You may have heard about the 11-year-old Umar Al-Khattab who went viral after it was revealed that he became a Shopee seller so that he could purchase a smartphone to continue his online education. One of Umar’s customers initially thought he was being scammed after receiving an LED light in the wrong size, but soon found out that the mistake was made because Umar was still getting the hang of things in terms of running an online business.

Umar’s story caught the attention of Realme Malaysia, and they decided to give him a Realme 8 Pro smartphone worth RM1,299 for him to attend his online classes with ease. Umar’s father, Shamsul Bahrim thanked Realme for the new smartphone, and also explained that Umar started his eCommerce endeavour because he taught his son the importance of earning on your own to get what you want.

The Realme 8 Pro is powered by a Snapdragon 720G SoC, and also features a 6.4-inch Full HD+ Super AMOLED display. It offers 8GB RAM and 128GB expandable storage alongside a 4,500mAh battery that supports 50W fast charging via USB-C.

The Realme 8 Pro has a quad-camera system that consists of a 108MP main camera that uses Samsung’s HM2 sensor, an 8MP ultra-wide-angle lens, a 2MP macro camera and a 2MP B&W sensor. Meanwhile, its selfie camera gets a 16MP lens.

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the closure of all educational institutions, and schoolkids were required to continue their classes through Malaysia’s home-based PdPR programme. To resume their online classes, students would require a smartphone, laptop or tablet. This has been a challenge for households with device shortages such as in Umar’s case, as he missed a few classes as his parents had to prioritise his older siblings’ lessons.

Under the Jaringan Prihatin initiative, free smartphones, device subsidies and affordable data plans are made available to students to help them have better accessibility when learning online. Unfortunately, there was an incident where a Yes Altitude 3 smartphone caught fire while a student was using it. Shortly after the incident, Xiaomi stepped in to sponsor the student with a Redmi Note 10 5G.

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