As Realme has gone about conquering sales milestone after sales milestone (it is the fastest growing smartphone manufacturer in the world) it has tried to move up the price ladder. The Realme GT was the flagbearer of the company last year and was a standout device. Realme has now decided to up the ante with the GT 2 Pro. While catering to the premium end of the market was a no-brainer, it does mean that Realme will have to fend off the far more established players. We have had the Realme GT 2 Pro for a while and have put it through evo India’s review cycle. Here are our impressions.
The spec sheet will tell you that the Realme GT 2 Pro gets all the core essentials you’d expect from a flagship device. Powered by a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Processor and with up to 12GB of RAM, the GT 2 Pro feels effortless. The phone handles long gaming stints with ease without throttling or even heating up much. The GT 2 Pro has a premium feel that is hard to pin down. The Paper White and Paper Green colourways get a textured bio-polymer material on the back while the rounded edges are accentuated with the metal trim that goes all the way around the edges. It easily distinguishes itself from other glass and metal flagships while also having the added benefit of being scratch and fingerprint resistant. A 6.7-inch QHD+ 120Hz OLED display does duty on the phone and is among the very best in the price range. It gets sufficiently bright for use outdoors while being excellent when it comes to colour accuracy. Unlike a number of other flagships, the GT 2 Pro has a flat display and comes with Gorilla Glass Victus protection. The stereo speakers too get plenty loud and have a hint of bass as well rounding out the GT 2 Pro as a very good media consumption device.
Realme has made a few unexpected choices when it comes to the camera hardware. Instead of a telephoto lens, it has gone for a microscope lens. The primary sensor is a Sony IMX766 seen on the likes of the OnePlus 9RT. However, Realme has done wonders with the processing. Sharpness levels and dynamic range are excellent while low-light images also shine with great amounts of detail. The ultrawide sensor also does a good job. Results are predictable if not as sharp as ones from the main sensor. Then there is the microscope camera which is set to 20x by default. You can even go as zoomed-in as 40x. I am not entirely convinced that a lot of people will have much use for it. On the video front there is the ability to record 4K/60fps with great amount of detail.
Battery life is excellent, and we easily sailed past the workday with charge to spare. While the 65W charging speed might not seem like a lot especially with the number of options that deliver significantly faster speeds. That said, the Realme GT 2 Pro does go from 0-100 in a little more than half an hour, fairly quick. Even at this price point, a lot comes down to the choices a brand makes and Realme seems to have got them just right with the GT 2 Pro, a solid contender if you are looking at the entry-level flagship category.