An emerging smartphone that prioritizes performance first!!
Ever since Realme came to the market, it has been known for its mid-range and budget segment smartphones, which had a great deal of success in the market. Then, later, came the GT series, which focused primarily on performance and gaming. The GT series brought in some of the best specifications that were flagship level, but later, Realme came up with the GT Neo series, which did well but could not live up to the standards.
Now this year, Realme has made a comeback with the GT series with the Realme GT 6 and the Realme GT 6T. The Realme GT 6T seems to be a solid option from the brand as it brings some very good specifications for the price which includes a curved AMOLED display, a powerful Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 chipset, a larger 5500mAh battery, etc. and is priced very competitively thus giving some serious competition to other brands.
So will the Realme GT 6T outshine its competition in the premium mid-range segment and is it a perfect all-rounder? Let’s find out in the full review.
Realme GT 6T Design:
In terms of design, the Realme GT 6T is not a head turner for instance, as it brings a very basic design when you look at the back that has a dual tone finish with the top portion that is rectangular in shape a mirror-like finish and surrounds the triple cameras along with a dual LED flashlight. The lower half of the back has a polycarbonate finish with a metallic design.
The back of the smartphone does catch a lot of fingerprints. Around the sides, the smartphone is curved both at the front as well as the back. The Realme GT 6T is available in two different colours – Fluid Silver and Razor Green. The smartphone comes with an IP65 rating which makes it dust and water-resistant which seems to be a great addition. The smartphone weighs around 191 grams which is slightly heavier.
Around the sides, the smartphone has a polycarbonate frame that houses the volume buttons along with the power button whereas the left side of the smartphone is completely cleaner. At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a primary microphone, a dual SIM card slot, and a loudspeaker grille. There is neither a microSD card slot for storage expansion nor a 3.5mm headphone jack.
On the top, there is a secondary noise-cancelling microphone along with an IR Blaster for controlling various devices. There is also an outlet for the secondary speaker which along with the bottom loudspeaker provides a stereo sound output. On the front, there is a curved display with almost minimum bezels which makes it look premium.
The display of the smartphone has a punch-hole located at the centre on the top that houses the selfie camera. It is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 for protection which is really a great addition as this display protection is found on many flagship smartphones that are priced much higher than this smartphone. Overall, the look is good but when it comes to build, Realme has cut corners with a polycarbonate back.
Realme GT 6T Display:
The Realme GT 6T houses a larger 6.78-inch 1.5K (1264×2780 pixels) AMOLED display which has a screen-to-body ratio of around 20:9. This display is curved around the edges making it look premium. Since it is a 10-bit display, the viewing angles are great and colour reproduction is very good with deep blacks and blues. The display of the Realme GT 6T has an LTPO panel which refreshes at 120Hz.
Since it is an LTPO display, the refresh rate scales as low as 1Hz and goes up to 120Hz which is really great. Talking about the refresh rate, there are three different settings to choose from – High, Standard, and Auto Select. If you choose the Standard mode, the display refreshes at 60Hz only. Switching to High mode allows variable refresh rates of 60Hz, 90Hz, and 120Hz.
With the display set to Auto-Select mode, the display goes as low as 1Hz while you are viewing the content on the homepage, scales up to 60Hz while watching a video, and scales as high as 120Hz while playing games like COD Mobile. Combined with the 120Hz refresh rate, you get a 360Hz touch sampling rate for faster touch responses which can go as high as 2500Hz during gaming.
There is also a setting where you can set the application-specific refresh rate. For example, for COD Mobile, you can set the display to refresh at 30Hz or 60Hz manually. The display of the smartphone has 2160Hz PWM dimming which lowers the brightness to as low as 70 nits of brightness while viewing the display in the dark which is definitely good for human eyes.
The display of the Realme GT 6T can reach a peak brightness of 6000nits which in itself is a huge number as claimed by the brand but it is seen that only a few amount of pixels in the display exhibit this level of brightness. Under High Brightness Mode, the display can reach a brightness of around 1600nits, which is good. Also, the display is well visible under direct sunlight.
The display of the Realme GT 6T has three different colour settings to choose from—Vivid, Natural, and Pro modes, which include Cinematic and Brilliant. The Pro mode provides a colour temperature slider, where you can set the display to a warmer or cooler tone. Setting the display to Vivid and Pro modes provides punchier colours, covering the DCI-P3 gamut space, whereas Natural mode provides closer to realistic colours, covering the sRGB colour space.
There is a feature called AI Eye Comfort that automatically enables eye protection while watching any content on the display by preventing the blue light filter from being activated. The smartphone’s display has an optical in-display fingerprint scanner that works accurately and is faster. The display supports HDR on YouTube, and since Widevine L1 exists, you can stream HDR content on OTT platforms.
Netflix supports Dolby Vision, which provides great colour reproduction while viewing content on the display. Overall, the display is great for multimedia consumption.
Realme GT 6T Performance:
The Realme GT 6T houses a powerful Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 chipset which is based on an efficient 4nm process and has an octa-core configuration which includes 1×2.8 GHz Cortex-X4 core with 4×2.6 GHz Cortex-A720 cores and 3×1.9 GHz Cortex-A520 cores. This chipset is coupled with a powerful Adreno 732 GPU. This chipset is the successor to last year’s powerful Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 chipset.
In terms of daily tasks whether it is heavy tasks like rendering videos, playing games, etc. and even lighter tasks like scrolling webpages, streaming social media, etc. the smartphone handles all of them easily without breaking a sweat. In heavy games like BGMI, and COD Mobile, the smartphone easily runs at the highest graphics settings and the gameplay is very smooth without any kind of frame drops.
In BGMI, the smartphone provided smoother gameplay at HDR graphics with Extreme frame rates without any frame drops and similar was the experience with Smooth graphics with Extreme frame rates. After 3-4 hours of gameplay, the back of the smartphone felt slightly warmer but since the back is made of polycarbonate it does not feel warmer.
Realme has equipped the smartphone with a larger vapour cooling system that helps dissipate heat faster. In the CPU throttling test, the smartphone could easily maintain a sustained performance of around 80-85 per cent with minor throttling present. However, at times there is some throttling on the higher side with the sustained performance going around 65-70 per cent.
The benchmark scores are the best in class whether it is both Antutuv8 or Geekbench 6. The scores are almost close to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2-powered smartphones which is great. In terms of network connectivity, you get support for good carrier aggregation and there are around 9 bands of 5G.
The Realme GT 6T is available in four different variants – 8GB RAM with 128GB storage, 8GB RAM with 256GB storage, 12GB RAM with 256GB storage, and another 12GB RAM with 512GB storage where RAM is of LPDDR5X RAM but with 8GB RAM with 128GB storage, variant has UFS 3.1 speeds whereas all other variants have faster UFS 4.0 speeds.
Overall, performance and gaming are best in class in the premium mid-range segment.
Realme GT 6T Software:
The Realme GT 6T runs on the latest RealmeUI 5.0 which is based on Android 14. Like OxygenOS or ColourOS, RealmeUI is almost similar and the look and feel are similar. You get a lot of customizations where you can change icon shape and size, and accent colours, and you get multiple options to customize the Always-On display and also the fingerprint scanner animations.
Some other features include Smart Sidebar where you can store multiple applications in a bar which can be pulled when you swipe from the edge of the display on both sides, Split View enables you to use two applications simultaneously, App Cloner is present where you can create a clone of your application, etc. The Sidebar has a File Dock feature which enables you to save the file anywhere and use it.
Some of the AI features have also trickled down to this smartphone like AI Smart Removal where you can remove objects in an image and the background automatically gets adjusted based on the removed object, then there is another feature called AI Smart Loop and AI Screen Recognition where the former lets you select certain text or image and send to other applications.
Smart Sensing under Special Features provides two features – Air gestures and Double Tap to Scan where the former provides multiple gesture shortcuts to customize and use by hovering your hand over the display. The presence of bloatware is also very less except for some pre-installed applications. In terms of software support, the smartphone will receive another three years of AndroidOS updates and four years of security patches which is good.
Realme GT 6T Cameras:
The Realme GT 6T has a dual camera setup that includes a 50MP f/1.9 Sony LYT-600 sensor for the primary camera and another 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera. It does lack a telephoto camera which the Motorola Edge 50 Pro has that is priced similarly to the Realme GT 6T. On the front, there is a 32MP f/2.5 Sony IMX615 sensor for the camera.
The images captured during daylight from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have a good dynamic range. The colours look oversaturated with a slight amount of oversharpening in the background. The noise is very low in the background and the contrast is handled very well. But in some scenarios, there is a slight drop in contrast and sometimes white balance fluctuates.
There is a high resolution 50MP mode which saves 12.5MP images by default. These images have sharper details and provide good dynamic range with oversaturated colours but noise is on the slightly higher side. The HDR images from the primary camera come out with sharper details but colours look oversaturated with some oversharpening present.
The smartphone does not have a telephoto camera but you can use the main camera by applying a 2x digital zoom which results in images with sharper details, good dynamic range, and colours come out saturated but noise is slightly on the higher side. At night, the images from the primary camera come out with sharper details and good dynamic range, and exposure is also well handled.
The details in the shadows look good also. However, the 2x digital zoomed images do come out with softer details and the dynamic range comes out to be average with slightly higher noise in the background. The 8MP ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of images that come with sharper details but the details look a tad softer at times.
The contrast is slightly on the lower side and noise is slightly on the higher side. The colours look natural without any kind of oversharpening and the dynamic range is wide enough. The images from the ultrawide camera during the night come out with softer details, and noise is on the higher side, but colours look natural and the dynamic range comes out to be good.
In terms of portraits, the primary camera does a very good job as the dynamic range looks wider and the details look sharper. The edge detection is good and you get proper background blur which can be adjusted also. There is no dedicated macro camera here. In terms of selfies, the 32MP camera does a good job in terms of dynamic range and has sharper details but contrast is on the lower side.
The skin tones look good but look slightly undersaturated. In terms of videos, the primary camera can capture 4K videos at 60fps and the videos come out with sharper details, great dynamic range, colours look saturated, and the noise is much less in the background since there is OIS present. The ultrawide camera can record 1080p videos at 30fps only.
The videos from the ultrawide camera come out with softer details and the dynamic range looks average. There is a considerable amount of noise in the background but colours come out saturated almost close to that of the primary camera. The front camera can record 4K videos at 30fps which is great and the videos come out with sharper details, good dynamic range, and almost less noise in the background.
Realme GT 6T Battery Life:
The Realme GT 6T houses a larger 5500mAh battery which is good to see and combined with the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 chipset which is based on an efficient 4nm process, you can expect good battery life. The battery life can easily last for two days with normal usage which includes casual gaming, streaming social media, browsing webpages, etc.
With heavy usage that includes playing games like COD Mobile for 3-4 hours, rendering benchmarks, clicking photos and videos using the camera, etc. the smartphone easily lasts for a day with some battery left. The standard screen-on time with normal usage came around 8-9 hours which is really good and with heavy usage, the standard screen-on time came around 5.5-6 hours.
In terms of charging, Realme has equipped the smartphone with a 120W SuperVOOC fast charger inside the box which takes the smartphone from 0 to 100 per cent within 35-40 minutes and within 30 minutes it charges up to 93 per cent which is good.
Realme GT 6T Audio Quality:
The Realme GT 6T has a dual stereo speaker setup that sounds adequately louder and clearer with proper bass and treble. The sound does not feel muffled even at the highest volume settings. The areas near the camera vibrate when the sound is played at the highest settings. There is Dolby Atmos present for enhanced sound output while watching movies, playing games or listening to music.
Verdict:
As an overall smartphone, the Realme GT 6T is a good all-rounder smartphone and tries its best to be the perfect smartphone. It brings all the necessary specifications like a good design, a great display along with stereo speakers for multi-media consumption, flagship-level performance and gaming, a good set of cameras, good software experience, and battery life is great combined with support for fast charging.
The biggest strength is its performance which is almost flagship level and the solid gaming experience. However, there are fewer areas where Realme GT 6T could have been improved. In terms of design, the smartphone comes with a polycarbonate back which does not feel premium like a glass back, the LTPO display does not work properly i.e. it does not go as low as 1Hz as it stays at 30Hz most of the time when used at idle.
Though the software experience is good and feature-rich, there is little bloatware present. The smartphone provides solid performance but there is thermal throttling often noticed. Other than these few shortcomings, the Realme GT 6T is a solid smartphone that provides the best performance and gaming experience along with a great multimedia experience with solid battery life thus sacrificing the cameras slightly.
So if you are someone who does not consider the camera as the top priority and can go along with the polycarbonate design, then considering all other specifications, the Realme GT 6T is a perfect smartphone worth considering and will definitely outshine the competition out there.