realme just launched its most expected realme GT 6T smartphone in India today. This is a comeback smartphone for the company in the GT series after the GT 2 which was launched in India 2 years back. It has several features such as LTPO display, faster Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 SoC, and a large battery. Is this worth the price? Let us dive into the review and find out.
| Box Contents |
| Camera |
| Battery Life |
| Conclusion |
Box Contents
- realme GT 6T 12GB + 512GB in Fluid Silver colour
- 120W SUPERVOOC charger
- USB Type-C Cable
- Protective case
- SIM ejector
- Quick Start Guide and Warranty Information
Display, Hardware and Design
The realme GT 6T features a 6.78-inch (2780×1264 pixels) 1.5K AMOLED display with 1-120Hz refresh rate 8T LTPO display, which is better than any other display on phones in the price range.
The phone has 450 PPI pixel density. The display is bright since it has up to 6000 nits peak brightness, which works for HDR, and the global maximum brightness has also increased to 1600 nits It offers good colour output since it has 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, and the sunlight legibility is good as well.
You can select from vivid, Natural and Pro screen colour modes. I am also a fan of nature tone display feature, which adjusts the display based on the ambient lighting conditions.
The phone has a 2160Hz high-frequency dimming technology. There are also eye-protection features such as sleep mode, ambient color adaptation, DC dimming, and comprehensive eye protection to enhance user comfort and reduce eye strain. The phone has Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 protection.
The phone also has HDR 10 support, which works for YouTube, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, but HDR or Dolby Vision didn’t work for Netflix for some reason. You can enable video color boost from display settings, which increases the colors in select apps. There is also image sharpener option.
The phone doesn’t have a notification LED, but this has an always-on-display that shows contextual info and notifications all day or as per schedule. The phone has ultra narrow bezels side bezels of 1.36mm, making it compact to hold. It has strong vibration motor.
The phone has a tiny punch-hole that houses a 32-megapixel camera. Above the display, there is an earpiece on the top edge that doubles up as a secondary speaker. It has an in-display fingerprint scanner. There is a 1.94mm ultra-narrow bezel on the bottom.
Coming to the button placements and ports, the power button is present on the right side along with the volume rockers. There is nothing on the left side. The Dual SIM slot, primary microphone, USB Type-C port and the loudspeaker grill are present on the bottom. The secondary microphone is on the top, along with a speaker vent and an IR blaster.
The phone’s back cover has a nano-level mirror coating technology that undergoes over 30 meticulous processes to achieve, highlighting the contrast of bright and matte metal textures, said the company. Even though it is not glass, it offers a premium look. The stainless steel camera module, with 20% increase in hardness, ensures enhanced lens protection.
Camera
- 50MP rear camera with Sony LYT-600 sensor, OIS, f/1.8 aperture
- 8MP IMX355 112° ultra-wide camera with f/2.2 aperture
- 32MP front-facing camera with Sony IMX615 sensor, f/2.45 aperture
The camera UI in the realme UI 5 is familiar. There is Pro mode, Panorama, Macro, Flim, Slo-mo, Time-Lapse, Dual-View video, text scanner, starry mode and tilt-shift. The rear camera offers 12.5MP output after pixel binning, and the front camera images are 32MP in size. There is a new Camera QR code scanning feature.
Daylight shots were decent, and the dynamic range is better with auto HDR. 2X is good, but as you zoom in you lose details even though you get up to 20X zoom. The portrait mode offers a good edge detection. This drops the 2MP macro camera, which is a good thing.
The colors are good, but I felt the IMX890 or any other larger sensor would have done a better job. The night mode is useful, but it takes a few seconds to process. There is also a tripod mode. The 32MP front camera does a decent job in daylight, but doesn’t do much in low light. The bokeh shots are good, and the edge detection is decent.
Check out the camera samples.
It can record videos at up to 4K 60 fps, slow motion 1080p at 120fps, and the front camera can record at 4K 30fps videos finally. Ultra-wide camera shooting and Portrait video mode video with the main camera are limited to 1080p, 30 fps. There is OIS and EIS which does decent job. There is ultra-steady mode which is limited to 1080p 60fps.
Software, UI and Apps
It runs Android 14 based realme UI 5.0 out of the box. It has Android security patch for December 2023. The phone will get 3 Android updates and 4 years of security updates.
realme UI 5.0 offers improved self-developed technology for smooth performance, and enhanced safety and privacy tools. The phone also brings Air Gesture, and the usual set of software features present in other realme phones.
Apart from the usual set of realme apps and Google apps, it comes with several preloaded apps such as Facebook, Amazon, Snapchat, Myntra, Paytm, and LinkedIn. These apps can be uninstalled, but come back once the phone is reset. There are also Hot Apps and Hot Games. Since this has an IR blaster, there is an IR remote app which is useful.
Out of 12GB LPDD5X RAM, you get 11.05GB of usable RAM, and about 7GB of RAM is free when default apps are running in the background. It also has DRE or dynamic RAM expansion feature, which uses the built-in storage as RAM. This has up to 12GB of additional RAM expansion. Out of 512GB UFS 4.0 storage, you get about 457GB of free storage. The 128GB version uses UFS 3.1, and the other models use UFS 4.0.
Fingerprint sensor and Face unlock
It has an in-display fingerprint sensor that unlocks the phone quickly. You can add up to 5 fingerprints. You can also use the fingerprint for app local and payments in apps. Furthermore, you can change the fingerprint animation and also disable it, and also enable quick launch option to launch apps directly from the lockscreen by holding the fingerprint. The phone also has face unlock feature.
Music and Multimedia
YouTube Music is the default Music Player. It has customizable Smart, Movie, Game and Music modes, but doesn’t have Dolby Atmos. It doesn’t have FM Radio support. Audio through the stereo speakers is good without any distortion even in full volume. Audio through earphones is good as well.
This has Widevine L1, so that you can play HD content on Netflix and other streaming apps. It supports HDR content on YouTube, but this doesn’t work on Netflix for some reason. Hope this will be fixed in update.
Dual SIM and Connectivity
The realme GT 6T has support for n1/n3/n5/n8/n28A/n40/n41(2535-2655MHz)/n77/n78 SA and n1/n3/n41 (2535-2655MHz)/n78 NSA Network Bands in India. It has 4G Wi-Fi and VoLTE, with support for Carrier Aggregation on 4G. Other connectivity options include Wi-Fi 6 802.11 ax (2.4GHz + 5GHz), Bluetooth 5.4, GPS / GLONASS / Beidou. It has OTG support, and NFC support. Moving on, the call quality is good, and we did not face any call drops and the earpiece volume was loud.
The realme GT 6T’s body SAR is 0.368W/Kg and head SAR is at 1.175/Kg, which is well under the limit of 1.6 W/kg (over 1 g) in India.
Performance and Benchmarks
This is the first phone to be powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 SoC in India. It uses the same microarchitecture as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, but the CPU cores are underclocked and this uses a different GPU.
It uses 1 x Kryo Prime CPU (Arm Cortex-X4 based) at up to 2.8GHz, 4 x Kryo Performance CPUs (Arm Cortex-A720 based) at up to 2.6GHz and 3x Kryo Efficiency CPUs (Arm Cortex-A520 based) at up to 1.9GHz.
The SoC is fabricated using the TSMC 4nm Process Technology, same as Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. It promises 15% CPU performance improvements and 5% overall power savings compared to Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2. The phone has the 9-layer cooling system incorporates a 10014mm² 3D tempered dual VC.
There is 10870mm² large copper foil above the screen, a 7075mm² superconductive graphite in the screen compartment, a 10000mm² dual Stainless Steel Vapor Chamber, cooling gel, a 1420mm² mainboard top graphite copper foil, the PCB, a 800mm² bottom copper foil, a
5300mm² press plate support graphite, and an AL metal support.
The Adreno 732 GPU promises 45% performance improvements compared to 7+ Gen 2. We did not face any issues or frame drops in the graphic-intensive games like COD, BGMI and Genshin Impact. It reached maximum 43º in our testing indoors in 5G, but this might vary outdoors.
In 3D Mark wild life stress test, it scored 54.6% which is just average, but there was not throttling issue. The temperature shot up from 30 to 43 degrees, which is not much, thanks to the cooling solution. That said, check out some synthetic benchmark scores below.
As you can see, this is clearly close to the benchmarks of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, and is clear better than Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1.
Battery life
Coming to the battery life, the phone packs a 5500mAh (typical) battery, which is slightly bigger compared to older realme GT series phones. It can easily last for a day with heavy use and for 2 days with typical use.
I got close to 6 hours of screen on time with 2 days use, mostly on Wi-Fi, and occasional 5G use in 120Hz. Since the phone has support for 120W SuperVOOC fast charging, it can charge up to 50% in about 10 minutes, and 100% in less than half an hour. There are smart charging, option to stop charging at 80%, and the smart rapid charging can charge the device faster if the battery is too low.
Conclusion
At a starting price of Rs. 30,999, the realme GT 6T is a performance champ that ticks almost all the boxes since it has an LTPO display, a powerful SoC, a large battery and fast charging support. The camera set up could have been better.
Pricing and availability
The realme GT 6T is priced at Rs. 30,999 for the 8GB + 128GB, the 8GB + 256GB model costs Rs. 32,999, 12GB + 256GB model costs Rs. 35,999 and the top-end 12GB + 512GB model is priced at Rs. 39,999. It will be available from Amazon.in, realme.com and offline stores starting from May 29th.
Alternatives
If you spend more, there is iQOO Neo9 Pro which offers a better camera, and a slightly better performance with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. POCO F6 should be a direct competitor with a slightly faster Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, but it should cost more.
Pros
- 1.5K AMOLED 120Hz LTPO display is brilliant
- Smooth performance and good gaming performance
- Eye-catching design
- Long battery life with 120W fast charging
Cons
- Average camera performance
- Bloatware