With a strong processor, an excellent primary camera, and a surprisingly sophisticated design, Realme GT 2 is a terrific choice for mid-range consumers. It’s unfortunate that the secondary cameras lack the same level of quality.
Realme GT 2 Review
For those who desire the taste of a high-end phone that costs $1000 or £1000 but is around half as expensive, the Realme GT 2 is one of the greatest Android phones available right now.
Our evaluation is mostly based on three aspects, all of which are quite remarkable. First off, the 120Hz OLED screen on the Realme GT 2 is vivid and bright.
The 50MP primary camera is as remarkable. This primary camera produces superb images day or night thanks to the fantastic Sony IMX766 sensor, which is also included in the OnePlus 9 Pro and the Oppo Find X5 Pro. Even if the GT 2’s highlight retention isn’t nearly as good as the top phones, it still performs admirably given its mid-range price.
A top-tier processor is another feature of the Realme GT 2. It is Qualcomm’s flagship from 2021, to be sure, but it still does incredibly well in 2022 and will probably do so for years to come.
The Realme GT 2’s 5,000mAh battery capacity is exactly what we’d hope for in a phone like this, but its stamina in the 120Hz display mode is lower than some of the low-power phones we’ve recently tested, like the Xiaomi Redmi Note 11. This phone is representative of the appeal of Realme phones, which frequently deliver hardware better than the competition, and this usually outweighs whatever finesse the backend software may, slightly, lack.
You’ll probably need to charge the Realme GT 2 phone every day. You might even need to top it up before a night out, as we have occasionally done. But we are discussing endurance comparable to that of some of the phones using this processor from the previous year, such as the OnePlus 9.
Design
The bizarre appearance of many Realme phones are meant to catch your eye right away. Some of its phones have enormous messages emblazoned over the back that resemble portable advertisements for the business. The Realme GT 2, on the other hand, is reserved. However, in typical Realme manner, it remains anything but normal.
The signature of Naoto Fukasawa, the designer of the rear panel, is displayed on a sleek rectangle near the top of the phone. You can’t avoid the signature, which appears twice in gloss print, even if you decide to use the surprisingly lovely soft-touch case that comes with it.
Although it’s yet another eye-catcher, we like how elegant the Realme GT 2 looks overall.
The sides and rear of the Realme GT 2 are composed of plastic, but this isn’t just any plastic. Realme refers to it as a “biopolymer” and states that it is “derived from renewable resources such as paper pulp.”
Although the term “plastic” is obviously being avoided by the corporation, Realme’s description implies that it is a bioplastic that contains cellulose. The business claims that using this bioplastic lowers carbon emissions during the back plate’s manufacturing by “35.5%”; however, Realme doesn’t specify whose baseline was utilized to get at that number.
In addition to the review phone’s beautiful green color, the back plate features a pleasing embossed texture. The designer’s distinctive detail doesn’t look so out of place in this color scheme. One of Realme’s more attractive phones is this one.
Not a fan? The only finish available with the lower-spec 128GB storage and 8GB RAM is the Steel Black GT 2, which looks to have a glass back. If that’s a turn-off, it also doesn’t seem to have the distinctive plate. This was a great deal at launch, costing £399 in the UK. We would most likely purchase this variant, which has a typical price of £499.
A fingerprint scanner is built into the screen of every Realme GT 2 model. Realme could have used a less expensive side-loaded one, but instead it went overboard.
Although this scanner is quick and consistently performed well during testing, it has a flaw. When you touch the screen or in standby mode, the Realme GT 2 doesn’t “search” for your finger. To open the region on the screen, you must first press the power button. Even though this fingerprint scanner is dependable, it would be quicker if it were integrated into the side power button.
By going into the settings menu, you may activate the “double tap to wake” and “raise to wake” options, which make things better by eliminating the need to hit the power button. We believe that one of these need to be activated by default.
With one driver on the bottom and another above the screen, the phone has good stereo speakers. For an Android fan like this one, the 6.6-inch screen is a suitable size.
Regarding the Realme GT 2’s external hardware, we have few complaints, however we do miss the headphone jack.
Display
The first significant distinction between this phone and the more costly Realme GT 2 Pro is visible on the screen of the Realme GT 2. It is a 2400 x 1080 pixel AMOLED display operating at 120 Hz. A higher-resolution 1440p panel is featured in the Pro edition.
Naturally, there is a noticeable difference, but the Realme GT 2’s screen is still crisp. Additionally, it is vivid, and you have complete control over how vibrant it becomes.
The wide color gamut DCI P3 standard is followed by the “vivid” setting by default. The Pro mode allows you to switch between DCI P3 and the native gamut of the OLED panel for even more vibrant color saturation, while “Natural” delivers something more like to sRGB. It has adjustments for color temperature as well.
As usual, select the one that most appeals to you. We used Vivid for a few days before moving to Natural. The only problem is that if you maximize the display color, all of your Realme GT 2 images will appear oversaturated until you actually view them on a different display because the images app cannot override this color calibration.
There is an Auto setting that automatically adjusts the refresh rate, and this 120Hz panel may be downclocked to a power-saving 60Hz mode. However, based on Android’s own monitoring features, it appears to be less dynamic because it is unable to reduce the refresh rate below 60Hz.
When viewing HDR video, the Realme GT 2 looks fantastic. To truly showcase the content on the screen, you can also use the Display settings menu’s toggle to maximize brightness with HDR.
The display’s max brightness rating of 1300 nits is comparable to those of the priciest phones available. Because it would overheat the phone and quickly drain the battery, Realme avoids using this type of electricity in direct sunshine. We were rather satisfied with the visibility outside, though, and like the best OLEDs, it has an automatic “sunlight” mode that modifies color and contrast to improve visibility in bright sunlight.
Although the Realme GT 2 Pro has an even better screen with a greater price tag, this one comes close to the top.
Specs and performance
The Realme GT 2 has a Realme UI 3.0 skin installed on top of Android 12. The software is mostly inoffensive, which is surprising for a new Chinese company like Realme.
It is uncluttered; only a few essential utilities, such as a music player and picture viewer, are pre-installed instead of bulky Realme programs. Although Amazon, LinkedIn, and Booking.com are preinstalled, probably to receive a little fee from these businesses, you can remove them in approximately 25 seconds. With the help of some well adjusted, inertia-tinged navigation animations, the overall performance is beautiful and fluid.
However, since this is still a third-party user interface, there are a ton of adjustments available beneath the surface, as is customary. You may adjust the speed of transition animations and make the keyboard appear when you open the app drawer, among other unusual features that are simple to use. For those with extensive app libraries, that is one.
There are only a few little problems. You have the option of selecting the Dark or Light interface modes, which change the interface’s default background color to either white or off-black. Some of the wording in the notification drop-down is not very clear when in dark mode. On a few occasions, the notification drop-dock remained in place and sat over apps until you pushed it aside.
Additionally, the software’s always-on display feature doesn’t seem to function, at least not on our Realme GT 2. No matter what settings we used, it never showed up. Nothing is beyond a software update or two, but the phone actually requires more than a couple.
The Realme GT 2 is an extremely potent mobile device. It is equipped with Qualcomm’s flagship early- to mid-2021 chipset, the Snapdragon 888 CPU. Since last-generation top-tier CPUs are nearly always better than the newest mid-tier processors, we adore seeing them in mid-range phones.
With a Geekbench 5 score of 3519 and 1133 per core, the Realme GT 2 is on pace with premium phones from the previous generation, such as the OnePlus 9 Pro. Additionally, the phone has a GT mode that promises to maximize performance at the sacrifice of battery life. The phone actually performed worse in GT mode on a Geekbench run, demonstrating that it is more about turning off whatever power-saving measures you may have enabled, like as 60Hz refresh, than it is about changing the power ceiling.
In order to determine whether GT mode changed throttling behavior over time, we conducted a 3D Mark Wild Life stress test. The maximum power decreased to 71% in regular mode and 75% in GT mode; this discrepancy can be due to the performance mode, although it is not very noticeable.
In any case, a Snapdragon 888 eliminates the requirement for such a ceiling hike. The Realme GT 2 runs games flawlessly. Tough ones play at considerably higher frame rates than the majority of less expensive phones, which retail for about $350, and they launch swiftly. Although it doesn’t always reach this with all visual settings at full capacity, Fortnite spends a significant amount of time at 60 frames per second.
The Realme GT Neo 2 is a good option if you want comparable performance but cannot afford the GT 2’s pricing. It also boasts a fantastic Snapdragon 870 CPU.
Camera
For tech enthusiasts, the Realme GT 2 stands out not because of its raw power. Even while only one of the three back cameras truly has it, it is the combination of a high-end CPU and high-end camera hardware.
A 50-megapixel primary camera, an 8-megapixel ultra-wide, and a 2MP macro—like other 2MP macros—are all features of the Realme GT 2. The 50-megapixel wide camera is wonderful, but the ultra-wide isn’t that terrific either.
It features optical image stabilization (OIS) and the Sony IMX766 sensor. Much more costly phones like the Xiaomi 12, Oppo Find X5 Pro, and Honor Magic 4 Pro employ the same components. The big 1/1.56-inch sensor is far superior to the 50MP Samsung camera used in a number of recent low-cost phones, such as the Xiaomi Redmi Note 11. On paper, they could appear to be similar, yet they are not.
Thanks to a fantastic sensor, an amazing ISP, and good software processing, the Realme GT 2’s primary camera produces excellent images in almost any scenario.
Daylight photos appear crisp at the pixel level. This is a significant accomplishment for a reasonably priced phone that employs pixel binning, where the processing sometimes results in a somewhat artificial or painted look.
Even the 2x zoom mode, which is solely a digital zoom, creates completely believable photos because of this exceptional image integrity. In contrast to 1x photos, these frequently appear processed up close. However, over time, real 2x zoom cameras have produced inferior results.
With its ability to expertly balance the priorities of bright skies and darker foregrounds, Realme’s Auto HDR enhancement is generally excellent. In extreme situations, such as a sunset image, it will lose a little highlight detail, but given how well exposed the foreground usually seems, we would assume that this kind of contrasting was most likely intentional. However, if we could alter anything, we would like to see the Realme GT 2 make every effort to preserve tough highlight detail as much as it does to emphasize shadow detail.
Battery life
The Realme GT 2 boasts a 5,000mAh battery that charges quickly at 65W. It takes you from flat to full in 43 minutes according to our tests, and reaches 89% in 30 minutes.
Because battery life isn’t that great, especially in the 120Hz or Auto display modes, you might need to rely on this rapid charging. Even though the Realme GT 2 has enough battery life for a moderate day of use, we didn’t find that we had much left when we plugged it in. Additionally, we would undoubtedly top it up before leaving the house if we were going out for the evening.
Naturally, the good news is that this should be easily accomplished with a 10-minute charge.
Switching to the Realme GT 2’s 60Hz display mode does appear to increase stamina, as you can see that there is roughly 30% of the battery left before bedtime. Although scrolling does not appear nearly as fluid at 60 Hz, it makes sense to utilize this mode strategically if you won’t always have access to a charging station.
It is not surprising that this phone does not include wireless charging, as the budget has obviously been carefully considered.