Realme
Smartphones

Realme GT 2 Pro review

₹ 57,999

(12GB+256GB)

Sambit Satpathy 19 Apr 2022 03:36 PM

For someone comfortable swimming in the shallow end or the middle of the pool, it’s not always smooth sailing when venturing into the deep end. It’s an analogy that most smartphone brands in India will relate to. Despite the tide being against them, Realme is venturing into the deep end again with the confidence of Michael Phelps. 
The new Realme GT 2 Pro is the company’s most expensive smartphone till date. It offers a comfortable form factor with unique design elements, and flagship-grade specs, while keeping the entry-level price tag under ₹50K. Having spent a few weeks putting it under the lens, here’s our Realme GT 2 Pro review.

Design: Notepad on-the-go

Realme has once again collaborated with Japanese designer Naoto Fukasawa to come up with a unique design that stands out in the sea of metal and glass bodies. This time around, the theme is paper. 
The phone’s rear panel is made using a bio-based polymer with finely engraved zigzag texture that reminds you of high-quality letter-writing paper. Like a letterhead, the Realme logo and Fukasawa’s signature are neatly placed on the top-right corner.

But what really blew our minds was how the back panel doesn’t only look like paper, but behaves like one as well. You can actually use a pencil to write on the panel, and even erase it. In essence you have a high-quality notepad everywhere you go. If only we could remember to carry a pencil and eraser with us all the time. 
The candybar design and form factor is just the right size for one-handed usage. It is easy to grip the phone and at no point were we worried about dropping it. Our only grouch is the missing IP rating. While it’s not a deal breaker, water and dust resistance is something we’ve come to expect from flagship phones.

Display: Poppin’

Equally impressive is the 6.7in QHD+ 120Hz AMOLED screen, which delivers excellent colours, more than enough brightness when outdoors, and decent viewing angles. Whether you’re reading stories on the Stuff website or watching your favourite OTT content, you won’t find much to complain about. 
Aiding the multimedia experience are dual stereo speakers, which are loud with a surprising amount of depth. Nestled under the display is a fingerprint scanner that is aesthetically placed, and is quick to recognise your prints and unlock the phone. No complaints here either.

Performance: Smooth as silk

Powering the smartphone is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip, and needless to say, performance is silky smooth. Basic multitasking and office-related work are handled with ease, and so are graphics-intensive games. 
Asphalt 9: Legends and CoD Mobile worked like a charm with little to no drops in frame rates. Under stress, the phone reaches Delhi’s summer temperatures, but at no point does it get overly uncomfortable to hold. Realme says that there’s a larger than usual cooling solution under the hood, and whatever it is, it is clearly doing its job well.

A lot of the smooth performance is also down to the Realme UI, which has matured over time. It is fast and smooth without being overly colourful or animated like interfaces from other Chinese brands. It’s far from perfect though. 
There are a bunch of preloaded apps that can thankfully be uninstalled. Then there’s the Glance screen, which shows annoying ads on the lock screen. Now there’s a way to disable glance from the Settings menu, but it is far from straightforward. It is unlikely that casual users will spend the time digging through the settings menu.

Battery: Fast charging on a leash

This level of top-notch performance doesn’t come at the expense of battery life. The battery on the phone was easily able to last a day with about 6-7 hours or screen time. Much of our usage involved browsing the net, endlessly scrolling through social media, checking emails and clicking photos. Even with a bit of heavier usage that involves gaming and watching OTT content, the battery was able to trudge through till the evening. 
The GT 2 Pro isn’t the fastest charging phone around, but 65W is still fast enough for most intents and purposes. It took us a shade above half hour to juice up the battery. The phone however needs to be leashed for charging. In other words, there’s no support for wireless charging, which is a feature that’s quite common among phones in this range.

Cameras: Into a different realm

This brings us to what is clearly a USP of the smartphone – the microscopic lens. It gives you the power of Ant-Man to look into an entirely different realm. With microscope mode enabled, you can go really close to the subject and see what’s impossible to see with the naked eye.

It might come across as a tad gimmicky, but there’s no denying the fun we had in clicking photos with the microscope lens and asking people to guess the objects. Equally gimmicky, yet fun to use, is the 150-degree fisheye mode. 
The primary 50MP Sony IMX766 camera is surprisingly good with its ability to capture fantastic amounts of details, HDR, and good dynamic range. With Realme having significantly improved image processing, the resultant photos are far better than the cameras on the OnePlus 10 Pro. The camera is quite capable at shooting photos in low light too with enough details captured in night mode.

Some might rue the missing telephoto lens, but again it is not a deal breaker. The 32MP front camera is equally capable at capturing good selfies.

Verdict: Should you buy it?

Realme has managed to make a smooth transition from the mid-range to the premium segment with the GT 2 Pro. It is a no-nonsense phone that gets a lot of things right from design, form factor, performance to the cameras. Though it misses out on a couple of features, they are unlikely to influence buying decisions. 
Realme has also done a fantastic job at keeping the entry-level price at ₹49,999, which undercuts other flagship devices from brands like OnePlus, Samsung, and others.

Stuff Says

A no-nonsense flagship device with a distinctive design and sensible price tag
Good stuff
Bad stuff

  1. Distinctive design

  1. Gorgeous display

  1. Top-notch performance

  1. Microscopic camera

  1. No water resistance

  1. No wireless charging support

  1. Lockscreen and UI ads

Specifications
Display: 6.7in QHD+ AMOLED 120Hz refresh rate
Chipset: Snapdragon 8 Gen 1
GPU: Adreno 730
Battery: 5,000mAh 65W fast charging
Rear Cameras: 50MP + 50MP ultra-wide + 2MP macro
Front Cameras: 32MP
Software: Android 12 (Realme UI 3.0)
Dimensions: 163 x 74.7 x 8.18 mm
Weight: 189 grams