The firm, a sub-brand of BBK Electronics, the massive Chinese conglomerate that also runs Oppo and OnePlus, has been a rising success story in the West since Huawei became a casualty of the US trade war. Since Huawei’s devices were effectively banned from including the Google Play Store, sales have slumped dramatically, while Realme became the fastest growing brand in 2020.
While Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips used to dominate both low-end and high-end devices in the west, Realme has been using a Mediatek chip in many of its cheaper devices, especially since the squeeze on global chip supplies since the start of the pandemic.
Image credit: Jack Loughran
In the west, Mediatek chips have long been used exclusively in lower-end devices and featured lacklustre performance and power efficiency...