The narzo 50i Prime shows how much time has passed. This smartphone is less than 4K on the market and yet it punches hard in the smartphone arena. It’s a testament to how far we’ve come in developing newer technologies.

I’ve been using the narzo 50i Prime for a couple of weeks already and this phone, for me, has provided a satisfying experience. Because it’s under 5K (under 4K actually), the narzo 50i Prime can be thought of as: A phone you could buy for your elders or an emergency phone when your current one suddenly stopped working. But from my experience, the 50i Prime is more than that. 

For starters, the rear 8MP camera is actually quite capable of taking decent pictures. Sure, you certainly won’t get images that can make you question the persistent experience of DSLRs and other mid to professional photography tools, but the narzo 50i Prime will produce results that you will be fine sharing to the digital world. It supports HDR, so you will still be getting some good colors in your pictures. And as far as videos go, I felt the phone does a pretty decent job. There’s also, at least for me, a striking beauty in the 50i Prime’s single rear camera. We’ve become so used to seeing three or more lenses out there, seeing a smartphone with one camera at the back kind of feels nostalgic. 

I downloaded my usual games for mobile and was happy for the most part. With Call of Duty and Mobile Legends, the narzo 50i Prime ran smoothly and without any fuss. Apex Legends was satisfactory and enjoyable. However, give the narzo 50i Prime much bigger games, like Genshin Impact, the smartphone begins to cough and sputter. And I think that’s to be expected. Genshin is a pretty heavy game. But overall, gaming with some of the usual mobile games have been a blast so far.

The narzo 50i Prime is powered by a Unisoc Tiger 612 chip. It boasts a slightly improved performance over mid-range phones from a few years back. The unit I’m reviewing has 3 gigs of RAM and 32 gigs of internal storage, which you can expand up to 1TB via SD card. The 5000mAh lasted throughout the day even with heavy playing games and browsing through YouTube. 

The 6.5-inch screen features a resolution of 720 x 1600, which is for me, nothing to complain about. It is under 4K, after all. And even though 720p is a little dated, the experience was never ruined.

My only real issue here is that the narzo 50i Prime still uses a microUSB for charging. A type C USB would have allowed faster charging and faster file transfers. But again, I suppose that isn’t a big deal. 

The 50i Prime is one of the first moves for narzo to step out of realme’s shadow and become its own brand here in the country. narzo is a name that you should not sleep on and it’s exciting to look forward to what they hold for us in the future.