earlier on this year real me released a standalone realme gt
if the name doesn't give it away already realme designed the phone to look much like a racing car
realme have just now introduced two new additions to the family today we'll be focusing on the top
of the line version known simply as the realme gt master explorer edition which sets aside the
racing car theme design in favor of a luxurious vegan leather suitcase finish the company has
now replaced the snapdragon aaa chipset for a slightly less performing cpu the snapdragon 870
in order to add an aluminum frame a curved display and a flagship worthy imx 766 main camera sensor
all while keeping the device at the same great price is the performance sacrifice
worth it for an improved design build display and camera boost
let's find out in my extremely detailed full review of the realme gt master explorer edition
the gt master explorer edition comes in a voyager gray or voyager apricot being the vegan leather
finish you can also pick them up in glass finishes as well though i especially like this gray
finished leather back we get a 4 500 milliamp hour battery under the hood alongside a 65 watt super
dot wired charger inside the box unfortunately no wireless charging and we do have gorilla glass 5
front vegan leather or glass back and of course an aluminum frame wrapping around it the back looks
fantastic though i'm pretty sure you're going to be getting some chafes in the near future
the included case is silicon not leather just letting you guys know we do have a power button
on the right hand side a split volume rocker on the left hand side and we have a dual sim 5g
standby tray there is a water resistant seal very strange usb 2.0 charging port as well as two
dual speakers paired with dolby atmos the camera bump at the back isn't that big pretty much on
par with the oneplus 9 pro and a lot smaller than the likes of other smartphones around which means
that the camera wobble on a flat surface is very manageable pretty minimal if you ask me in terms
of the back designs i actually think the real me gt master explorer edition stands out a hell of a
lot more than the rest of these expensive devices and it weighs just 183.5 grams and it's just eight
millimeters thick depending on the version that you get the back design looks absolutely
phenomenal but what about the display well we are welcome to a six point five five inch super amoled
20 by nine aspect ratio curved display it is full hd plus it has a dci p3 rating of 100 with hdr 10
plus 1 100 nits max brightness 120 hertz refresh rates and 480 hertz a touch sampling rate it looks
darn fancy even when up close unfortunately no qhd plus over here and no 1 billion colors this time
around with a slightly smaller panel when compared to the competitors though the curves on the side
are just as minimal as we've seen on recent flagship smartphones the colors do certainly pop
even when up close and the color accuracy is on par with even more expensive smartphones out there
and the white balance is pretty great too we also have an incredible 1 100 units peak brightness
which is almost right up there with the best of the best and certainly better and higher than more
flagship budget friendly smartphones around of course we do have the camera punctual over there
like i mentioned no wqhd plus as we see on true flagship smartphones and we do have a 120 hertz
refresh rates though not 144hz as we've seen on other smartphones around 120 hertz for me is still
pretty much a sweet spot even 90 would have been okay in my books it looks phenomenal it feels so
darn smooth and just to let you guys know yes i did record this in slow motion the biggest
drawback of this 120 hertz panel is the fact that it doesn't have an adaptive refresh rate it can
only automatically detect whether you're using a 60 or 120 hertz app we can of course increase the
brightness a change the eye comfort level with a warmer or cooler screen we can also change
the screen color modes though not as intense as we've seen on other smartphones we also have image
enhancers though they are limited to only certain apps here in china and of course we do have dark
mode over here which gives you nice deep blacks and you can set it to turn on whenever you'd like
automatically we do have an enhanced medium and gentle option something that i wish we would see
on more phones third-party apps some of them do work with it first party apps of course all of
them work with dark mode though the notification tray is pretty much gray not really black even
when you're using the enhanced version we do have an always on display here and just like we see
in opposed color os we can create custom patterns which are just a joy to do yes it may seem pretty
gimmicky but once you get it done you really do feel like a bit of an artist every time you go
ahead to unlock your device it looks fantastic and there are a couple options that you can customize
with it including the date and time so on and so forth of course all your notifications as well but
i'm a simple guy i prefer the more simplified always on displays we do have an optical in
display fingerprint sensor and it's pretty much on par with the oneplus 9 pro and the oppo find
x3 pro since they use the same one it's had faster than the zte xn30 ultra and it is almost on par
with the red magic 6r now and then we do have 2d face unlock it utilizes the selfie camera
and when comparing it to other devices using the same 2d face unlock it's pretty much once again
on par with that from oppo and from oneplus because they're also made by the same company that
being bbk electronics and the red magic is a tad quicker this time compared to the real me device
of course that selfie cam can be used for more than just unlocking your phone we do have a 32
megapixel selfie snapper and it looks great even when in portrait mode this is technic recording
a 1080p 30fps selfie video on the brand new realme gt master explorer edition it is completely capped
at 30fps and 1080p when recording using the selfie cam taking selfies at night don't come out too
great even when using the dedicated night mode feature the flash looks way too overblown for the
back cams we do have a 14 millimeter ultra wide sensor which is 16 megapixels we also have a 24
millimeter main sensor which is the 50 megapixel sony imac 766 sensor and we have a 2 megapixel
macro sensor unfortunately no telephoto this time around the ultra wide picks actually come out
very oversaturated the main 50 megapixel looks great switching to ai and using 4 1 pixel binning
to get a 12.5 megapixel shot looks decent we have zoom but only digital it can go up to 20 times
zoom anything past i would say five times zoom isn't the best but ten times is still bearable
20 is kind of unusable if you ask me and we do have the macro sensor of course that two megapixel
useless thing at the back if you do use it it comes out just fine and we can also use portrait
mode but once again no telephoto over here so it's just using a digital ai which still doesn't look
too bad we have 1080p at 30fps ultra wide but 30 fps is the max fps that we can get with ultrawide
and 1080p is the max resolution that we can use when using ultrawide we do have 4k 60fps which
is the max there is no ak this time around this is the main sensor of course with optical image
stabilization once again 1080p 60fps using the main camera looks pretty decent not as detailed
as 4k as you would expect but nice and smooth over here too we also have an option to use 1080p at
30fps using ai highlight video but it is capped at 30fps and 1080p it really does make colors pop but
once again a little over saturated for my liking we do also have a bokeh video effect mode which
keeps edge detection on points if you ask me it looks pretty decent but once again capped at 1080p
30fps we do have ultra steady and yes i am swaying when it is on and i'm swaying when max is on
but it just doesn't show this way because it is so darn good we do have 1080p at 24 frames per second
very strange ultra wide when recording at night it tends to drop down the frames in order to brighten
up the video 4k 60fps doesn't drop the frames over there same thing doesn't drop the frames
with 1080p doesn't look too bad the nice thing though is that we do have a highlight video which
really does make a difference at night making things a lot more bright but it does take away
in terms of image quality talking about image quality ultrawide at night doesn't look the best
but the night mode feature makes a huge difference doesn't make as much of a difference with the bin
12.5 megapixel main shots but it still makes a bit of a difference keeping the detail intact
and when zooming in night mode on completely washes out the detail but does pop out all the
colors same thing with five times digital zoom and of course a 10 times as well things look
a little too dull when night mode is off and it really does make it pop with night mode on but you
lose a lot of quality we have 20 times zoom max but unfortunately no night mode option for that
we do have real me ur 2.0 skinned over android 11. it is literally the exact same if you are
used to an opera phone running color os 11. the software is nice clean easy to use and yes we do
have a fully fledged google services on here so no need to worry about that with all the split screen
and all that jazz that you've come to know and love from oppo's color software packed in to real
me ui 2.0 with mini window so on and so forth we also have smart sidebar which we've seen in oppo's
software which is a nifty little multitasking gesture tool pulled in from the side and yes
the holy grail personalization options where we can change themes as well as wallpapers we can
also go into our gallery and we can customize a wallpaper but it only really changes the colors
keeps the shapes the same for all wallpapers you try to do this with we also can customize
our always on display of course and all the system icons the way that you'd like as well as
your fingerprint animation and your colors of your phone as well as your text and it just goes on
and your notification draw of course you can change the shapes and icons of that
and of course you can also have a edge lighting wrapping around your phone when
you get a notification the haptics are very much on point with the best phones around and in terms
of speakers let's test the dual speakers up with dolby atmos against two other devices
ah
want some more when it comes to gaming we do have the same game space software that we see
in opera devices with low power mode balance mode and pro gamer mode in oppo we usually see
something called competitor mode it is nice and simple there are a couple things that you can do
but it is limited to only certain games such as the 4d vibration which yes is available over here
and jumping into ganshin impact over here to showcase the on display menu that you can pull
in from the side it looks pretty decent it shows you fps over there it is not always on and you
can change things like your touch optimization and go into game focus mode there's not too much
about it but it's a nice nifty thing if you want it you don't have to have it enabled going into
our first game here against an impact with the highest possible graphics settings as well as the
max fps the game is capped at 60 fps so no phone can go above 60 fps no matter the refresh rate
of the panel and we're getting between 41 and 52 fps on the snapdragon 870 powered realme gt
master explorer edition which isn't too bad if you know anything about this game you know how graphic
demanding it is it is literally the benchmark for all gaming smartphones going down next
game over here pubg mobile with hdr graphics and extreme fps unfortunately we don't have a 90 fps
option on smooth graphics even when trying to use a tool to get it there it's not available
on the phone yet i'm sure it will come later on though we are getting a rock steady 60 fps and
we're also getting 60 fps in bullet force nice and stable here though the game has an unlimited frame
rate cap so the real me should be hitting 120 fps but it is not hopefully this gets changed with a
future software updates of the phone and now we have dead trigger 2 another game that has no fps
cap though it is not quite hitting 120 fps at high graphics settings over here we're sitting between
83 and 101 fps at least that game is supported with the real me gt master explorer edition to
do a higher frame rate unlike real racing 3o vr which is once again kept at 60 even though it is
an uncapped game moving on to benchmarks now super excited for this one thanks to that snapdragon 870
processing chip we do have 8 gigs of ram though you can use ram expansion to use the rom of the
phone to get an extra 5 gigs bringing it up to 13 gigs which is pretty impressive of course we are
going to be using the 88 battery as a marker at the start we'll compare it at the end and
get a milliamp hour per minute reading as well as measure the temperature at the start of the
test and the end of the test we're running through and two to version nine over here
geekbench version five and then last but not least we're going into 3d mark wildlife version 2.2
getting to battery drain results the phone drained by nine percent at a rate of 25.3 milliamp hours
per minute and the temperature is a bit hotter as well adding 22.1 degrees in celsius when it comes
to antutu version nine it is right up there just underneath the snapdragon triple eight
average with the regular real me master edition which is paired with a snapdragon 778 g chipset
way down there at the bottom when it comes to geekbench version five it actually scored
pretty decently in the single core segments with a thousand and nineteen points but the
multi-core is even worse than the standard real me master edition the vanilla edition that is
running a subpar 778 g chipset which had a higher multi-core score which is strange to
say the least another bit of a mixed bag over here with 3dmark wildlife it actually scored
worse than the average snapdragon 870 run powered smartphone on my channel which usually gets about
29.7 fps this got 25.6 which is actually closer than last year's snapdragon 865 plus but you've
got to bear in mind that the 870 is pretty much an overclocked overclocked version of the vanilla
snapdragon 865 once again a hell of a lot better than the regular realme master edition at the
bottom of the line here the realme gt master explorer edition is certainly a mastercraft
designed smartphone thanks to its gorgeous vegan leather suitcase designed finish needless to say
the design has improved by landslide the camera performance has also been dramatically boosted
thanks to the flagship level sony imx 766 sensor however i am slightly disappointed in the lack of
a telephoto lens which we still saw back in the days of the realme x2 pro after unlocking the
device with its snappy under display fingerprint sensor we are welcomed to a bright and vibrant
curved amoled display which makes the clean realme ur 2.0 software skin truly stand out and the
massive customization options are certainly the cherry on top the gaming software is simple and
easy to use and when paired with the silky smooth 120hz refresh rate snapdragon 870 chipset lpddr5
ram and ufs 3.1 storage games like an absolute champion most of the time however the master
explorer edition is not alone in the race for best overall smartphone of 2021. the oneplus 9 pro and
oppo find x3 pro both have qhd displays improved camera systems with telephoto sensors and an ip68
water and dust certification but they both cost a hell of a lot more money than the gt master
explorer edition and while the zte accent 30 ultra also has a better camera setup and the red magic
6r actually has physical gaming triggers neither of them can match up to just how much bang for
buck you get with the real me gt master explorer edition and that is why i am happy to say that
yes the improved design build quality display and main camera sensor far outweigh the fact that the
realme gt master explorer edition makes use of a snapdragon 870 instead of an 888 chipset which
leads me to think that this may very well be the best all-round smartphone of the year thus far