Realme 16 Pro+ Review

The realme 16 series is finally here, and it’s arguably one of our most highly anticipated launches this year.

That’s because the realme 16 series has undergone a major redesign inside and out. The phone features a radical new design along with a new set of cameras.

For this review, we’re looking at the realme 16 Pro+. The Plus variant was strangely missing from the lineup last year, but now it’s back.

So, how does it perform? Let’s find out in this review.

Design and Construction

The most obvious change realme made to the realme 16 Pro and Pro+ variant is the design. The back panel has been overhauled with a completely new camera island design, helping it stand out from the rest of the smartphones in the segment.

The square camera island features a small black slit at the top housing two of the three cameras. Below the slit we find the third camera island along with the LED flash.

We’re sure everyone will have their own opinion regarding the redesigned camera island of the realme 16 Pro+. But in our eyes, it looks great. Again, it helps distinguish the phone from others on the market. At the end of the day, style is subjective after all.

Our review unit is in the Master Gold color, which is the only color available. I find it a bit loud for my liking.

Though not as obvious, it is wrapped in a leather-like material. It feels nice to the touch, and paired with the metal frame, gives the phone a premium feel. Not to mention it’s quite smudge resistant.

The phone itself is a bit on the larger scale, but the volume rocker and power button on the right side are positioned ergonomically. With that, even users with small hands won’t have a hard time using the realme 16 Pro+ with one hand.

At the bottom, we’ll find the USB-C port, one of the loudspeakers, and the dual-sim card slot. Meanwhile, at the top, there’s the secondary microphone and the infrared port. It’s slim too, measuring just 8.09mm, making it easy to fit in your pocket.

Despite the leather-like back panel, the realme 16 Pro+ is still well protected from the elements. It features IP66, IP68, IP69 and IP69K ratings for dust and water resistance.

With that, there’s no problem using it in all kinds of weather conditions. We could even submerge it and it will still work fine. Just not in salt water though.

Display, Multimedia, Biometrics

Moving on to the display, the realme 16 Pro+ features a 6.8-inch AMOLED screen with a Full HD+ resolution, a 144Hz refresh rate, 6500 nits peak brightness, and HDR10+ support.

Sounds familiar? Well, that’s because it seems to be the same display found on the realme 15 Pro.

Then again, we’re not complaining about realme carrying over the display from before. It still looks amazing on the realme 16 Pro+, and we enjoyed watching our favorite shows on this phone.

It features nice thin borders all around with amazing colors and great contrast. Since it’s an AMOLED, we also have great viewing angles too. With that, watching with friends won’t be a problem.

With the 144Hz refresh rate users can enjoy its smooth animations as well. But it’s the gamers who will benefit the most by playing on this phone, which we’ll get into later.

For audio, the realme 16 Pro+ comes with dual-stereo speakers. No brand tuning or Dolby Atmos here, but they are decent out of the box. It lacks bass, but the balance between the mids and highs are okay. Nothing too amazing in particular. The more important bit is that they are loud.

As for biometrics, users can choose between an under-display fingerprint sensor or face unlock. Both work fast and are accurate. Out of convenience, though, we chose to use the fingerprint scanner most of the time.

Cameras

Perhaps the biggest upgrade on the realme 16 Pro+ are the cameras.

As mentioned earlier, the phone now features a triple camera system featuring a 50MP periscope-telephoto with PDAF and OIS, along with an 8MP ultrawide. For selfies, there’s a 50MP front camera.

The highlight of the cameras is the new 200MP main shooter with 2-axis OIS. Considering how capable the main camera is, we had high expectations for the images and videos captured by the realme 16 Pro+, and unsurprisingly, it delivered.

The images came out amazing from the get go. For reference, most of the images captured using this phone were left as is. The phone did a great job post-processing the photos to give it decent contrast and a moody vibe.

It’s not overly edited or saturated either. Best of all, the image quality remains almost unchanged when switching from 1x and 2x zoom to up to 5x and even 8x. That means consistent image quality all the time. Well, except for the ultrawide.

It’s very obvious when we use the ultrawide camera as compared to the telephoto or the main camera. Even in the same lighting conditions, the difference is night and day, and it’s arguably the weak point of the cameras on this phone.

Despite the realme 16 Pro+ having a periscope-telephoto, there are limitations to its use. If we go beyond 10x zoom, the quality starts to drop. Then again, that’s to be expected with all cameras.

For video, the realme 16 Pro+ records up to 4K@60FPS for both the front and rear cameras. What’s great is that there’s stabilization even in its maximum resolution, which is not common on smartphones of this level.

As for the quality, it’s very much the same as what we saw in the images. There’s great contrast and colors. But what I enjoyed the most is the stabilization. Even with somewhat shaky hands, the video is stable.

Just check out the gallery below, and see what we mean.

realme 16 Pro+ Photos

Jan 1 – Mar 28

Performance and Benchmarks

Under the metal, the realme 16 Pro+ packs a Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 chipset. Our review unit comes with 12GB RAM and 512GB of UFS 3.1 storage. For reference, this is the only variant available for the Philippine market.

Similar to the display, the chipset is also a carry-over from the realme 15 Pro. While the Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 chipset is still a very capable chipset, we were expecting something more capable under the hood.

It’s still more than capable of running all our everyday tasks – from watching videos to surfing the net and social media. We left multiple applications running in the background, and there was no issue. We were able to easily switch between different applications, quickly getting back to where we left off.

In terms of gaming, the realme 16 Pro+ is still a great phone to play on. Together with the high refresh rate display, the phone can run light games like CoD:Mobile on max graphics without any issues.

On more graphic intensive titles like Genshin Impact, the phone ran the game smoothly with some of the settings set to high.

There were no framerate drops even when going up against a lot of enemies. Loading times were decent, and it was a nice phone to explore the world with.

What I did notice is that the phone has a tendency to heat up when playing games. It’s not that hot enough for users to be concerned, but it is quite noticeable. Thankfully, it didn’t affect gameplay in any way.

As for the benchmarks, you can check them out below.

OS, Apps, and UI

While the chipset of the realme 16 Pro+ remains unchanged, what is new is the UI. It now runs on realme UI 7.0 based on Android 16. Similar to most Android 16 phones, it now features the frosted glass look. Whether you like that look or not, well that’s up to you.

We like how realme UI 7.0 looks, but we can’t help but notice it looks very similar to iOS 26, especially the home screen and the control center when we swipe down. But the animations look great with a much smoother feel.

Of course, the usual AI features like Google Gemini and Circle to Search are present as ever including the usual AI Editor.

But what we’re excited about are the AI features used to help the user take even better photos. Some of these include AI LightMe, which changes the lighting of your photo and AI Framing Master, which helps improve image composition.

There is still a bit of bloatware, but they can easily be deleted.

Battery and Connectivity

Powering the realme 16 Pro+ is a 7,000mAh Si/C lithium-ion battery. It’s a big battery that isn’t too obvious in size, and it lasts quite a long time.

For daily use, it’s more than enough to last an entire day. Even when we used the phone for benchmarking and taking photos, we still had some juice left.

The battery benchmark showed the same results too. Using PCMark’s Work 3.0 Battery Test, it lasted 19 hours and 17 minutes. For reference, the test was done in airplane mode, zero volume, and 50% brightness.

With that, we did not need to worry about bringing a power bank or a charger with us when we went out. When we need to charge, the phone features fast 80W charging speeds.

According to realme, it can juice the large battery from 0 to 50% in just 30 minutes. Unfortunately, no wireless charging here, but that’s fine.

As for connectivity, the realme 16 Pro+ features Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, GPS, and infrared for using it as a remote for appliances.

Conclusion

Overall, the realme 16 Pro+ is a pretty great phone to use for almost anybody. We definitely enjoyed the new cameras and the long lasting battery. The phone is sturdy too, so no need to worry about dropping it or using it in various weather conditions.

The chipset could have been upgraded to a newer model, but it’s still quite capable even to this day. And the 144Hz refresh rate display is still more than capable for playing games too.

As for the price, the realme 16 Pro+ retails for PHP 43,999 for the lone 12+512GB variant.

One thing’s for certain, those who love taking photos will enjoy using this midrange phone.

But so far what do you think of the realme 16 Pro+? Would you cop or choose something else? Whatever the case, share your thoughts in the comments below.

What we liked:

• Amazing camera
• Nice design
• Long lasting battery

What we didn’t like:

• Relatively old chipset
• Ultrawide camera needs an upgrade

realme 16 Pro+ specs:
6.8-inch AMOLED display, FHD+ (1280 × 2800), 144Hz refresh rate
10-bit color, HDR10+, up to 6500 nits peak brightness
Corning Gorilla Glass 7i
Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 4
Adreno 722 GPU
8GB / 12GB LPDDR5X RAM
128GB / 256GB UFS 3.1 storage
200MP main camera (f/1.8, OIS)
50MP telephoto camera (OIS)
8MP ultra-wide camera
50MP front camera
In-display fingerprint scanner (optical)
Android 16 with realme UI 7.0
5G, 4G LTE
Wi-Fi 6
Bluetooth 5.4
GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, BDS
USB Type-C
Stereo speakers
7000mAh battery
80W fast charging
IP69 dust and water resistance
Weight: 203 g
Dimensions: 162.5 x 76.3 x 8.1 mm
Color options: Master Gold