In March last year, Realme launched its first “GT” series smartphone named the Realme GT. It is a flagship with the Snapdragon 888 SOC, 50W charging, a 120Hz Super AMOLED, and more. Later, we got a few more phones under the “GT” series, but all of those phones were placed lower than the Realme GT in terms of pricing & features. Today, we got the successor to the Realme GT, named the Realme GT 2. Along with this phone, the company also launched the Realme GT 2 Pro, which it calls its first premium flagship phone.
Both pack high-end hardware, but there is a difference of almost ¥2000 or nearly $200 in the starting price, which shows that the GT 2 Pro is not your typical flagship phone from Realme.
REALME GT 2
We are looking at the same design as Realme GT Neo 2. So, there is a similar camera module design with three cameras and two different flash modules inside it. The camera module has a shiny finish, whereas the rest has frosted glass.
The Black & Blue color options have a frosted glass back with no unique texture on top, but there are also two Master Edition variants. One comes in White and the other in Green, and both of these feature bio-based back covers. The company says the back cover comprises sustainable Sabic bio-based materials extracted from renewable raw materials such as paper pulp and fallen leaves. Moreover, the box in which the phone comes has just 0.3% plastic which is way less than what previous Realme smartphone boxes had(21.7%). For printing, Realme used Soy ink which again is eco-friendly.
The phone is 8.6mm thick and weighs around 194.5 grams (199.8 grams in Black & Blue colors).
Speaking of the specifications, Realme GT 2 has a 6.62-inch panel, and it is a 120Hz AMOLED with Full-HD+ resolution, 1300 nits of peak brightness, and Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection. The fingerprint scanner is placed under the display, and it is an optical scanner.
Under the hood, the Realme GT 2 packs the same Snapdragon 888 SOC that powered the Realme GT last year. This is probably because the main flagship under the GT series now is the GT 2 Pro, not the GT 2. There is either 8GB or 12GB LPDDR5 RAM paired with 128GB or 256GB UFS 3.1 storage.
In terms of the cameras, there are three cameras on the back, where the primary camera has a 50 Megapixel Sony IMX766 sensor, and the camera also has OIS. There is a second 8MP ultrawide camera and a third 2MP macro camera. There is a 16MP selfie shooter.
Finally, Android 12 runs out of the box with Realme UI 3.0 on top.
REALME GT 2 PRO
The Realme GT 2 Pro is a premium flagship phone from the brand with many upgrades over the vanilla GT 2, but one area where Realme decided not to upgrade is the design. It has the same design as the GT 2 Pro and even the same color options (including two Master Edition variants). Even on the front, there is a similar design with a flat panel having a hole punch on the top left corner. This is interesting because usually, we have seen these smartphone makers opting for a curved screen for their Pro or Ultra phones. After all, that looks more premium.
So coming straight to the specifications, Realme GT 2 Pro has an incredible display. It is a flat 6.7-inch 2K AMOLED with a Quad-HD+ resolution (also called the 2K resolution). The peak brightness is 1,400 nits, and the panel has LTPO 2.0 tech, which enables a dynamic refresh rate of 1-120Hz. This is also a 10-bit panel, which can output over a billion colors. Realme claims that compared to the previous generation, LTPO 2.0 tech improved the battery consumption by up to 50%, so the overall battery life is extended by up to 1.7 hours! Dropping from 120Hz to 1Hz takes just 75ms, so this shift in the refresh rate is almost in an instant without you noticing any lag of jitters.
The display is also protected with Corning Gorilla Glass Victus and has an instantaneous touch response rate of 1000Hz. Realme claims this to be the absolute best flat 2K panel on a smartphone and the specifications make us believe that!
Performance-wise, there is a massive upgrade too. Realme GT 2 Pro has the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SOC, which is built on the 4nm process and has Cortex-X2 CPU cores for performance. There is Adreno 730 GPU and the 7th Gen AI Engine. The storage options remain the same as the GT 2.
The phone has a 5,000mAh battery and supports 65W fast charging. There is no support for wireless charging, though.
There are three cameras on the GT 2 Pro, just like the GT 2. But, the hardware here is upgraded. The primary camera still has a 50MP Sony IMX766 sensor and supports OIS, but there is a second 50MP sensor for the ultrawide shots. Not only this, the ultrawide camera has a field-of-view of 150-degrees, the highest ever in a smartphone camera! This camera allows you to take some impressive wide-angle shots, and there is also a ‘Fisheye’ mode in the camera. And that’s not it! There is a third camera for macro shots, but this is not your typical macro camera.
Like the last year’s Find X3 Pro, the macro camera on the Realme GT 2 Pro gives a microscope-like experience where you can go extremely close to the subject and see things that your naked eye cannot see. Realme says the macro camera on the GT 2 Pro offers up to 40x magnification which is still less than what the Find X3 Pro offers at 60x!
For selfies, there is a 32MP camera on the front. Finally, the phone runs on Android 12 based Realme UI 3.0.
PRICING & AVAILABILITY
Finally, let’s talk about the pricing and availability of these phones. Realme GT 2 comes in four colors, and here is the pricing for the Chinese market –
- 8GB + 128GB – ¥2699 (~$425)
- 8GB + 256GB – ¥2899 (~$456)
- 12GB + 256GB – ¥3199 (~$503)
Realme GT 2 Pro has the same four color options as the GT 2 but there are four storage options. Here is the pricing –
- 8GB + 128GB – ¥3899 (~$613)
- 8GB + 256GB – ¥4199 (~$660)
- 12GB + 256GB – ¥4499 (~$708)
- 12GB + 512GB – ¥4999 (~$786)
Both phones are already up for pre-order in China, and the sale starts on the 8th of January. Both of these phones are coming to the global market in Q1 2022 itself.