Realme 14 Pro+ hands-on

Realme invited us to Denmark for a first hands-on experience with the new Realme 14 Pro+. This is more of a preview than a full announcement as key details about the Pro+ and its sibling, the Realme 14 Pro, remain under wraps.

The company will do a full reveal soon. For now, let’s talk about the exterior. It’s no coincidence that we’re here, Realme partnered with Copenhagen-based Valeur Designers for the exterior.

Together they came up with a color-changing look for the back, one that we hadn’t seen before. In the past, there have been phones that change color when lit by sunlight (the Realme 9 Pro+, for example). This one is different and reacts to cold temperatures instead – quite fitting for the season.

The back of the Realme 14 Pro+ normally looks pearl white, but when the thermometer dips to 16°C (61°F) or lower, vibrant blue swirls appear on the back. Once the phone warms up, they quickly change back to off-white. This is the first time that such a material has been used on a smartphone. Note that Realme considers this a “bonus feature” – this effect will fade over time as sunlight causes it to degrade. It is expected to last around 12 months under normal use.

Here is a demonstration. We used an ice bath to speed up the process and, no, the Realme isn’t afraid of water, hot or cold. However, you don’t need water to show off the effect to your friends, a chilly winter day will work just as well.

Pearl White isn’t just a name, by the way, Realme used actual seashell pearl powder for the back, mixed with microcapsules that contain special color-changing pigments. The powder mix is not homogeneous so each phone ends up with a unique pattern on its back panel.

The aquatic theme continues with an underwater photo mode. Since touchscreens don’t work well when submerged, you use the volume keys to snap a photo instead. The phone is rated IP68 for submersion and IP69 for hot water jets.

Unfortunately, we can’t talk about the camera just yet. Not in detail, anyway. We can say that the Realme 14 Pro+ will be the only one in the series with a periscope camera.

And have a closer look at the back – there are three LED flash modules arranged in a circle and spaced 120° apart. Realme calls this “MagicGlow” and is used for even illumination of night-time portraits. This creates more natural lighting for your subjects. When we turn the flash on, you can notice something else too – different color temperatures on the lights. This allows the camera to control the color temperature of the portraits it takes.

The 14 Pro+ will also be the only one in the series with a quad-curved display. The curves are only at the very edge of the display and make the already thin 1.6mm bezel look even thinner – the display looks almost bezel-less from all four sides. And it’s a great quality panel too, but details on it will have to wait for the full reveal.

The back has a matte finish, which together with its light color, makes fingerprints invisible. The frame has a golden hue to it, as does the frame around the camera island.

The Realme 14 Pro+ is powered by the new Snapdragon 7s Gen 3. Unlike the 7s Gen 2, this one is fabbed on a 4nm TSMC node (instead of a 4nm Samsung node) and uses the ARMv9 Cortex-A720 and A520 cores, plus a next-gen Adreno 810 GPU (vs. A78/A55 CPU cores and Adreno 710 on the older chip).

Official numbers from Qualcomm indicate that the 7s Gen 3 has a much faster GPU (+40%) compared to the 7s Gen 2, along with better CPU performance (+20%) and a boost for AI tasks (+30%). And it uses less power too – 12% overall, but the new CPU cores are a whopping 45% more efficient than the old ARMv8 cores.

Realme will launch the 14 Pro series soon – this includes the Realme 14 Pro+ that we looked at as well as a more affordable Realme 14 Pro model – so stay tuned for more news.