realme GT 6 hands-on: A pretty phone that cuts the right corners

Premium Android smartphones have only been getting more expensive recently. The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is $100 more than the same model was in 2023, pushing it to a whopping $1,299 at the low end. Even the Google Pixel 8 Pro, compared to the Pixel 7 Pro, jumped by $100 to $999. These ultra-premium phones continuing to rise in price does have a silver lining, though, which is that there are now gaps in the $600-$900 range that other companies can fill. In that vein, enter a new contender: the realme GT 6.

Poised as a “flagship killer,” the realme GT 6 attempts to deliver most of the premium features you would want from an expensive flagship but with a lower price tag. I had some hands-on time with the GT 6 and have some thoughts on it, so let’s get into it.

Design

The first thing I said to myself when I took the realme GT 6 out of the box was, “Huh, I haven’t seen this before.” The phone has a two-tone mirrored back. Most of the back is frosted — i.e., slightly reflective — while the portion surrounding the large rear camera module is polished, giving you a pure mirror. It’s a unique look that might be a “love it or hate it” kind of thing, but I quite like it.

While the back makes the phone look cool, it also has a purpose. Using the reflective back, you can more easily line up a selfie shot using the rear cameras. Doing so will produce better results than using the front-facing camera, making the mirrored back a sort of lo-fi alternative to just spinning your phone around, hitting the shutter, and hoping for the best. Check the photos below to see me lining up a shot of myself.

Notably, this was a method used a long, long time ago with phones that didn’t yet have front-facing cameras. I remember the LG Prada — the first phone with a capacitive touch screen, beating the original iPhone to market by a few months — had a small mirror on the back for this very reason. So really, realme has just taken an old idea and modernized it, but it’s still great to see here.

Speaking of the back of the phone, the GT 6 comes in two colors: Fluid Silver and Razor Green, the latter of which is the version I got my hands on. Both colors are nice, but the Razor Green model isn’t nearly as reflective as Fluid Silver. If you envision yourself using that selfie trick I just described a lot, you’ll probably have an easier time with Fluid Silver since it looks basically just like a real mirror.

Of course, all this mirrored glass makes the GT 6 a fingerprint magnet. Seriously, I couldn’t even gently touch the phone without leaving fingerprints behind. Also, if you plan on dropping the whole thing into a protective case, the finish doesn’t really mean anything, so keep that in mind if this is a phone you’re interested in buying.

Outside of the back and the colors, the phone follows recent premium smartphone design trends. It has a huge 6.78-inch display with some steep curves on the sides. The display has a nice resolution of 2,780 x 1,264 with a 120Hz refresh rate and can also get very bright, but I’ll touch more on that in the next section.

Finally, at 199g, the phone isn’t super heavy but still feels premium. As far as big phones with curvy screens go, I found it relatively comfortable to use with one hand, and it never felt like I was using a mid-ranger.

Hardware and features

The three most notable hardware aspects of the realme GT 6 are the processor, the display, and the battery. Let’s start with the processor.

Under the hood, you’ll find a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 3. Launched in March 2024, this is essentially a slightly weaker version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which is the processor you’ll find in the OnePlus 12 and the Galaxy S24 series (in certain locations). Despite its launch a few months ago, we haven’t seen many phones actually include it, making the realme GT 6 one of the first to market with the chipset.

For day-to-day usage, the processor will deliver everything you need. It even will be more than capable for high-performance tasks, such as gaming. For example, it supports PUBG Mobile gameplay at 120fps and plays Genshin Impact at a silky smooth 1.5K resolution. There’s even a feature, awkwardly called Geek Power Tuning (seriously, realme, re-think the name of this), that allows you to customize CPU/GPU performance to your needs. Obviously, all the tweaking in the world won’t make it quite as good as a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 phone, but the 8s Gen 3 is cheaper, which will prevent the realme GT 6 from hitting those aforementioned ultra-premium prices.

The display is the second notable hardware feature of this phone. In its marketing, realme is making a big deal of calling this “the brightest smartphone display ever,” which is technically true. By that, I mean, technically speaking, the phone is capable of hitting an absolutely bonkers 6,000 nits — nearly three times the peak brightness of the Google Pixel 8 Pro and Galaxy S24 Ultra. However, you will never, ever see that brightness during normal usage. In fact, the normal peak brightness of the GT 6 is only 1,600 nits, which is much lower than the peaks for the Galaxy S24 Ultra (2,600 nits) and Pixel 8 Pro (2,400 nits). To hit the 6,000 nits mark, you’ll need to manually force it using Android’s Developer Options, which makes it a silly parlor trick, essentially.

Parlor tricks aside, the display is still very nice. But don’t believe the jargon — the GT 6’s display is brighter than most, but not as bright as some in real-world scenarios.

The third notable aspect of this phone is its battery and how fast it can charge. The GT 6 has an enormous 5,500mAh cell, which is 500mAh bigger than what you’ll find in the S24 Ultra and the Pixel 8 Pro. You can also charge that battery much, much faster than either of those two other phones, thanks to SUPERVOOC technology bringing 120W wired charging speeds to the GT 6. Thankfully, the phone comes with the charger needed to meet that speed, which promises a battery topped off from zero to full in just around 28 minutes.

Unfortunately, the trade-off here is that the GT 6 doesn’t support wireless charging at all. Still, when you can go from 0% to 50% in around 10 minutes with a wire, wireless charging might seem like the weaker alternative.

Moving on, the camera system on the realme GT 6 is pretty good. You’ve got a solid 50MP primary shooter with a Sony LYT-808 sensor and optical image stabilization (OIS). That’s paired with a Sony IMX355 ultrawide with an 8MP resolution and a 50MP telephoto with 2x optical zoom on top of a Samsung JN5 sensor. The front-facing sensor has a resolution of 32MP. All in all, this is a solid setup. However, there are some notable deficiencies, such as the lack of 8K video support in any mode, which is thanks to the processor not supporting it.

Finally, the GT 6 comes with up to 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM and up to 512GB of UFS 4.0 storage. Maxing those specs out should give you all the power and space you could need.

Specs

The specs of the realme GT 6 are pretty awesome, especially considering that they either meet or exceed most of the core specs of ultra-premium flagships from other brands.

realme GT 6 hands-on verdict: The price will be the deciding factor

As of writing this, I still don’t know how much this phone costs (Update: Check out the price info here). When asked, realme told me it will be “under $850,” which would make it at least $150 cheaper than the list price of a Pixel 8 Pro ($999 at Amazon) and at least $450 cheaper than the lowest list price of a Galaxy S24 Ultra ($1419.99 at Amazon). Those are some significant savings, though considering the phone is unlikely to be officially released in the US, we’ll also need to see how that converts to local currencies in Europe and other regions.

Assuming the final price sticks to realme’s promise, I can absolutely imagine recommending this to someone who wants a beautiful and powerful Android phone but doesn’t want to spend more than $900 on it. After all, the only major caveats here are the lack of wireless charging, the camera hardware not being as good as a Pixel 8 Pro or Galaxy S24 Ultra, and realme’s weak software support history, which is usually locked to just two years. Outside of those things, the GT 6 has everything the average person could want and then some.

Until I know that price, I can’t really say whether or not you should grab a realme GT 6. For now, though, I can confidently say the realme GT 6 is a very pretty phone that cuts the right corners to keep the price significantly lower than the competition, which is always good to see.

Stay tuned for the final price reveal from realme coming soon. In the meantime, let me know what you think of the GT 6 in the poll above and the comments below.

FAQ