For better or worse, the realme GT8 Pro is the OnePlus 15 that never was

The GT7 Pro was a rather confusing release for realme. The brand was clearly trying to walk a fine line between a premium and affordable flagship experience. Yes, there was the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, a 3x 50MP camera, and a great screen. But the phone got extremely hot under heavy load, the 8MP ultrawide shooter was disappointing, and the lack of wireless charging was notable for the €1,000 recommended price.

If anything, the OnePlus 13 shone a harsh light on the GT7 Pro. Between its versatile cameras, impressive performance, great screen, and premium extras, it was clear that OnePlus had the more well-rounded package. Now, realme is back with the realme GT8 Pro. And it turns out the new phone has a lot in common with the OnePlus 15. In fact, this seems like the OnePlus 15 from a parallel universe.

If there’s one area where the GT8 Pro is actually better than the OnePlus 15, I’d argue that it’s the camera hardware. The 50MP main camera (1/1.56-inch) and 50MP ultrawide lens are effectively identical to the OnePlus 15’s shooters. However, realme has upped the ante with a 200MP 3x telephoto camera compared to the OnePlus handset’s 50MP 3.5x (1/2.76-inch) camera. This 200MP sensor isn’t as large as the 200MP tele cameras seen on recent flagships from the likes of HONOR, OPPO, and vivo, but it’s still a noteworthy move.

I wasn’t overly enthused by the main and ultrawide cameras. Neither camera is particularly amazing, and they follow the realme trend of delivering absolutely saturated colors. The ultrawide shooter, in particular, takes some noisy snaps even in broad daylight. The primary camera is a solid performer, but I did occasionally encounter blown highlights and color fringing. Images taken with this camera also seem to lack definition compared to rival camera phones. Meanwhile, the telephoto camera generally performs well, although it continues the saturated trend. When comparing shots between it and the vivo X300 Pro’s 200MP telephoto camera, vivo’s handset would frequently deliver better fine detail and tamed highlights.

The GT8 Pro follows in the OPPO Find X9 Pro’s footsteps by shooting at a higher resolution by default. The phone defaults to 50MP or 26MP snaps in ideal lighting before switching to 12MP snaps in mixed conditions. I love the idea of this, and there’s an impressive amount of detail in most of the 1x and 3x snaps I took. In fact, I thought that the high-resolution 1x and 3x shots of myself at the market had significantly more detail than the vivo X300 Pro’s somewhat muddier renditions. In saying so, the realme phone gave me an orange hue, as well as more saturated colors in general.

This isn’t a one-off, either, as I noticed high-resolution shots occasionally suffered from aggressive HDR, neon colors, and blown highlights. The ultrawide also seems to shoot at a binned resolution most of the time, and it’s easy to see why. Full-resolution ultrawide snaps are a smeared, flat mess upon closer examination.

If 50MP isn’t enough, you can crank things up to 200MP full-resolution snaps via the 3x camera. It takes roughly seven or eight seconds to capture a 200MP photo, which is just an absolute age compared to the X300 Pro’s three or four-second shot time for its 200MP snaps. It’s also here that the GT8 Pro’s smaller tele sensor makes itself known, as there’s less detail, plenty of color fringing, and more blown highlights.

This is also the first realme phone in partnership with camera company Ricoh. The fruits of this tie-up are a dedicated Ricoh GR mode, featuring a variety of color profiles (standard, positive, negative, black-and-white, and high-contrast black-and-white), an optional clean UI, and the ability to set focusing at a number of preset distances (one meter, 2.5 meters, five meters, infinity). I quite like the monochrome shots, and they don’t shy away from graininess.

Easily my biggest annoyance with this mode is that you’re restricted to a few focal lengths, namely 28mm, 35mm, 40mm, and 50mm. I get that realme is likely trying to emulate the focal lengths of a Ricoh camera, but I would’ve liked to see the ability to use 3x and 6x zoom ranges as well.

Otherwise, the GT8 Pro also ships with a Gemini-powered AI Framing Master feature that’s vaguely reminiscent of the Pixel line’s Camera Coach feature. This uses cloud-based AI to analyze your viewfinder and dole out tips. These hints include using the rule of thirds and framing hints with the aid of an on-screen dot. In the case of the latter, the phone will even automatically zoom in for you. Even though this tool lacks some Camera Coach features, such as reference images, it’s a neat idea that could be handy for some people. However, this is the kind of tool that would really benefit from on-device processing to speed things up, even if the feature itself were less powerful. Local AI processing would also make for a more private feature in theory.

Take a closer look at the realme handset and you’ll find curved corners and a flat metal frame, much like the OnePlus 15. I’m tired of this lazy, iPhone-inspired approach to design, and the worst part is that Samsung, Google, OPPO, and vivo have also copied this trend with recent flagships. So it’s more of an issue I have with Android OEMs at large rather than being a realme complaint.

Flip the phone over and you’ll find a circular camera bump that can be swapped out for another bump design. It’s a cool idea, and I’m relieved to see that realme includes the necessary Torx screwdriver in the phone box. You can choose to stick with the circular camera bump, switch to an optional square bump, or forego the add-on housings in favor of the barebones, robot-like bump (see the second image below). I don’t foresee people switching out these bumps with any sort of regularity, but realme is encouraging users to 3D-print their own designs.

Otherwise, the phone has a paper-like rear cover that won’t attract fingerprints, Gorilla Glass 7i on the front, as well as IP68 and IP69 ratings. By contrast, the OnePlus 15 uses Gorilla Glass Victus 2 and has IP68/69/69K ratings. So the OnePlus handset is more durable on paper, but you’re still getting a relatively well-protected phone in the GT8 Pro.

Both phones are powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, and both deliver fantastic CPU performance in benchmarks as well as great peak scores in graphical benchmarks. Unfortunately, both phones also suffered from serious heating issues. As we outlined in our dedicated benchmarking article, the realme GT8 Pro lost as much as 70% of its performance in 3DMark stress tests. I did notice a significant improvement when running the Wild Life Stress Test a few weeks later, as it now sits at ~50% stability compared to ~39% stability at first. This suggests that an update has improved matters, although you’re still looking at unsatisfactory performance levels and a hot device.

Fortunately, the realme GT8 Pro handles real-world tasks and apps smoothly for the most part. I was able to play demanding games like War Thunder Mobile and Genshin Impact just fine while cranking up the graphical settings. I also managed to play some PS3 games via emulation for roughly 20 to 30 minutes, and this was about as smooth as you’d expect from such a demanding, bleeding-edge app. In fact, the only time I noticed any significant performance issues was when I was taking full-resolution 200MP snaps. This entails the aforementioned eight-second capture time.

OnePlus’s flagship stands out thanks to its 7,300mAh battery, but the realme GT8 Pro isn’t far behind with its 7,000mAh battery. And this definitely helps deliver impressively long endurance. I was able to get two days of typical usage without really trying. This usage consisted of browsing Reddit and Instagram, watching YouTube, and browsing the web. One particular stretch saw me unplug the phone on Thursday afternoon, using it for WhatsApp, Reddit, and YouTube on Thursday and Friday, along with three Uber trips on Saturday. The phone dipped below the 5% mark late on Saturday afternoon during my Uber trip home. I was also generally able to get roughly nine or ten hours of screen-on time, if not more. Very impressive.

The GT8 Pro is also equipped with 120W wired charging and 50W wireless charging. Realme claims a 0-100% charge in 43 minutes with the bundled charger, but it took me 53 minutes to go from 1% to full. That’s notably short of the firm’s claims, but still very speedy for a phone with a 7,000mAh battery. I’m also glad to see that the phone supports speedy USB-PPS charging, as my 65W PPS charger delivered a full charge in roughly an hour. That’s not far off the bundled charger at all. Android OEMs really need to embrace this industry standard.

That huge battery lights up a screen that could conceivably belong to a OnePlus 15 from another universe. Realme is still sticking with a QHD+ OLED display, which is sure to please OnePlus fans who lamented the drop to a 1.5K resolution. This screen is paired with a 144Hz refresh rate. I don’t particularly care about such a high resolution or refresh rate, but I thought the GT8 Pro’s display was sharp and smooth enough.

Realme touts 7,000 nits of peak brightness, but we all know this figure is a marketing gimmick. Fortunately, you can expect an impressive 2,000 nits of brightness in high-brightness mode and 1,000 nits of manual brightness. Either way, the screen was bright enough for me to comfortably use the device under the summer sun.

Dive under the screen, and you’ll find an optical in-display fingerprint sensor. That’s technically a downgrade compared to the GT7 Pro’s ultrasonic scanner, which means you can’t use the sensor as an underwater shutter key like the previous handset. It also means the sensor will be less effective with wet fingers, although I actually had no problems unlocking my phone in this situation. Other notable hardware features include an IR blaster and some pleasantly loud stereo speakers.

The realme UI 7 software is great if you can ignore the obvious Liquid Glass inspiration, and there’s no shortage of features and customization options. Some of the phone’s most notable features include per-app volume controls, a take on Apple’s Dynamic Island feature, and the ability to double-tap the back of the phone to scan QR codes. There are plenty of customization options, too, including the fun ability to change the fingerprint scanner icon to an emoji of your choosing (disco ball all day). There isn’t a ton of bloatware, although the likes of Temu, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Facebook still make appearances. Unfortunately, you can’t uninstall all the Meta bloat like the App Manager.

realme’s Android skin also has plenty of AI features. These include summarization and transcription smarts, the Mind Space feature for capturing on-screen content, translation capabilities, and notification summaries. The latter is really hit-and-miss, as it sometimes delivers useful summaries but often makes mistakes or just rewords already brief alerts. Why is it trying to summarize a notification about the currently playing podcast or the ebook I’m reading? Silly. The phone also offers task suggestions based on these summaries, but they’re often useless as you can see in the third image above.

The new phone offers four major OS upgrades and five years of security patches. That’s not great compared to high-end phones from stablemates OnePlus, OPPO, and vivo, let alone the likes of Google and Samsung. Nevertheless, this means you should be getting Android 20 down the line.

The realme GT8 Pro certainly makes a strong case for being one of the more well-rounded flagship Android phones on the market right now. At a recommended price of €1,000 (~$1,173), it undercuts the OnePlus 15 in Europe while offering superior camera zoom and a higher-resolution screen. Toss in the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, a huge battery with fast wired/wireless charging, and a mostly slick Android skin, and this really feels like the OnePlus 15 prototype that never was.

It’s not all great, though. The phone has very poor sustained performance, cameras that produce saturated and inconsistent images, a fingerprint scanner that’s technically worse than its predecessor, and AI notification summaries that are more annoying than useful.

There are a few realme GT8 Pro alternatives worth considering, starting with the OnePlus 15 ($899.99 at Amazon). It features the same flagship processor, very similar main and ultrawide cameras, and similarly fast wired/wireless charging. You do lose out on that impressive zoom camera and a QHD+ screen, though, but you gain a slightly larger battery and superior sustained performance on paper. It’s also available in North America, unlike the realme handset.

You should think about the Google Pixel 10 Pro XL ($1515 at Amazon) if you like the idea of a flagship with great camera capabilities and plenty of AI features. The phone features more polished AI smarts, slick camera hardware, and a longer update policy. However, the Pixel falls short in terms of horsepower, battery capacity, and charging speeds. The OPPO Find X9 Pro ($1515 at Amazon) also warrants a look if you’re in an Asia-Pacific or EMEA market. It offers a better main camera, support for an external lens, an even bigger battery, and a few other extras. However, it does pack a higher price tag.