Realme GT 2 Pro Review: Realme’s First True Flagship Smartphone

The Realme GT 2 Pro is the first true flagship phone from the Chinese smartphone brand Realme. It’s a successor to last year’s Realme GT that did not make it to Nepal.

The Realme GT 2 Pro price in Nepal is Rs. 1,09,999 (12/256GB). It is available at Realme authorised stores across Nepal and online at Daraz.

The phone is equipped with Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset and a 2nd generation LTPO AMOLED display. Additionally, the GT 2 Pro has a biopolymer rear instead of the more typical glass back.

But the question arises: how good of a phone is the Realme GT 2 Pro? Can it rival other premium smartphones? All of it will be discussed in my review of the Realme GT 2 Pro.

Realme GT 2 Pro Review

Design

• 163.2 mm x 74.7 mm x 8.2 mm
• 189 g
• Bio-polymer back

The design material of the Realme GT 2 Pro is very unique in comparison to any other premium phone. Unlike the glass rear we see on every other flagship phone of 2022, the GT 2 Pro is made up of bio-polymer material.

The material is the first bio-based polycarbonate (PC) copolymer, introduced by Saudi Arabian petrochemicals manufacturer SABIC to help the consumer electronics industry achieve its net-zero carbon emissions goals.

The material also secured International Sustainability and Carbon Certification Plus (ISCC+). Realme claims that it has reduced its carbon footprint by 35.5%.

To design this phone, Realme collaborated with Japanese industrial designer Naoto Fukasawa, whose signature can be seen beside the glass rear camera module along with the Realme branding.

The back is intended to have a paper-like feel, and in some ways, it does. It does not feel that premium to the touch, but it’s built well. Its textured and curved back helps with the grip.

The frame is constructed of metal, as are the buttons for volume and power. The power button, which is located on the right, has a texture to it, which I prefer, although it goes unnoticed most of the time.

The bottom side has a SIM card tray, microphone, USB-C, and speaker. The earpiece doubles as a secondary speaker, enabling the phone to have a stereo speaker setup.

Furthermore, there is an in-display optical fingerprint sensor. The sensor works as intended: it’s fast and reliable. The display is protected by Gorilla Glass Victus, but unfortunately, the phone does not have any IP rating. The SIM card tray has a rubber gasket, which should provide some water resistance.

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Display

• 6.7 inches AMOLED
• 120Hz, LTPO 2.0
• 1440 x 3216  pixels
• 1400 nits (peak)
• HDR10+
• Gorilla Glass Victus

The Realme GT 2 Pro flaunts a stunning 6.7-inch QHD+ AMOLED display. The 2K display is very sharp with up to 525 pixels per inch (PPI).

Watching movies or any videos on this display is a wonderful experience. The 10-bit display produces some of the nicest and most accurate colours.

It supports HDR10+ and Realme says that it covers 100% of P3 colour space. It can refresh at up to 120Hz. It uses LTPO 2.0 technology, so the display can adjust itself to as low as 1Hz to save the battery. I must say the optimisation is really good; it’s very smooth.

When interacting, it locks at a 120Hz refresh rate to give a smooth experience to the user. But at other times, the display cleverly adjusts its refresh rate to different rates to match the content on it.

Although not at the level of the Samsung Galaxy S22 Plus, the display can get really bright, so using it outdoors in direct sunlight is also not a problem.

Performance

• Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1
• Octa-core (1×3.00 GHz Cortex-X2 & 3×2.50 GHz Cortex-A710 & 4×1.80 GHz Cortex-A510)
• Adreno 730
• 256GB 12GB RAM

The device comes with 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage. There is also an 8GB variant with 128GB storage, but it is not available in Nepal as of now. It is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor built on a 4nm process node with Adreno 730 GPU.

The SoC has a single powerful Arm Cortex-X2 flagship-core running at up to 3.0GHz, three performance and efficiency balanced Arm Cortex-A710 big-cores running at up to 2.5GHz, and four power-efficient Arm Cortex-A510 little-cores running at up to 1.8GHz.

As expected, the flagship chipset delivers excellent performance. The phone is incredibly snappy and smooth.

I never experienced any slowing down or stuttering of the phone. The phone always felt incredibly fast, regardless of what I was doing.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is incredibly power-hungry compared to other chipsets, therefore it generates greater heat. To combat this, Realme said that the phone features the industry’s largest heat dissipation area at 36761 sq. mm.

However, I still felt the phone getting warm even when doing light tasks. And when gaming or using the camera app for an extended amount of time, the upper portion of the phone gets hot.

I can’t say that the heat was comfortable, especially with the metal side frames, but it wasn’t intolerable either. I should add that it’s summer, so that may have affected it even more.

Interestingly, the phone cools down fairly quickly when not in use. This suggests that the 9-layer cooling structure with a 4129 sq. mm. Stainless Steel VC area is working effectively in the background.

BENCHMARK

The benchmark result is also very interesting of the Realme GT 2 Pro. I could not test the phone’s GPU performance on 3DMark Wild Life because it said the device was too powerful for that test.

The score straight away said that it “Maxed Out!”. This is the first time I have ever encountered it. Therefore, I had to run 3DMark Wild Life Extreme benchmark. In this test, it scored over 2500. Likewise, on Antutu 9, it scored close to 8,50,000.

Testing on Geekbench 5, the phone managed to get around 1200 points in the single-core score and over 3300 in the multi-core score. The Realme GT 2 Pro outperformed the Galaxy S22+ in both the single-core and multi-core scores.

The scores are similar to the scores of the Xiaomi 12 Pro and the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra.

I also did some thermal testing of the CPU. The result I got was underwhelming. The CPU performance decreased significantly throughout the course of the 60-minute CPU throttling test I conducted, reaching 80 percent in less than 10 minutes. Then, in a little over the next five minutes, it experienced a dramatic dip to 60%, which, in real-life terms, might result in unexpected frame drops when gaming.

It continued to try to reach the 80 percent mark for the next 45 minutes or so, but it kept free falling to 60 percent. It remained at or near 60% for the majority of the time. I was expecting it to perform better, especially when Realme said that it boasts the largest cooling system in the industry.

I should add that summer is currently in full swing, so that could be a contributing cause to the unsatisfactory CPU throttling results. Additionally, the GT mode was disabled. Although I’m not sure how much of an effect that has, I felt it was important to mention.

Nevertheless, this is just a synthetic test. In practise, I encountered no performance issues. Throughout my use, the device ran as smoothly as it possibly could.

GAMING

The testing of the performance is not complete without some gaming. So, we tried some popular graphically heavy games on it. And, without a surprise, it performed admirably.

When setting the Graphics and Frame Rate settings to “HDR” and “Extreme,” respectively, on PUBG Mobile, it delivered a stable 60 frames per second (FPS). And when Graphics and Frame Rate settings were set to “Ultra HD” and “Ultra,” respectively, it gave a stable 40FPS.

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Likewise, I was easily able to play Apex Legends at a stable 60FPS with Graphics Quality set to “ExtremeHD” and Frame Rate set to “Ultra”.

When it comes to Genshin Impact, I first set the Graphics Quality to “Highest”, on which, the FPS was set to “30” by default. Impressively, the phone was able to play the game at a stable 30FPS. But, when I changed the FPS to “60”, it hit around 45FPS for a few minutes, and then it dipped to below 35FPS.

Camera

• Rear Camera: 50 MP (main), f/1.8, OIS
  • 50MP (ultrawide), f/2.2
  • 3MP(microscope), f/3.3

• Front Camera: 32MP, f/2.4

The Realme GT 2 Pro features a triple camera setup on the back. One of them is the primary camera (Sony IMX766), and the second one is the 150-degree ultrawide camera. Both are 50MP.

The third one is the interesting one. It is a 3MP micro-lens camera that can take extremely close-up shots. Unfortunately, the smartphone does not have a telephoto lens though.

I should point out that when switching between the primary and ultrawide camera lenses, the device does not immediately register the initial few shutters I shoot. That is sometimes noticeable, but at other times, the shutter speed is good.

MICRO-LENS PHOTOS

In most phones today, we see a macro camera that can help in taking close-ups. But the micro camera on the Realme GT 2 Pro takes it further. The camera takes extreme close-ups with 20x magnification. There is also a 40x magnification option, but it simply crops the 20x, so it’s not truly 40x.

The micro-lens works surprisingly well. It can take pictures of tiny things that are hard to see with naked eyes. The micro-lens camera is truly impressive. The picture quality is also good.

I can’t say how useful this feature can be in day-to-day life, but it is definitely a great party trick. And it’s fun to use. But the fun remained for only a few days for me. I stopped using it after a few days and eventually forgot it was there.

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NORMAL PHOTOS

The main camera’s photos are really good. It properly maintains the highlights and shadows of the pictures. The colours also look natural. I felt like the sharpness could have been better, but the details are excellent.

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ULTRAWIDE PHOTOS

The quality of the photos taken from the ultrawide camera is comparable to the primary camera’s photos. The colours are consistent and the details and dynamic range are also great. The sharpness is comparatively lacking, but it’s common for an ultrawide camera.

It can also shoot extremely wide-angle photos with a 150-degree field of view. For that, you need to enter 150° mode from the “More” option on the camera app. The 150-degree photos are even wider than before but come with barrel distortion.

Within that mode, there is also the fisheye mode. As the name suggests, pictures in this mode have a fisheye effect. It’s also very fun to use. You can be as creative as you like with this and take amazing shots.

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LOW LIGHT PHOTOS

The GT 2 Pro takes impressive low-light photos, even without turning on the night mode. The photos come out bright and have good detail in them.

When night mode is turned on, the brightness and details are improved. However, when it’s not sufficiently dark, such as outside in the evening or when there are some light sources present, it’s hard to see the difference between photos with night mode turned on and off.

Brighter and enhanced details on photos taken with night mode turned on are noticeable in darker environments though. But the difference is not that significant most of the time.

Overall, the low-light camera performance of the Realme GT 2 Pro is great.

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PORTRAIT PHOTOS

The phone manages to properly distinguish the subject from the background. The background blurs also appear natural.

The skin tone looks good. It smoothens and brightens the skin, but does not overdo it. It always makes sure that the face is well-exposed. The portrait photos on this phone are pleasing to look at.

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FRONT CAMERA

The selfies are also great. I like the skin tone, details, and sharpness of selfies taken from this device. The face is well-exposed and the dynamic range is also wide, although sometimes it fails to expose the highlights properly.

The background blur on portrait selfies is natural. The portrait mode retouches the selfies, which results in good selfies. Selfie lovers should love this mode.

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VIDEOS

The phone is capable of shooting 4K video at up to 60 FPS and up to 8K at 24FPS. The quality of the video is impressive. Both 1080p and 4K videos are well stabilised. The colours and details are stunning.

The videos don’t appear oversharpened; instead, natural sharpness and clarity are present. You can also record 8K videos, but they are jerky in comparison to 4K footage.

Battery and Others

• Non-removable Li-Po 5000mAh battery
• 65W Fast Charging
• Android 12, Realme UI 3.0

The 5000mAh battery of the Realme GT 2 Pro provides a long battery life. When I used the phone only for light tasks such as scrolling through social media, it gave me over 8 hours of screen-on-time, which is really impressive.

But when I played games or used the camera app for a long period, the phone only gave me around 4-5 hours of screen-on-time. Anyway, the phone can easily last a day for a medium user on a single full charge.

Even if you’re a heavy user, the 65W fast charging support can easily charge the device in around 30-40 minutes from 0% to 100%.

In terms of software, it runs on Realme UI 3.0 based on Android 12. I personally like the Realme UI. It’s smooth, clean, and gives a lot of customisation options. But what I don’t like is the bloatware that it comes with. Fortunately, most of them can be uninstalled.

Realme has promised that the GT 2 Pro will get 3 Android OS updates and 4 years of Android security patches.

For speakers, it comes with a stereo speaker setup. One is at the bottom, while the other also functions as an earpiece. I’m afraid I cannot say the speaker quality is that impressive.

Don’t get me wrong; the speaker is great for casual movies, games, and music. It’s clearly above average. Still, for a flagship phone, it could have been better. But most people should not have any issues with this.

Simply put, it doesn’t have the same level of excellence as some other flagship devices, like the Samsung Galaxy S22 series or the iPhone 13 series.

Furthermore, the Realme GT 2 Pro has an X-axis linear vibration motor, jointly developed by Realme and AAC Technologies Holdings Inc. The motor is accurate and feels premium.

Should You Buy the Realme GT 2 Pro?

The Realme GT 2 Pro is the first premium Realme flagship phone. The design is unique and has excellent display and performance. The cameras are also great. The micro-lens is an interesting and fun-to-use feature.

But the phone does not have an ingress protection rating, wireless charging support, or a telephoto camera. These are not huge compromises, but for a smartphone that costs over a lakh in 2022, I expect it to have them.

Similarly priced Samsung Galaxy S22 has all the said features, including IP rating, wireless charging support, and a telephoto lens. In addition, it has a premium glass back and Samsung has promised to give four OS updates.

But the S22 can be smaller for people who prefer huge phones. There are the Galaxy S22 Plus and the OnePlus 10 Pro that have bigger displays and batteries, but they are more expensive.

The GT 2 Pro could be a wise decision in light of those factors since it is currently the cheapest flagship phone. As an alternative, besides the Galaxy S22, there is also the Xiaomi 12 Pro if you’re into MIUI.

READ NEXT: Realme Mobiles Price in Nepal: Features and Specs

What do you think about the Realme GT 2 Pro? Let us know in the comments!

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Also, watch our review of the Realme GT 2 Pro in Nepali.