Fairly telephone that cuts the fitting corners

Premium Android smartphones have solely been getting costlier just lately. The Samsung Galaxy S24 Extremely is $100 greater than the identical mannequin was in 2023, pushing it to a whopping $1,299 on the low finish. Even the Google Pixel 8 Professional, in comparison with the Pixel 7 Professional, jumped by $100 to $999. These ultra-premium telephones persevering with to rise in value does have a silver lining, although, which is that there at the moment are gaps within the $600-$900 vary that different corporations can fill. In that vein, enter a brand new contender: the realme GT 6.

Poised as a “flagship killer,” the realme GT 6 makes an attempt to ship many of the premium options you’ll need from an costly flagship however with a lower cost tag. I had some hands-on time with the GT 6 and have some ideas on it, so let’s get into it.

The very first thing I stated to myself after I took the realme GT 6 out of the field was, “Huh, I haven’t seen this earlier than.” The telephone has a two-tone mirrored again. A lot of the again is frosted — i.e., barely reflective — whereas the portion surrounding the massive rear digicam module is polished, supplying you with a pure mirror. It’s a singular look that could be a “find it irresistible or hate it” form of factor, however I fairly prefer it.

Whereas the again makes the telephone look cool, it additionally has a objective. Utilizing the reflective again, you’ll be able to extra simply line up a selfie shot utilizing the rear cameras. Doing so will produce higher outcomes than utilizing the front-facing digicam, making the mirrored again a type of lo-fi different to only spinning your telephone round, hitting the shutter, and hoping for the very best. Verify the pictures beneath to see me lining up a shot of myself.

Notably, this was a way used an extended, very long time in the past with telephones that didn’t but have front-facing cameras. I keep in mind the LG Prada — the primary telephone with a capacitive contact display, beating the unique iPhone to market by a number of months — had a small mirror on the again for this very motive. So actually, realme has simply taken an outdated thought and modernized it, however it’s nonetheless nice to see right here.

Talking of the again of the telephone, the GT 6 is available in two colours: Fluid Silver and Razor Inexperienced, the latter of which is the model I acquired my palms on. Each colours are good, however the Razor Inexperienced mannequin isn’t almost as reflective as Fluid Silver. When you envision your self utilizing that selfie trick I simply described so much, you’ll most likely have a neater time with Fluid Silver because it appears to be like principally identical to an actual mirror.

In fact, all this mirrored glass makes the GT 6 a fingerprint magnet. Severely, I couldn’t even gently contact the telephone with out leaving fingerprints behind. Additionally, in the event you plan on dropping the entire thing right into a protecting case, the end doesn’t actually imply something, so hold that in thoughts if it is a telephone you’re desirous about shopping for.

Exterior of the again and the colours, the telephone follows latest premium smartphone design traits. It has an enormous 6.78-inch show with some steep curves on the edges. The show has a pleasant decision of two,780 x 1,264 with a 120Hz refresh price and may get very shiny, however I’ll contact extra on that within the subsequent part.

Lastly, at 199g, the telephone isn’t tremendous heavy however nonetheless feels premium. So far as huge telephones with curvy screens go, I discovered it comparatively comfy to make use of with one hand, and it by no means felt like I used to be utilizing a mid-ranger.

The three most notable {hardware} elements of the realme GT 6 are the processor, the show, and the battery. Let’s begin with the processor.

Beneath the hood, you’ll discover a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 3. Launched in March 2024, that is primarily a barely weaker model of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which is the processor you’ll discover within the OnePlus 12 and the Galaxy S24 collection (in sure areas). Regardless of its launch a number of months in the past, we haven’t seen many telephones truly embrace it, making the realme GT 6 one of many first to market with the chipset.

For day-to-day utilization, the processor will ship all the pieces you want. It even might be greater than succesful for high-performance duties, corresponding to gaming. For instance, it helps PUBG Cell gameplay at 120fps and performs Genshin Impression at a silky easy 1.5K decision. There’s even a function, awkwardly known as Geek Energy Tuning (significantly, realme, re-think the title of this), that permits you to customise CPU/GPU efficiency to your wants. Clearly, all of the tweaking on the planet received’t make it fairly pretty much as good as a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 telephone, however the 8s Gen 3 is cheaper, which can forestall the realme GT 6 from hitting these aforementioned ultra-premium costs.

The show is the second notable {hardware} function of this telephone. In its advertising, realme is making an enormous deal of calling this “the brightest smartphone show ever,” which is technically true. By that, I imply, technically talking, the telephone is able to hitting a completely bonkers 6,000 nits — almost 3 times the height brightness of the Google Pixel 8 Professional and Galaxy S24 Extremely. Nevertheless, you’ll by no means, ever see that brightness throughout regular utilization. Actually, the conventional peak brightness of the GT 6 is only one,600 nits, which is way decrease than the peaks for the Galaxy S24 Extremely (2,600 nits) and Pixel 8 Professional (2,400 nits). To hit the 6,000 nits mark, you’ll have to manually drive it utilizing Android’s Developer Choices, which makes it a foolish parlor trick, primarily.

Parlor methods apart, the show continues to be very good. However don’t consider the jargon — the GT 6’s show is brighter than most, however not as shiny as some in real-world eventualities.

The third notable side of this telephone is its battery and how briskly it may cost. The GT 6 has an unlimited 5,500mAh cell, which is 500mAh larger than what you’ll discover within the S24 Extremely and the Pixel 8 Professional. You can too cost that battery a lot, a lot sooner than both of these two different telephones, because of SUPERVOOC know-how bringing 120W wired charging speeds to the GT 6. Fortunately, the telephone comes with the charger wanted to fulfill that pace, which guarantees a battery topped off from zero to full in simply round 28 minutes.

Sadly, the trade-off right here is that the GT 6 doesn’t help wi-fi charging in any respect. Nonetheless, when you’ll be able to go from 0% to 50% in round 10 minutes with a wire, wi-fi charging would possibly seem to be the weaker different.

Transferring on, the digicam system on the realme GT 6 is fairly good. You’ve acquired a stable 50MP main shooter with a Sony LYT-808 sensor and optical picture stabilization (OIS). That’s paired with a Sony IMX355 ultrawide with an 8MP decision and a 50MP telephoto with 2x optical zoom on high of a Samsung JN5 sensor. The front-facing sensor has a decision of 32MP. All in all, it is a stable setup. Nevertheless, there are some notable deficiencies, corresponding to the shortage of 8K video help in any mode, which is because of the processor not supporting it.

Lastly, the GT 6 comes with as much as 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM and as much as 512GB of UFS 4.0 storage. Maxing these specs out ought to provide you with all the facility and area you may want.

The specs of the realme GT 6 are fairly superior, particularly contemplating that they both meet or exceed many of the core specs of ultra-premium flagships from different manufacturers.

As of scripting this, I nonetheless don’t know the way a lot this telephone prices. When requested, realme advised me it will likely be “underneath $850,” which might make it at the least $150 cheaper than the listing value of a Pixel 8 Professional ($999 at Amazon) and at the least $450 cheaper than the bottom listing value of a Galaxy S24 Extremely ($1419.99 at Amazon). These are some vital financial savings, although contemplating the telephone is unlikely to be formally launched within the US, we’ll additionally have to see how that converts to native currencies in Europe and different areas.

Assuming the ultimate value sticks to realme’s promise, I can completely think about recommending this to somebody who desires a phenomenal and highly effective Android telephone however doesn’t wish to spend greater than $900 on it. In any case, the one main caveats listed below are the shortage of wi-fi charging, the digicam {hardware} not being pretty much as good as a Pixel 8 Professional or Galaxy S24 Extremely, and realme’s weak software program help historical past, which is often locked to only two years. Exterior of these issues, the GT 6 has all the pieces the common individual might need after which some.

Till I do know that value, I can’t actually say whether or not or not you need to seize a realme GT 6. For now, although, I can confidently say the realme GT 6 is a really fairly telephone that cuts the fitting corners to maintain the worth considerably decrease than the competitors, which is at all times good to see.

Keep tuned for the ultimate value reveal from realme coming quickly. Within the meantime, let me know what you consider the GT 6 within the ballot above and the feedback beneath.