All Realme phones, including Realme 1, will have the same software: Realme CEO Madhav Sheth

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Realme was seen as a lowkey debutant in India when it launched its first device back in May 2018. Their first smartphone, which was officially called the OPPO Realme 1, made ripples in the already saturated Indian budget smartphone segment with its high value for money. Selling 400,000 units of the Realme 1 in just 40 days gave Realme the confidence to spin off as a separate entity. Now, with more than ten devices and five different series already in the market, CEO Mr. Madhav Sheth announced that the company has been serving 10 million active customers and aims to raise that figure to 15 million by the end of this year. To helps these objectives, they have been working on two major advancements – the 64MP camera smartphone to be called the Realme XT and its own custom Android skin, RealmeOS.

Currently, Realme’s smartphones run ColorOS, which is OPPO’s custom UI for its devices. While the company has brought some minor changes to the interface in order to match the expectations of its young customers, that hasn’t quite filled the requirement for a cleaner and snappier user experience that Realme’s young consumers demand. In order to fulfill these expectations, they are now building RealmeOS, which will be exclusive to Realme devices.

Changes available in ColorOS 6 exclusive to Realme devices

On the sidelines of the Realme 5 series launch in New Delhi, India, we spoke with Mr. Madhav Sheth to learn more about the company’s aspiration with the new interface. According to Mr. Sheth, RealmeOS is still at its conception phase and there’s only limited information that he could share with us about the project.

Realme’s portfolio is diverse and Mr. Sheth tells me Realme believes, “you cannot have [the] entire TG [target group], which is the Millenials, classified into a single device under [Rs] 20k; every user has got a different expectation from the device.”

However, where all of these expectations align is in terms of the software experience. Realme has been striving to bring ColorOS 6 to all of their devices and all of the older devices launched with ColorOS 5 have already received the intended update. ColorOS 6 is already available on the Realme 1/U1/2 Pro while ColorOS 6 beta has been made available for the Realme 2/C1.Mr. Sheth told us that the same will be the philosophy for all Realme smartphone.

Talking about RealmeOS – although with a cautionary “if”, the CEO said, “if we have any sort of OS, all the devices will have the same thing. All the devices from [Realme] 1 to the last one we [will] have launched. That is very clear.”

The company also introduced some new software features with the Realme 5 Pro, including refined quick launch toggles, a password or fingerprint-protected app vault, and hotspot management options to limit the speed of the tethered connection. Mr. Sheth ensured that these features will also be available in the older devices through OTA.

“We don’t stick to that basically, certain devices will only get certain features. All our features from our Rs 5,000 phone go up to Rs 30,000 phone so that everybody can enjoy those features. We never categorize the features according to the price point.” Mr. Madhav Sheth, CEO, Realme

It is in fact reassuring for not just us but the community of Realme users to get the optimism from Realme. But at the same time, Mr. Sheth kept iterating that RealmeOS is far from finalization and refrained from sharing any key details about the secret project. Meanwhile, his remark about Rs 30,000 pricing may indicate the tentative pricing for the Realme XT.

We understand that the thought process behind building a new UI ground-up can be challenging and exhaustive. We will make sure that we continue to ask Realme for updates in this regard. Till then, feel free to share your expectations from RealmeOS and we’ll make sure to convey these to the company.

The quotes in this article have been lightly edited for better clarity and the changes have been clearly mentioned in square brackets.

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