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I don’t remember the last time (or, if ever) I reviewed a peerlessly purple smartphone. This one’s a flagship, the Realme 14 Pro+. With mid-range flagships, Realme has had much success with its feature-packed smartphones. With a bold design and a few unexpected tricks up its sleeve, this device isn’t just another mid-range contender — it demands a second look. Let’s dive in.
Realme continues its push in the mid-range segment with the 14 Pro+, a smartphone that blends eye-catching design with practical innovations. From a Bikaner Purple finish to a Pearl White variant that changes colour with ice, the phone makes a strong first impression. With a few software quirks to iron out, does it deliver a well-rounded experience? We take a closer look.
Design
Here’s a colour I bet you haven’t seen on a smartphone, ever! The realme 14 Pro+ has an India-exclusive Bikaner Purple variant, and let me tell you it doesn’t get more purple than this! There’s Suede Grey and Pearl White too, with the latter incorporating a cool party trick. Rub a cube of ice on it and it changes to shades of blue instead of white!
The smartphone is fairly light at 194 grams and sports a massive 6.83-inch AMOLED display. The display has an optical under-display fingerprint sensor, which is quite snappy.
Camera
The primary camera on the Realme 14 Pro+ features a 50 MP main lens, a 50 MP telephoto lens, and an 8 MP ultrawide lens. In daylight photography, colours really pop onscreen! Photographs taken even while on the move turn out to be sharp. With faraway subjects, 3x zoom delivers some decent results but the 6x option results in some grainy, low-on-detail shots. The 8 MP ultrawide too delivers decent contrast and colours while capturing landscapes.
There’s a new ‘MagicGlow Triple Flash’ system on board to compensate for less-than-ideal lighting conditions. In the beginning, it sounded like something I might not want to tweak or use often but I was pleasantly surprised. With a slider to tweak the temperature and brightness of the flash, I got some lovely portraits with a warmer flash tone. It really lights up the subject evenly and not in a harsh way that so many smartphone cameras still do.
There’s also a dedicated underwater shooting mode which you can use to snap something that’s less than 1.5 metres in water. You just need to activate the mode beforehand. The 32 MP selfie camera delivers some decent selfies but smoothes out texture just a little bit, even without filters. The AI Eraser still seems like a work in progress. I had trouble erasing the tail-end of a bike that I didn’t want in my frame. There’s also AI Ultra Clarity 2.0 which sharpens blurred images quite well.
Tech Specs
The Realme 14 Pro+ runs on the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chipset, and the unit I reviewed offers 8 GB RAM and 256 GB storage. There’s an additional 10 GB RAM expansion that can be utilised as and when needed. While overall usage was smooth, there were occasions when the screen would stutter just a bit while switching between apps or not close exactly when I swiped the window away.
The realme 14 Pro+ packs in a 6,000mAh battery which delivers excellent usage time. On a full charge, over a day of taking photos, watching videos and playing casual games, the smartphone still had about 40 per cent charge left at the end of the day.
The smartphone runs on realme UI 6 (based on Android 15), which brings in AI Sketch to Image, AI Recording Summary and AI Writer. There’s also the unique AI Smart Loop which kicks in when I screenshot or copy text and drag it towards the smart sidebar. It automatically suggests apps that I might use immediately after taking these actions.
In terms of upgrades, the brand has promised two major OS upgrades and three years of security updates.
Verdict
Realme has had a history of hitting it out of the park with mid-range smartphones. Would I say the same of the Realme 14 Pro+? Well, it does pack in a bright display, great battery life and a decent camera setup with a truly unique and functional flash system you will want to use. As long as the occasional lags and stutters can be fixed with a software update, the realme 14 Pro+ makes for a great smartphone package at a decent price range for what it offers.
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