Is the Realme GT 6 the best premium mid-range smartphone to buy in 2024?
Realme GT 6 is available in Fluid Silver (pictured) and Razor Green colourways
Realme GT 6 — the company's latest arrival in the GT series of smartphones — is equipped with premium mid range specifications, while keeping the price around the Rs. 40,000 mark. This handset is powered by Qualcomm's recently announced Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset, and is equipped with a 50-megapixel triple rear camera setup, as well as a 32-megapixel front facing camera. The Realme GT 6 also packs a 5,500mAh battery that can be charged at 120W with the included SuperVOOC charger. The company has also equipped this smartphone with AI features, but does it have what it takes to compete with similarly priced smartphones? Find out in our review of the smartphone.
Realme GT 6 price
Realme GT 6 price starts at Rs. 40,999 — this is for the base model that is equipped with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of inbuilt storage, while the 12GB+256GB and 16GB + 512GB variants will set you back by Rs. 42,999 and Rs. 44,999, respectively.
The company sent me the Realme GT 6 in a Fluid Silver colourway, and the handset is also available in a Razor Green colour option.
Realme GT 6 Review: Design
The design of the newly launched Realme GT 6 appears quite similar to the more affordable GT 6T model, down to the curved edges off the display, the rear camera module arrangement, and colour options. However, unlike its cheaper sibling, the Realme GT 6 has a glass panel that has a slightly more premium feel.
Realme has equipped the handset's rear panel with a mirror like section that houses the triple rear camera setup and doubles up as a handy pocket mirror. It has a smooth finish and attracts a lot of fingerprints, smudges, and dust. This is also the case for the rest of the panel, but the cloudy finish is better at hiding them. The cameras are on one side, which means that the phone wobbles when placed on its back, without the included TPU cover.
On the front, there's a curved display with Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 protection. During the three weeks that I spent using the Realme GT 6, the phone's tall 6.78-inch screen was mostly easy to use, if I used both hands. It didn't get in the way of scrolling through apps, even when my fingers were resting on the curved edges.
There's a speaker grille at the bottom edge along with a USB Type-C port, while the right side of the phone houses the volume and power buttons. At the top, Realme has included an infrared transmitter that can be used to control several household appliances. The sides of the phone have a metallic finish that are cool to the touch.
Realme ships the GT 6 with a charging brick, a USB charging cable, and a TPU cover that shows the reflective portion of the rear panel. I ended up using the TPU cover throughout the time I tested the phone as the sides are a little slippery. The included cover has a slightly raised section on the rear panel that protects the camera module.
Realme GT 6 Review: Specifications and software
The Realme GT 6 has an octa-core Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chip with an Adreno 735 GPU, and this 4nm mobile processor has one Arm Cortex X4 core clocked at 3.0GHz, and four Cortex-A720 and three Cortex-A520 cores clocked at 2.8GHz and 2GHz, respectively. The processor is paired with up to 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM.
As far as software is concerned, the Realme GT 6 runs on Android 14 out-of-the-box, with the company's Realme UI 5 skin on top. The handset comes with five preinstalled third-party apps — Amazon, Finshell Pay, Myntra, ORoaming, Snapchat — that can be uninstalled, but it's disappointing to see these on a phone that costs more than Rs. 40,000.
The software on the Realme GT 6 adds useful features on top of Google's operating system including a dedicated gaming mode, ‘air gestures', and the ability to use a pair of wired earphones and a wireless headset at the same time.
This is also Realme's first AI-branded phone, and the company has equipped the GT 6 with its ‘Next AI' that improves low light camera performance, allows you to remove objects from photos, and suggests actions to perform by analysing the content of your screen. Realme says that the phone will get three Android OS and security updates followed by a fourth year of security updates.
On the connectivity front, the Realme GT 6 offers support for Wi-Fi 6, 5G, 4G LTE, Bluetooth 5.4, GPS, as well as a USB Type-C port for charging and data transfers. The company has also equipped the handset with an IR transmitter that can control a wide range of appliances — I tested it with a TV, home theatre system, and a few air conditioners during the time I spent testing this phone.
Realme GT 6 Review: Performance
With its Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset and ample RAM, the Realme GT 6 is capable of handling both day-to-day tasks and demanding workloads with no issues. This included editing a 4K video and exporting it on InShot, hours of gaming, and lots of browsing the web and social media apps.
I tested Genshin Impact and Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile on the Realme GT 6 on the highest supported settings selected by default in both games. These are two of the most demanding titles you can play on an Android phone, and there was no lag, stuttering, throttling or overheating, even after an hour of gaming. The built-in gaming mode also lets you turn on optimisations for HDR content, touch response, and pick between battery saving or performance modes.
The Realme GT 6 was on par or slightly ahead with the Poco F6, its rival with the same Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 processor, on most synthetic tests. You can refer to the table below to see how the phone fared in both CPU and graphics benchmarks, compared to the Poco phone as well another handset with a slightly more powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip, the iQoo Neo 9 Pro.
| Benchmark | Realme GT 6 | Poco F6 | iQoo Neo 9 Pro |
|---|---|---|---|
| Geekbench 6 Single Core | 1944 | 1835 | 2050 |
| Geekbench 6 Multi Core | 4895 | 4693 | 5741 |
| AnTuTu v10 | 1,405,190 | 1,457,491 | 1,585,868 |
| PCMark Work 3.0 | 18,828 | 15,743 | 13,319 |
| 3DMark Wild Life | Maxed Out | Maxed Out | Maxed Out |
| 3DMark Wild Life Unlimited | 11325 | 11734 | 12789 |
| 3DMark Sling Shot | Maxed Out | Maxed Out | Maxed Out |
| 3DMark Sling Shot Extreme | Maxed Out | Maxed Out | Maxed Out |
| GFXBench Car Chase | 60 | 71 | 85 |
| GFXBench Manhattan 3.1 | 60 | 112 | 119 |
| GFXBench T-Rex | 60 | 120 | 120 |
Like most phones launched this year, the Realme GT 6 runs on Android 14, with Realme UI 5. The software feels well optimised, there are no promotional messages, and a few preinstalled apps can either be disabled or uninstalled. RAM management is optimal, and I didn't notice any recently used apps being kicked out of memory when I switched back to them. Like other Realme handsets, you have to agree to separate privacy and usage agreements before opening some system apps.
The Realme GT 6 features a 6.78-inch Full-HD+ (1,264×2,780 pixels) LTPO AMOLED screen with a dynamic refresh rate that ranges between 1Hz and 120Hz, and a 360Hz touch sampling rate. The display gets plenty bright when automatic brightness is enabled, and you can see details on the screen even when you're outdoors and using the phone in bright sunlight. There's a toggle that lets you ramp up the screen brightness beyond the original limit, but it also comes at the cost of increased battery drain.
There's a 5,500mAh battery powering this Realme handset and it lasted for 21 hours and 7 minutes during our HD battery video loop test. In terms of actual usage, I managed to get about 7 hours of screen on time before I had to plug it into the charger at 5 percent. It can be fully charged in 29 minutes on average, using the included 120W SuperVOOC charging brick. The phone has a glass back, but there's no support for wireless charging on the handset.
Realme GT 6 Review: Cameras
The Realme GT 6 is equipped with three rear cameras — a 50-megapixel primary camera with a Sony LYT-808 sensor, an 8-megapixel ultra-wide angle camera with a Sony IMX355 sensor, and a 50-megapixel telephoto camera with a Samsung JN5 sensor. The handset also has a 32-megapixel selfie camera on the front with an unspecified sensor.
The best camera sensor on the handset is the primary camera, which captures images that are clear with accurate colours. Zooming into these images shows that there is enough detail, assuming there's enough light. In low-light scenarios, the camera still captures good photos in the default mode, and you can switch to a dedicated Night mode that takes brighter images in under a second.
The ultra-wide angle camera offers images with a considerably lower resolution and slightly darker than the primary camera, but it's handy for clicking larger subjects that aren't too far away. There's also no noticeable warping around the edges. In low-light scenarios, the camera captures photos that have less detail compared to the primary camera, and I found myself using the latter when there wasn't enough lighting.
If you have subjects that are far away, the telephoto camera on the Realme GT 6 can capture sharp images at 2x optical zoom, along with an additional 4x zoom option. The colours on images captured by the telephoto camera are slightly less vivid than the primary camera. In darker scenarios, zooming in on distant subjects produces photos with a little bit of noise and softening. If you zoom past 15x, the camera interface displays an indicator that tells you when to hit the capture button.
The primary and telephoto cameras let you capture video at up to 4K/ 60fps, but if you want to use the built-in ultra steady mode, you'll need to record at 1080p/ 60fps and use the primary camera — this is the best option when recording videos while walking around. The ultra-wide angle camera lets you capture videos at up to 1080p/ 30fps.
For selfies, the front facing camera can deliver detailed images after you disable the ‘beautification' features. The photos captured by the selfie camera look good when there's enough light, and slightly blurry in low-light scenarios.
You can also use the primary and telephoto camera to record videos in Dolby Vision, at up to 4K/ 30fps, and while these videos are brighter and offer more contrast, it's worth noting that you can only view them on Dolby Vision compatible displays. Meanwhile, videos captured using the front facing camera are good during the day, but the quality drops considerably at night.
Realme GT 6 Review: Verdict
If you're in the market for a new smartphone priced around Rs. 40,000 , it's easy to recommend the Realme GT 6, which offers a good mix of performance, battery life with fast charging support, and reliable cameras. I encountered no issues during casual use, voice calls, and gaming on the handset, over the course of the review.
There's a lot of competition from similarly priced phones, in this price segment. The iQoo Neo 9 Pro (Review) and OnePlus 12R (Review) feature the more powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC, but the Realme GT 6 offers a more versatile camera setup.
Meanwhile, if performance is your primary consideration, you can also look at the recently launched Poco F6 (Review) which has the same processor as this Realme handset but is available at a much lower price point. Other less-powerful options worth considering include the Samsung Galaxy S23 FE (Review) and the Google Pixel 7a (Review), and both these phones come with no preinstalled apps as well as Samsung and Google-exclusive features.
