realme 15 Pro 5G Exemplifies the Highly Competitive Mid-Tier Smartphone Market (Outside the U.S.)
Summary
Outside the U.S., there are not just additional Chinese smartphone brands to choose from, but also a richer selection of non-premium phones. For example, realme’s 15 Pro 5G takes mid-tier Snapdragon silicon and adds more premium cameras, case finishes, and much bigger batteries than you would expect at the price.
Analysis
The U.S. smartphone market is huge, but due to carrier incentives, a relatively wealthy population, and Apple’s home country advantage, it is an outlier. Outside the U.S., there are not just additional Chinese smartphone brands to choose from, but also a richer selection of non-premium phones designed to appeal to people buying phones without carrier incentives. realme is a BBK brand that started by focusing on southeast Asia but is now a force in Europe as well, so I asked the company to send its latest 15 Pro 5G. I took it with me to IFA 2025 in Germany so I could actually use it as a phone (it has the wrong radios for most U.S. cellular networks, and gives you a warning that it might not make voice calls when you use it there).
This is a mid-tier phone with a mid-tier Ssnapdragon 7 Gen 4 SoC that costs around $330 in India, but it has some features that are found on much more expensive phones. Both the front selfie camera and two rear cameras are 50MP; the main camera is a Sony sensor with OIS that took better pictures than I expected for the price. Around front is a curved 6.8" 144Hz OLED display with up to 6500 nit peak brightness. I doubt it really measures that bright, but it certainly is visible in direct sunlight. Two other highlights are the battery and case finish. The realme 15 Pro 5G is a normal 7.7mm thin, but it houses a massive 7000mAh silicon carbon battery that supports 80W fast charging with the included charger. I was using multiple phones at IFA so I can't say for certain how long that enormous battery on an efficient Qualcomm processor can last, but it's going to be more than a single heavy day for certain. Finally, the rear panel is plastic, but the "flowing silver" colorway looks a bit like marble.
Of course there are compromises to hit the price point, including using a lower grade of Gorilla glass, but it is IP69 rated for high-pressure water jets. I wasn't that impressed with realme's AI features or the heavy-handed push for app downloads, but realme is hardly the only brand to try to get a cut of app revenue with an "App Market," "Hot Apps," and "Hot Games." The phone runs on Android 15, so you can just use Google's own tools for photo editing and Gemini for AI queries, which I did without a problem. realme is now promising to support the 15 Pro 5G for three Android generations and four years of security updates -- not the best in the industry overall, but still better than you might expect for the price.
Phones like the realme 15 Pro 5G won't be sold in the U.S. both for political and economic reasons -- the financing and incentive structure at U.S. retail hollows out the mid-tier. However, this is the type of high-spec product that Indian consumers have come to expect, and it puts pressure on Samsung and Apple as these products increasingly make their way first across Asia, then to Eastern Europe, and finally to Western European strongholds.
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