Realme Malaysia teases new Snapdragon 680-powered device, could this be the best phone under RM1,000?

Realme has begun the new year by teasing their first smartphone of 2022. There’s still no details on what make and model it’ll be, but they have revealed that it’ll be powered by the recently-launched Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 system-on-chip, and would be priced somewhere around the RM1,000 mark.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 was revealed back in October of last year, and came out alongside the Snapdragon 778G+, Snapdragon 695 and Snapdragon 480+. Curiously, it was the only one of the bunch to remain as a 4G-only processor, meaning that Realme’s upcoming smartphone will likely not have 5G support, but should still be solidly in the mid-range segment. One major selling point of the Snapdragon 680 is that it’s fabbed on the 6nm process node, the same as its more powerful but more expensive 5G-capable siblings such as the Snapdragon 778G+.

Specs-wise, the Snapdragon 680 uses Kyro 265 CPU cores, which is likely a tweaked version of the old Kyro 260 last seen on the 11nm Snapdragon 662. It uses the Adreno 610 GPU as well as a Hexagon 686 digital signal processor. Realme’s upcoming device will also find itself capped to a maximum refresh rate of 90Hz, as that’s the best the Snapdragon 680 has to offer. It’s a little better in the camera department though, as the Snapdragon 680 uses the Spectra 346, a triple ISP that allows for simultaneous triple camera shooting and up to 64MP photos.

While there’s no word just yet on what this smartphone could be, we can still take an educated guess. Realme Vietnam seems to have jumped the gun, posting on their Facebook page a teaser for the upcoming Realme 9i. It shows just part of the back of the phone though, obscuring the camera bump on the Realme 9i. There’s previously been leaks of the Realme 9i all the way back in December that had claimed the inclusion of the Snapdragon 680 too.

Some of you may be perplexed by the lack of 5G support, but by cutting out the 5G modem, devices with the Snapdragon 680 may come with lower price tags while still being reasonably powerful. So far, no one has yet launched a Snapdragon 680-powered smartphone in Malaysia, but by the looks of things Realme could be the first to do so very soon.