation, it performs excellently in noisy environments. The earpiece sounds clear and loud, so you can always hear your conversation partner. The vibration motor is weak but noisy, so it still serves its purpose.

A single multimedia speaker handles audio playback. Its quality is quite good, so you can watch movies or listen to music even without headphones . Headphones, as a reminder, can be connected via the standard audio jack, but Bluetooth is better, as it supports high-resolution codecs. It’s also worth noting that the speaker supports the “400% Volume” feature, which increases the volume fourfold. While this feature works, it significantly degrades the sound quality, so it’s best to avoid it. The model also supports OReality sound optimization technology , allowing you to select optimal settings for different types of content. Specifically, the presets include “Dynamic” (automatic parameter selection), “Music,” “Movies,” and “Game.”

Camera

realme P3 Lite is equipped with two cameras: the main one with a resolution of 50 MP and the front one with a resolution of 5 MP.

The photo quality from the main camera is commensurate with the smartphone’s price. On its display, photos in good light look quite good, but when viewed on the larger screen, the lack of detail and modest dynamic range are noticeable. Night shots are even simpler: smart algorithms try to enhance the image, but noise still takes its toll. Overall, these are typical results for a budget phone, so don’t expect miracles. The front camera, due to its low resolution, takes mediocre photos, but blurs the background quite well.

The main camera can record video in FHD at 30 fps, while the front camera can record in HD at 30 fps. There’s no stabilization in either mode. The results, again, are modest.

The Camera app is standard for realme smartphones. I won’t describe it here; all the necessary information is in the screenshots above.

Autonomy

The realme P3 Lite has a 6300 mAh battery, which, given its modest processor and low display resolution, ensures long battery life.

In the PCMark test with adaptive refresh rate, manual display brightness set to maximum, and a constant Wi-Fi connection, the new model achieved 13 hours and 20 minutes of battery life. In real-world use, this figure equates to approximately two workdays, meaning you’ll be charging the phone every other day.

The charger in this case is 15W. A full charge takes about 2.5 hours. That’s quite long, but considering the price, fast charging isn’t worth it. However, the manufacturer has added 6W reverse charging, meaning the realme P3 Lite can be used as a power bank .

Conclusion

The realme P3 Lite is priced at 8,000 rubles for the 4GB/128GB version and 10,000 rubles for the 8GB/256GB version. By today’s standards, this places it in the ultra-budget category, so some compromises will still be necessary. However, even with these compromises, the device remains worthy of consideration, for the following reasons:

• beautiful design, good assembly and reinforced body structure;
• a large display with decent color rendering, a high refresh rate, a good level of brightness, and the ability to operate it with wet hands;
• sufficient performance for work and a large amount of memory for this price (subject to choosing the 8/256 GB version);
• availability of all necessary wireless modules;
• Bluetooth with support for high-resolution codecs;
• noise-canceling microphone and clear speaker sound;
• a comfortable OS with AI support and many useful features;
• good quality of photos during the daytime;
• long battery life;
• support reverse charging;
• the presence of a 3.5 audio output and a separate slot for a microSD memory card.

Those same compromises I mentioned earlier include a low display resolution, slow memory speed, no stereo sound, a modest front-facing camera, poor video quality, and long battery life.

The shortcomings may be disappointing, of course, but they’re typical of budget devices. Moreover, if you realistically evaluate the capabilities of a smartphone under 10,000 rubles, our hero offers more than many competitors, and overall, it feels like an inexpensive, yet high-quality device that won’t let you down.

I like the new device. I think it’s worth every ruble. Therefore, the realme P3 Lite can be safely considered as a phone for children or the elderly, a work assistant, or if you need a simple and reliable gadget for basic everyday tasks like calls, messaging, reading books or news, and watching movies .