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Realme 5i Launching 6 January 2020; Likely Coming to Malaysia Soon
December 31, 2019 Andrew Cheng

Realme is set to introduce a new smartphone soon, and it’s expected to be a budget-friendly offering. The phone in question is the Realme 5i, and it is launching next week on 6 January 2020 in Vietnam.

This bit of news comes from a teaser posted on Realme Vietnam’s official Facebook page. While the post is light on detail, we do know Vietnam will be one of the first countries to receive the upcoming Realme 5i. In fact, Malaysia could be in the list too.

We were going through SIRIM’s database when we noticed a particularly interesting mobile device with the model number RMX2030. Turns out, this mysterious phone is the Realme 5i. Given that it’s already registered with SIRIM, there’s a very good chance Realme Malaysia is gearing up to launch the unannounced smartphone on our shores.

As far as specifications are concerned, however, not much is known about the Realme 5i; officially, that is. Ahead of the phone’s official debut next week, Vietnamese e-commerce site FPTShop has a listing of the device already. Naturally, several key specifications are detailed in the listing.

Not surprisingly, it appears the Realme 5i has rather similar hardware as the Realme 5. At least, that’s what FPTShop’s listing is suggesting here. It will supposedly come with a 6.52-inch 1600 x 720 display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 chipset, a very generous 5,000mAh battery, and a quad camera system.

Just like the Realme 5, the Realme 5i’s quad camera configuration is supposedly made up of a 12MP primary shooter, an 8MP ultra-wide angle lens, a 2MP depth sensor, and a 2MP macro camera. The selfie camera, however, isn’t the same: the 5i is said to feature an 8MP shooter instead of the Realme 5’s 13MP selfie camera.

Other specifications of the Realme 5i include 4GB of RAM, 64GB of internal storage, a microSD card slot, a microUSB port, a rear fingerprint sensor, and ColorOS 6.0.1 based on Android 9 Pie out of the box. All in all, it’s your average mid-range smartphone.

But the Realme 5i’s biggest selling point would be its asking price. Looking at FPTShop’s listing of the device, the 5i will supposedly retail for 4,290,000 Vietnamese dong, which comes up to about RM760. That’s a reasonably inexpensive price tag, but it may not reflect the pricing of the phone in Malaysia.

See, the Realme 5 is considered to be a higher-end offering compared to the Realme 5i, but the former costs only RM599 for the 64GB model with 3GB of RAM. The 128GB variant of the Realme 5 with 4GB of RAM, on the other hand, goes for RM799.

Chances are, the Realme 5i will cost less than the Realme 5 once it is launched in Malaysia, especially if its rumoured list of hardware are accurate. Nonetheless, we’ll find out exactly how much the upcoming phone will cost come 6 January 2020, where it will make its debut in Vietnam.

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