I bought realme GT5.
High performance in a beautiful body
The realme GT5 is powered by a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.
The back is a specially processed glass body with a smooth and beautiful curved surface.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 logo is visible on the design, which is surrounded by LED lights that glow when charging or notifications.
This review is done on the 12GB+256GB version, RMX3820_13.1.1.140 (CN01).
- Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for high performance and power savings
- 144Hz flat display
- Frame interpolation and upscaling available
- Unique rear LED & Snapdragon logo
- 5,240mAh battery with 150W charging support
- No rattling when placed on a desk
- Easy to get fingerprints on the back and slippery
- Tight performance limitation
- Widevine L3
- Not many bands supported
| realme GT5 (RMX3820) | |
|---|---|
| OS | Android 13 |
| RAM | 12GB / 16GB LPDDR5X |
| Storage | 256GB / 512GB UFS 4.0 |
| SoC | Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 |
| Display | 6.74inch 2772 x 1240 Aspect ratio 20.12:9 144Hz OLED |
| Size | 163.13 × 75.38 × 8.9mm |
| Weight | 205g |
| SIM | nano SIM + nano SIM |
| Rear Camera | 50MP (OIS / Sony IMX890) + 8MP (Ultra-wide Sony IMX355) + 2MP (Macro GalaxyCore GC02M1) |
| Front Camera | 16MP (Samsung S5K3P9) |
| Battery | 5,240mAh |
| USB Port | USB Type-C (USB 2.0) |
| Bands | GSM：850/900/1800 CDMA1X：BC0 WCDMA:B1/B5/B8 4G：FDD-LTE:B1/B3/B5/B7/B8/B28A TDD-LTE:B34/B38/B39/B40/B41 5G NR：n1/n3/n5/n8/n28a/n41/n77/n78 |
Index
- 1 High performance in a beautiful body
- 2 Display: 144Hz and low touch latency
- 3 Rear: Beautiful curved surface
- 4 Camera: beautiful despite cosmetic phone
- 5 Speaker: Stronger treble
- 6 Port: Fast charging at 150W
- 7 Performance: Stronger throttling
- 8 OS: More features than OnePlus
- 9 Bootloader Unlockable
- 10 Conclusion
Instructions, protective case, charging cable and charger are included.
Protective film is attached from the beginning.
Although the charger is capable of up to 150W, it is limited to 100W fast charging in 100V regions.
Display: 144Hz and low touch latency
The realme GT5 features a 6.74″ 2772 x 1240 resolution display.
The bezel has been minimized by eliminating the plastic bracket.
It is flat and has no edges, and the edges outside the display area are slightly curved.
The edges are not difficult to see and protective film is easy to apply.
It is AB641AB641010 made by Tianma and the array is diamond pixels.
When measuring brightness with the LX-1336B during all-white HDR video playback with automatic brightness adjustment on, it reached a maximum of 905 nits.
Outdoors, we were able to confirm that the brightness would be 666nits~.
Note that the 905 nits above is with “Bright HDR Video Mode” enabled.
With it off, the brightness was only 444 nits, which is quite low for HDR.
Thanks to the Pixelworks X7 chip, frame interpolation is possible, and smooth video playback is possible with frame interpolation to 60FPS or 120FPS.
This can be used on YouTube and other apps.
The screen resolution can be selected between 1.5K and 1080p, and the refresh rate supports 144Hz.
The maximum refresh rate can be set individually for each application.
When the touch sampling rate was measured with the Touch Sample Rate Tester, the Input Event Invoke Rate was 120 Hz and the Movement Rate was about 370 Hz for both single-touch and multi-touch in game mode.
The touch latency measured by the WALT Latency Timer was 11ms, and the screen rendering latency was 24.5ms, for a total of 35.5ms.
As expected, the latency is low for a realme, although it does not reach the level of a gaming smartphone.
Drag latency was quite small at 3.5ms, and it seems to be particularly responsive to swipes.
Unfortunately, it is Widevine L3.
It is equipped with an in-screen fingerprint sensor and authentication is highly accurate.
Rear: Beautiful curved surface
The back is made with the industry’s first integrated full-coverage hot-forged glass process, which was completed after 15 months of research and development.
The border with the camera bump is smooth and curved, and thanks to its full width, it does not rattle when placed on a desk.
While the design is unique and beautiful, the glossy glass is prone to fingerprints and is quite slippery, so care should be taken when charging or dropping the device.
The area next to the camera is equipped with an LED strip light (Pulse Light).
The inner square of the LED light, when reflected by light, reveals the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 logo.
Pulse Light can be turned on for incoming calls, notifications, charging, etc.
When receiving calls or playing music, the light pattern can be changed according to the sound.
It weighs 208.6g.
Camera: beautiful despite cosmetic phone
realme GT5 is triple cameras:
- 50MP (OIS / Sony IMX890)
- 8MP (Ultra-wide Sony IMX355)
- 2MP (Macro GalaxyCore GC02M1)
Hand-held photos are saved here.
The realme GT5 is more about SoC performance and design than camera, but thanks to the SONY IMX890, the main camera is clean enough to take beautiful pictures.
The saturation is slightly higher, but easily closer to the actual color.
Even at 2x zoom, the image looks great and is fine for light uploading to social networking sites.
Even though the camera is equipped with OIS, it may not compose well due to camera shake when shooting night scenes.
This phone is not a camera oriented phone so I think it is adequate.
Speaker: Stronger treble
The realme GT5 is equipped with stereo speakers.
The volume balance is different on the left and right sides, with the bass sounding crisp and the treble sounding stronger.
Dolby Atmos supported.
The audio output delay was 34.6 ms when measured with the WALT Latency Timer.
Bluetooth supports AAC / aptX / aptX HD / aptX TWS+ / aptX Adaptive as well as LDAC.
LHDC can only be used with OPPO / OnePlus / realme products.
I don’t see the point of limiting it, and if that is the case, I would like it to be clearly stated in the product specifications.
Port: Fast charging at 150W
The realme GT5 supports 150W fast charging.
It can display the maximum battery capacity as a percentage, and has options for optimized charging and smart fast charging to reduce battery degradation.
There is an infrared port on the top that allows the realme GT5 to be used as a remote control for home appliances and other devices.
The power and volume buttons are located on the right side.
Performance: Stronger throttling
The realme GT5 is powered by a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.
Perhaps the fear of heat generation is strong, and performance is limited even at temperatures as low as 40°C, except in GT mode (performance mode).
In Geekbench 6, the package name disguised version (i.e., not affected by the manufacturer’s illegal boost) had single-core 1558 and multi-core 5129, while the normal version had single-core 2027 and multi-core 5523.
Because of the difference in scores, it appears that the performance is controlled by the package name determination.
In the 3DMark Wild Life Extreme Stress Test…to my surprise, it was forcefully terminated in the middle of the test due to over heating.
The battery temperature was only 40°C so I think it’s too fast for limiting.
In GT mode, the forced termination threshold is loosened and the system will not terminate at around 40°C.
With rooting and disguised as if the temperature were 30°C for the throttling control code (→ throttling disabled), the battery temperature rose to 50°C with a score of 3566 → 3264.
PCMark Work 3.0 (disguised package name), which measures performance in everyday use such as document manipulation, scored 10078.
This is quite low for a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 model, indicating that the performance is limited to the minimum for everyday use to reduce heat generation.
A high PCMark score is not necessarily better than a low PCMark score, and it is sufficient if the minimum score is achieved.
UFS 4.0 storage (Samsung KLUEG4RHHD-B0G1) and LPDDR5X memory (SK hynix).
Sequential and random writes are top class speeds, and reads are there.
It may be a tuning to eliminate stress when installing apps, taking pictures, etc.
Playing Genshin in GT mode, highest quality, 60FPS setting, Fontaine (underwater to land) and using WeTest PerfDog measured an average of 57.5 FPS with a power consumption of 95.30 mW per FPS.
It is quite power-saving.
Battery temperatures rose to a maximum of about 41°C.
In balanced mode, the average was 52.9 FPS.
The graph shows that after 7 minutes, the performance is gradually limited and the FPS is decreasing.
15 minutes of play at the highest quality on Honkai: Star Rail averaged 48.312 FPS, with an average consumption of 137 mW per FPS.
CPU and GPU temperatures were restricted immediately after rising to nearly 80°C, and then were restricted in several stages thereafter.
OS: More features than OnePlus
Although it has the same ColorOS as OPPO and OnePlus (just a different name), realme UI has slightly more features that can be used, such as changing screen resolution, setting refresh rate for each app, and displaying seconds on the status bar.
It’s not that it can’t be achieved hardware-wise, and I hope OnePlus will release it…
Gesture controls are abundant, and a double tap can be used to turn the screen on and off, as well as to write text to trigger an action.
With the additional gesture, you can choose any app you like.
There is a feature called game-specific RAM, which allows specific games to occupy memory.
Android’s style is to use up as much memory as it has, but this feature will allow games to remain as a priority even if non-game applications start to eat memory.
In game mode, some applications such as Genshin can use a frame interpolation function called Frame Booster to boost the frame rate to 144FPS (48FPS x 3).
Unfortunately, newer games such as Honkai: Star Rail are not supported at this time.
In particular, horizontal camera movement becomes much smoother. However, the initial movement of camera movement sometimes felt heavy, such as with Nahida’s long-press skill, so it may be better to turn it off in situations where immediate responsiveness is required.
Super resolution is an upscaling feature that sharpens the image and can be added to game mode for any application.
Note that frame interpolation and other operations are automatically stopped at high temperatures.
There is also a feature that allows the CPU clock to be fixed in non-root mode.
…However, only a few Chinese games support this.
It can save power in games that require performance as well as in games that do not require excessive performance, and I hope that it will be made freely available for other games in the future.
Bootloader Unlockable
There is no official app for Bootloader Unlock application yet, but you can use DeepTesting_v1.0.1.apk for other models to apply and it will be allowed in a few tens of seconds.
After being allowed, press “Start deep testing” to enter the Bootloader and you can BLU with fastboot flashing unlock.
対応してると思われるDeepTestingのapkをアップロードしておきました
— nakajimegame (@nakajimegame) September 7, 2023
この2つを触ってるうちにクエリが通ったみたいで、GT Neo5などと同様にfastbootに入ることができますhttps://t.co/tJ7NH3TCam
KernelSU is easy to use for rooting. The kernel of android13-5.15.74 can be used.
With the Magisk module I created, you can enable location history, near-by share, etc.
Conclusion
- Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for high performance and power savings
- 144Hz flat display
- Frame interpolation and upscaling available
- Unique rear LED & Snapdragon logo
- 5,240mAh battery with 150W charging support
- No rattling when placed on a desk
- Easy to get fingerprints on the back and slippery
- Tight performance limitation
- Widevine L3
- Not many bands supported
Widevine L3, despite the drawback of fewer supported bands, offers smooth and clear images thanks to frame interpolation and upscaling that can be used in games and video applications.
The touch latency is small, and the GT mode provides decent performance, so it can be used for both those who want to enjoy a relaxing experience with higher image quality and those who demand the highest performance.