Snapdragon 888 In an Affordable Phone

Even though they share the same parent company, Realme is on a mission to take the “flagship killer” throne away from OnePlus with its latest handset, the Realme GT.

With an early bird price of just 369 euros (around $450), the Realme GT is poised to become the least expensive phone to feature Qualcomm’s top-tier Snapdragon 888 chip, packing big performance into a mid-range device.

Now before we go on, I should note that the Realme originally started out as an offshoot of Oppo, which is also a subsidiary of parent company BBK Electronics. This makes the idea of stealing the flagship killer title from OnePlus kind of silly, since it’s essentially a sibling rivalry. But Realme is taking it seriously, calling its latest handset a “flagship killer” during its livestream announcement and in its press release. OnePlus is now playing with the bigger companies and no longer packing flagship specs into mid-range devices, so here comes Realme to pick up the thread.

With the Snapdragon 888, full-HD 6.4-inch OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate, 8GB or 12GB of RAM, 128GB or 256GB of storage, and even an optical fingerprint reader, the Realme GT definitely has flagship-level specs. And unlike a lot of premium phones these days, the Realme GT also comes with an actual headphone jack to go along with its dual Atmos stereo speakers.

Funnily enough, Realme’s aspiration to take down OnePlus can also be seen around back. The phone’s use of faux leather and black glass reminds me of the OnePlus Concept One from back at CES 2020, just with the camera module and back glass shifted to the left a bit. And with the rear camera module housing a 64-MP main cam, a 8-MP ultra-wide cam, and a 2-MP macro cam, the Realme GT has a solid range of lenses in its photography toolkit.

So far, the one main feature the Realme GT lacks compared to other premium phones (including OnePlus 9 Pro) is support for wireless charging. Though to help make up for that, Realme does include 65-watt wired charging to quickly top up the GT’s 4,500 mAh battery.

The Realme GT is only set to be available in Europe and Asia, with no official release planned for the U.S. And to make matters worse, the Realme GT’s early bird price is set to jump up to 549 euros (around $665) when it officially launches later this month.