realme just launched the realme GT 6 smartphone in India today as the second smartphone in the GT series after this year after the launch of realme GT 6T last month. It has the same LTPO display, battery and camera, but gets a faster Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 SoC, Sony LYT-808 sensor, and a telephoto camera. Is this worth the price? Let us dive into the review and find out.
| Box Contents |
| Camera |
| Battery Life |
| Conclusion |
Box Contents
- realme GT 6 16GB + 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 6 features a 6.78-inch (2780×1264 pixels) 1.5K AMOLED display with 1-120Hz refresh rate 8T LTPO display, which is the same as the one present in the GT 6T.
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. Compared to the plastic back in the GT 6T, the GT 6 has a glass back, which looks a feels premium. The stainless steel camera module, with 20% increase in hardness, ensures enhanced lens protection. The phone IP65 ratings for dust and splash resistance.
Camera
- 50MP main camera with 1/1.4″ Sony LYT-808 sensor, OIS, f/1.69 aperture
- 8MP IMX355 112° ultra-wide camera with f/2.2 aperture
- 50MP telephoto camera with 1/1.28″ Samsung JN5 sensor, f/2.0 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 brilliant compared to the GT 6T and the other competitors who uses 1/1.56″ sensors., 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 2x telephoto camera also does a decent job, and the portrait mode offers a good edge detection. It has a same 8MP ultra-wide camera, which could have been better.
Low-light shots are good. The night mode is way better, even though it takes a few seconds to process. With advanced night video algorithms, realme says that this uses Industry’s first AI Night Vision Mode. 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. It can also shoot 4K HDR Dolby Vision videos at 4K 30fps. 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 April 2024. The phone will get 3 Android updates and 4 years of security updates.
The phone has AI features that include AI Smart Removal, AI Night Vision Mode, and AI Smart Loop. The AI Smart Removal allows you to manually select “passersby” and “clutter” in your photos, which are then automatically erased. The background is smartly filled in, seamlessly rescuing and restoring your pictures without a trace of the unwanted elements.
The AI Smart Loop feature helps to identify content selected and dragged by the user on the screen, allowing for quick sharing to third-party apps and enabling seamless interactions, which greatly saves time and steps in the process. It offers three main capabilities: Smart Recognition, Simplified Operations, and Increased Efficiency.
Apart from the usual set of realme apps and Google apps, it comes with several preloaded apps such as Facebook, Amazon, Snapchat, and Myntra. 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 16GB LPDD5X RAM, you get 14.94GB of usable RAM, and about 9GB 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.
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 lock screen 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 6 has support for 5G SAn77/78/38/40/41(2496-2690MHz)/B66(2110~2180MHz)/N66(2110~2180MHz)/1/3/5/7/8/20/28
NSA：n77/78/38/40/41(2496-2690MHz)/1/3/5/7/8/20/28 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 6’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 one of the few phones to be powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s 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 3.0GHz, 4 x Kryo Performance CPUs (Arm Cortex-A720 based) at up to 2.8GHz and 3x Kryo Efficiency CPUs (Arm Cortex-A520 based) at up to 2.0GHz.
The SoC is fabricated using the TSMC 4nm Process Technology, same as Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. 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 735 GPU offers similar performance as the one GPU in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. It has Real-time Hardware-Accelerated Ray Tracing, but it lacks Global Illumination which the Snapdragon 8 Gen has.
We did not face any issues or frame drops in the graphic-intensive games like COD, BGMI and Genshin Impact. It reached maximum 42º in our testing indoors in 5G, but this might vary outdoors.
In 3D Mark wild life stress test, it scored 52.5% which is just slightly less than the GT 6T. The temperature shot up from 34 to 44 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 better than the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3, but the 8 Gen 3 is clearly the best.
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 7 hours of screen on time with a day of heavy 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. 40,999 for the 8GB + 256GB, the realme GT 6 is a camera and performance powerhouse while retaining most features from the GT 6T. Wish it had a better ultra-wide camera, and a slightly cheaper price tag since the gap between the GT 6T and GT 6 is huge.
Pricing and availability
The realme GT 6 is priced at Rs. 40,999 for the 8GB + 256GB model, 12GB + 256GB model costs Rs. 42,999 and the top-end 16GB + 512GB model is priced at Rs. 44,999.
The phone is now available for pre-order from Flipkart, realme.com and offline stores and will go on sale from June 25th.
Alternatives
The OnePlus 12R in the similar price range offers a better build quality, but you will have to compromise on the camera. Xiaomi 14 CIVI with the same chip should be a good option, but it lacks an LTPO panel and a smaller battery.
Pros
- 1.5K AMOLED 120Hz LTPO display is brilliant
- Smooth performance and good gaming performance
- Eye-catching design
- Brilliant main camera in daylight and low-light
- Long battery life with 120W fast charging
Cons
- 8MP ultra-wide camera, and 2x telephoto camera are average
- Bloatware