Should you pay more for a flagship when Realme’s tech is so cheap?

This story was originally published 2021/03/04
12:08pm PSTon Mar 4, 2021 and last updated 2021/06/16
1:39am PDTon Jun 16, 2021. 

The smartphone market’s funny in that we’re both seeing the release of some of the most expensive models ever made, while also flagship performance comes to much more affordable handsets. Now the Realme GT is showing just how much you can get for not much cash, with a Snapdragon 888 under the hood and a price tag of just $430.

The phone was first teased at MWC Shanghai this year and has now finally been announced in the Chinese market. Apart from the flagship Qualcomm chip, there are a few other things that make it stand out, including the dual-tone leather variant that’s reminiscent of the OnePlus Concept One. There’s a 6.43-inch 120Hz Super AMOLED screen for viewing pleasure that boasts of an impressive 360Hz touch sampling rate.

The Snapdragon 888 is accompanied by up 12GB of LPDRR5 RAM and up to 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage, a combination that should deliver excellent performance. There’s also a stainless steel VC cooling system that claims to fully cover core heat sources and “significantly” reduce temperatures.

The camera stack is comprised of a 64MP Sony IMX686 sensor, an 8MP f/2,4 ultrawide, and a 2MP macro sensor. There’s a 16MP camera at the front for selfies.

Keeping the GT running is a 4,500mAh battery that can be juiced pretty quickly with the 65W fast charger in the box. This is also one of the first phones from Realme running Android 11 out of the box, with Realme UI 2.0 on top.

The Realme GT is currently on sale only in China and has an asking price of CNY 2799 (~$432) for the 8GB/128GB variant and CNY 3299 (~$510) for the 12GB/256GB variant. There’s no word on international availability yet, but it may make a trip to markets like Europe in the near future.