Editor’s rating: 3.75/5 Realme has launched its new captivating flagship – the Realme GT – which is also one of the most pocket-friendly Snapdragon 888 phones in India. Gunning for the Flagship Killer phone of 2021 tag, Realme has packed it with competitive flagship-grade features such as a 120Hz screen, 64MP camera, 65W fast charging, and more. Display & Audio Performance & software Camera Battery The Realme GT 5G is a very ambitious offering that’ll retail in a segment that has been primarily dominated by the likes of OnePlus, Samsung, and Xiaomi. Does the Realme GT make a killer impact? Let’s find out in our full review of the Realme GT 5G: Realme has a history of taking design inspiration from unconventional sources while designing its phone. Back in 2019, it took inspiration from Onion and Garlic while later that year it launched X2 Pro inspired by Redbrick and Concrete. In 2021, Realme GT 5G debuts with a design that is clearly trying to resonate with sports cars. It is clear from both name and design.
Realme GT Unboxing: What’s in the box?
For this review, Realme loaned us its flagship phone in a special media box. The retail box that you’ll get will be a simple rectangular box housing the following:
GT handset65W fast chargerUSB Type C cableA silicon bumperA SIM pin
Realme GT price in India
Variants: 8GB RAM+128GB ROM; 12GB RAM+256GB ROMPrice in India: Rs 37,999 / Rs 41,999 The GT 5G phone has an eye-catching design featuring a vertical black strip with a gloss finish in contrast to Racing Yellow colourway. Truth be told, the yellow color reminded me of Bumblebee from Transformers. The back panel is primarily made of plastic with a layer of vegan leather slapped on it. That’s right, it’s not faux leather but real leather which is something we are seeing on a phone after a very long time. The rear camera sits on an island of its own which will make it wobble on a table or any other flat surface, i.e. if you use it without a case. Realme’s design choices ensure that the GT 5G not only has striking looks but also an excellent in-hand feel. It has a slim side profile and thanks to the plastic frame, it weighs only about 184 grams. The back panel tapers down towards the edges to ensure it feels comfortable to operate even when held for hours. The rest of the design highlights including ports and button placements are similar to the Realme GT Master Edition (review). The Realme GT 5G has a fingerprint sensor underneath the screen, a volume rocker on the left edge, and a power button on the right. The bottom edge has a Type C port, loudspeaker, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The dual SIM tray and volume buttons are on the right edge while the power key sits on the left edge. As far as build quality is concerned, it feels like a solid phone despite its plastic frame. We aren’t expecting any ‘bendgate’ design flaws here. The display enjoys Dragontrail glass protection and also an oleophobic coating to help keep finger smudges at bay. Talking of display, let’s explore a few more details: Realme has blessed the GT phone with a Samsung-made 6.43-inch AMOLED display. It’s a 20:9 panel delivering FHD+ resolution at 2400X 1080 pixels. It’s an HDR 10 supported panel with support for 120Hz refresh rate and 360Hz touch sampling. Thanks to the AMOLED panel, you get punchy colors and excellent contrast. Realme has managed to implement the 120Hz refresh rate well. The user gets three options: 60Hz, 120Hz, and Auto select refresh. The latter two work in a similar fashion. They run most system UI, social, and productivity apps at 120Hz whereas during images and videos playback screen automatically adjusts the refresh rate to 60Hz to conserve battery. Thanks to the 360Hz Touch Sampling rate, the screen responds to touch instantaneously. This is a really handy feature for gamers. Coming to Audio, the Realme GT has a stereo setup with support for Dolby Atmos and Hi-Res audio. The speakers on the phone manage to deliver loud sound with decent stereo impact but don’t expect the depth of a larger speaker. If that’s not good enough, you can plug-in a 3.5mm headphones or type C headphones or connect wireless TWS via Bluetooth for a more immersive audio experience. All in all, the Realme GT audio experience isn’t second to any other phone in its class. The Realme GT gets a triple-camera stack on its back. The setup is led by a 64MP Sony IMX 682 sensor (quad-Bayer) which is teamed with an 8MP Ultra-Wide snapper and a 2MP macro sensor. A dual-tone led flash also sits on the same island. For selfies, the GT phone has a 16MP selfie shooter upfront. The 64MP camera works as a default one delivering 16MP binned images until you decide to capture in full 64MP resolution. The Sony sensor manages to deliver images with a good amount of detail and contrast. The level of noise is negligible in daytime shots. However, at times Realme image processing ends up over-sharpening images. The HDR processing is also on point more often than not. If you compare the Realme GT 5G camera with the iQOO 7 and Xiaomi Mi 11X Pro, you will notice, the iQOO 7 has a better white balance while the Mi 11X Pro handles shadows better. Where Realme GT does better is color science. The low-light camera performance isn’t bad either and can compete toe to toe with other phones in its segment. Realme has tried to strike a balance between noise suppression and detail retention. The Ultra-wide sensor also manages to take good shots with very little distortion compared to other phones you get at this price. The dynamic range is also decent but colors do not appear very accurate. Realme is using the same selfie camera as the Realme 8 Pro and the results are also similar. It delivers bright images and is a little too lax with beautification. The Realme GT 5G runs Google Android 11 based Realme UI 2.0. Basically, it is a leaner version of OPPO’s Color OS. It has fairly long customization options. A user is allowed to control icon styles, fonts, colours, and more. That’s not all, Realme has added several features including an ‘ultra vision engine’ to enhance video content and a Realme Lab where it introduces features in beta. The Realme GT 5G has several pre-installed apps. Apart from a few of Realme’s own apps, most of the third-party extras can be uninstalled. Once you uninstall all these apps, the phone’s UI feels more appealing. There is a dedicated GT mode that basically optimizes your phone for gaming or high-performance tasks by activating the performance core. It is one of the most powerful smartphones in its price bracket. It ropes in Qualcomm’s premier Snapdragon 888 chipset, which is one of the most powerful SoC that delivers top-of-the-line performance. It’s an octa-core processor based on the 5nm node offering a 1+3+4 configuration. It includes a 1x 2.84 GHz Kryo 680 Prime (extreme performance) coupled with 3×2.42 GHz Kryo 680 Gold (balanced performance) & 4×1.8 GHz Kryo 680 Silver (power efficiency). Realme offers GT 5G with either 8GB or 12GB of LPDDR5, ours has 12 gigs of memory. That’s not all, Realme has RAM expansion which converts part of your storage as virtual RAM. It’s not exactly the same as the RAM. The storage options are 128GB and 256GB, and the storage is of the UFS 3.1 type. With so much power under the hood, it can handle anything and everything. We thoroughly enjoyed the combination of an SD888 and a high refresh rate screen. Like all other SD888 phones this year, the GT 5G also had to deal with its heating issues. Realme used multiple layers of graphite along with a copper vapor chamber surrounded by stainless steel to keep the temperatures in check. During our usage, we found it to remain cool most of the time. We only witnessed CPU throttling during extended gaming or back-to-back benchmark testing. Even then it was only warm, not hot. Here are the synthetic benchmark test results: The phone packs a 4,500mAh cell which is not the best in class. With a power hog 120Hz screen and demanding chipset, it could last you a day on most days. In fact, it can give you better screen time than the OnePlus 9. Where the Realme GT really shines is its 65W fast charging. It takes only a few heartbeats to add one percentage of battery. The bundled 65W super dart charger only takes 35 minutes to fully charge the battery (jaw-dropping). As far as connectivity is concerned, I placed a JIO and AIRTEL 4G sim in each slot, and both were registered to the network instantly. I have faced no network-related issues so far. It comes with both mm-wave and sub 6 5G right out of the box. But sadly we won’t get to see 5G in India until 2022. The Realme GT ticks almost all the right boxes and offers great value. Be it design or performance, it lived up to most of our expectations. With its impressive pricing Realme manages to undercut all other SD888 phones in the Indian market and truly embodies the flagship killer spirit. Having said that, the Realme GT will face some stiff competition from the likes of iQOO 7, the upcoming Asus 8Z, and Mi 11X. Each one of these has there own set of pros and cons. As far as Realme GT 5G is concerned, here are a few reasons to buy it and a few for why you may want to skip it:
Reasons to buy:
Excellent design120Hz HDR 10+ AMOLED screenGreat PerformanceDual-band 5G support
Reasons not to buy:
No IP ratingNo HRR gamingNo telephoto camera for zooming inHDR not supported on Netflix app
Q. Does Realme GT 5G has a dedicated MicroSD slot? A. No, Realme GT 5G doesn’t have a dedicated micro-SD card slot. Q. What is the SAR value of Realme GT 5G? A. Realme GT 5G edition SAR values are 1.151 W/kg @ 1gm (Head) & 0.748W/kg @ 1gm (Body) Q. Does Realme GT feature Gorilla Glass Victus? A. No, Realme GT 5G doesn’t come with Gorilla Glass. Instead, it uses DragonTrail Glass protection. Q. What are the 5G bands supported by Realme GT 5G? A. Realme GT supports as many as 14 5G NR bands in India. here’s the complete list: n1/n3/n5/n7/n8/n20/n28/n38/n40/n41/n77/n41/n78/n79 Q. Can I use mobile data and Wi-Fi together on Realme GT 5G? A. Yes, thanks to dual-channel aggregation you can club mobile and Wi-Fi connections together. Q. Does Realme GT 5G support Wi-Fi6? A. Yes, Realme GT Master Edition supports dual-band WiFi 6 (2.4GHz + 5GHz). Q. Does Realme GT 5G support VoWiFi or WiFi calling? A. Yes, Realme GT does feature VoWiFi. Q. How many microphones are on the Realme GT 5G? A. Realme GT 5G comes with two microphones. Q. What about Android updates on Realme GT 5G? A. The Realme GT 5T comes running on Android 11 out of the box. At the time of writing, it has the July 05, 2021, security update. The Google Play System update is also dated March 01, 2021. Q. Does Realme GT 5G feature 4K60 FPS? A. The maximum video quality supported by Realme GT 5G is 4K30 FPS. So, no 60 frames per second here. A. Realme GT 5G has DRM L1 certification and I did manage to do HD streaming on Prime Video but somehow HD streaming is not supported on Netflix. Q. Does Realme GT 5G support GCam or Camera2API? A. Realme GT Master Edition comes with Level 3 Camera2API support for GCam. Q. Does the Snapdragon 888 SoC within Realme GT 5G get hot? A. In my usage, I didn’t come across any major heating issue. Perhaps the Vegan Leather finish doesn’t let you feel the heat as much.
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