Realme announced the global launch of the Realme GT 3 duringMobile World Congress, which is essentially the same device as the company’sGT Neo 5that launched earlier in February 2023 as a China exclusive.
The Realme GT 3 can charge your phone from flat to full in 9.5-minutes - we know, impressive right - but there’s plenty more on offer here too. Here are our first impressions.
The Realme GT 3 has a lovely design that feels great to hold. There’s a slight curve on the edges of the rear - which is finished in a material that is soft to touch - with both these elements contributing to how nice it sits in the hand.
At the top of the rear there is a rather prominent camera housing which takes up the top section of the device, but there are more than just camera sensors in this housing.
Alongside the camera module, the Realme GT 3 has a translucent window that shows off the platform running the show, an NFC chipset, and the Pulse Interface System with a C-shaped RGB light ring.
The Pulse Interface system will see the light ring within the window light up in various colours depending on your settings, and what’s happening on your device - more on this in a minute.
At the bottom of the Realme GT 3, you’ll find USB-C charging, alongside the SIM tray, while the left edge has the volume rocker and the right edge has the power button. Overall, it’s not the slimmest phone out there at nearly 9mm, nor the lightest at nearly 200g, but the curved edges on the back certainly detract from this, while the finish and design on the whole is quite striking.
The Realme GT 3 has a 6.74-inch AMOLED display on the front that delivers a resolution of 2772 x 1240 pixels for a pixel density of 451ppi.
There’s apunch hole cameracentralised at the top of the screen and colours appeared vibrant with plenty of punch based on our initial experience. Icons and images appeared crisp and sharp too.
There’s a peak brightness of 1400nits, and a typical brightness of 500nits, and you’ll also get arefresh rate of 144Hz, along withHDR10+.
While we couldn’t test the display performance during our brief time with the Realme GT 3, it didn’t give us any immediate concerns so we’re expecting it to be a good offering.
Specs and battery
The Realme GT 3 runs on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 platform, which is flagship hardware, though not Qualcomm’s latest chipset as that comes in the form of theSnapdragon 8 Gen 2. It’s still a very powerful platform though, which should decent performance.
The Realme GT 3 comes in a multitude of RAM and storage options too. The base model has 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, while the top of the range model has 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage and there are several configurations in between.
Despite offering some great specs there though, the Realme GT 3’s standout feature is the battery and its super fast charging.
The battery under the hood is a 4600mAh capacity cell, but the biggest story here is that it can be charged from flat to full in under 10 minutes, from flat to 50 per cent in four minutes and from flat to 20 per cent in 80 seconds. That’s thanks to the 240W wired fast charging capabilities provided by sister company Oppo’s SuperVOOC technology.
It’s the maximum charging power possible under current USB-C standards and the Realme GT 3 comes with a custom 12A charging cable in order to achieve the charging current.
We saw a demo of the charging in action during Mobile World Congress and the Realme GT 3 achieved its goal of 20 per cent in 80 seconds, though we will be keen to test it out fully when we come to review it.
Features and software
Alongside the speedy charging, there’s the Pulse Interface System we mentioned previously that changes colour on the rear of the device depending on the phone’s status. Depending on the use case, you’ll see the ring light up in a colour.
For example, when the Realme GT 3 is 20 per cent charged, the ring will display a red breathing light effect. This changes to purple when the device is showing anywhere between 21 per cent and 100 per cent. When the device is fully charged, the purple light remains on.
For incoming calls, the light ring will flash quickly and when notifications come through, the lighting system will display a white colour. When it comes to the 10-second countdown before taking photos, the phone will display a blue, white, and orange colour beaming.
The Pulse Interface System is a little bit different, which Realme is playing on with the light ring broken up by the words ‘Dare to Leap’ - hence the C-shaped ring rather than O-shape. It adds a fun and interactive element to the phone and there are 25 colour shades, two rhythm types, and five lighting speed modes for a changing things up to suit your style and preferences.
The system works well from what we have experienced so far, though we will need to test this feature in full to be able to pass judgement on whether it’s actually useful, or simply a gimmick.
Elsewhere in terms of software, the Realme GT 3 runs onAndroid 13with the Realme UI 4.0 interface on top.
The Realme GT 3 features a triple rear camera system, which is comprised of a 50-megapixel main camera sensor with an f/1.9 aperture, alongside an 8-megapixel ultra wide sensor with f/2.2 aperture and 112-degree field of view and a 2-megapixel microscope sensor with f/3.3 aperture.
On the front, there is a 16-megapixel sensor with an f/2.5 aperture.
We of course couldn’t test the camera capabilities during our brief time with the Realme GT 3 so our thoughts for this department will be reserved for our full review.
We did like that the Pulse Interface System on the rear worked with the timer element of the camera though so that’s something we can see it being useful for.
First impressions
The Realme GT 3 might be a re-badged Realme GT Neo 5 but that’s no bad thing as that means we get the benefits of its super speedy changing and features in more countries and regions.
We haven’t spent a huge amount of time with it as yet, but from what we have seen so far, the Realme GT 3 has got a lovely design and finish with what seems like a cool feature in the Pulse Interface Design. Let’s also not forget about its key feature of being able to charge it to full in 10 minutes, which let’s face it is very impressive.
We will bring you our full review of the Realme GT 3 soon for the full rundown of what you can expect from the device with the ‘world’s fastest charging power’.
