The all-new Realme GT 6 is equipped to impress with a Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chip, 50MP telephoto camera, and more. It aims to dominate the sub-₹40,000 segment. Will it outperform its rivals?
Following a brief hiatus, the Realme GT series returns to India in 2024 with a bang! Hot on the heels of the Realme GT 6T, the even more powerful Realme GT 6 has now arrived.
It aims to conquer the sub-₹40,000 smartphone segment with its Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset, big 5,500mAh battery, and a dedicated 50MP telephoto camera.
Can it dethrone the current contenders in this competitive price bracket? It’s time to find out!
Realme GT 6 Design
At first glance, differentiating the Realme GT 6 from its more affordable sibling, the GT 6T, is a challenge. Both phones share a near-identical design aesthetic, with a smooth matte silver finish accented by a mirror-like stripe running across the rear camera module.
The glossy stripe across the back proves to be a fingerprint magnet, constantly attracting smudges and requiring frequent cleaning.
However, a closer look reveals some differences. The GT 6 packs three camera lenses compared to the 6T's dual setup. This translates to a thicker camera cutouts on the GT 6, compared to the slimmer cutouts of the 6T.
To be honest, the GT 6's camera module placement feels a bit derivative, lacking any unique visual identity. Personally, I find the more affordable Realme 12 Pro and Pro+ much more elegant than these GT twins.
On paper, the GT 6 is also not the slimmest phone around at 8.6mm, but given that the front and rear panels are curved, it actually feels much slimmer in hand.
Realme GT 6 Display & Utility
The display of the GT 6 is shared with the 6T, but it is worth another mention. It's a 6.78-inch 1.5K curved LTPO AMOLED display, and it comes with a 120Hz refresh rate, which gives you a very smooth scrolling experience.
The phone's bezels are pretty thin, and its chin is very minimal as well. It's a delight to look at. The colours on this display are excellent, and you'll enjoy watching content on it. HDR content also looks very bright and colourful, and also supports Dolby Vision.
The company also claims that it offers a peak brightness of 6000 nits: yes, you heard that right, 6000 nits! That being said, the local brightness in High Brightness Mode is still 1600 nits only - quite a good number, but it's important to understand how brands generate hype with the ‘peak brightness’ number.
Moving on, the GT 6 comes with an optical fingerprint scanner under its display, which worked with good speed and accuracy during my testing period.
Also, the stereo speaker setup on this smartphone is loud and crisp, which makes content watching quite enjoyable.
Realme GT 6 Performance & Software
The GT 6 is powered by a Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset. In fact, the chipset is one of the key differences between the Realme GT 6 and GT 6T, with the latter featuring the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3.
The choice of chipsets does make sense, because just like the GT 6 and GT 6T, the 8s Gen 3 and 7+ Gen 3 are also twins (both share the same architecture). The former is an amped up version of the latter with higher-frequency cores and a slightly more potent GPU.
Interestingly, benchmark scores on the GT 6 and GT 6T tell a somewhat conflicting story – the 6T edged out the GT 6 in AnTuTu, while the GT 6 pulled ahead in 3D Mark's Wildlife Extreme stress test, but only slightly.
Ideally, the GT6 should have clearly beaten the 6T in these benchmarks, so I’m not sure what happened here. Maybe Realme will push a relevant update soon.
Gaming on the Realme GT 6 isn’t an issue either: it handles heavy games with ease and can play popular titles like Call of Duty Mobile at 120fps.
But, I recently reviewed the Poco F6, another phone with the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chip, and one major issue with it was excessive heat generation. Even in air-conditioned environments, the F6 became uncomfortably warm.
The Realme GT 6, unfortunately, suffers from the same issue. Realme has equipped this phone with an ‘Iceberg Vapor Cooling System’, featuring a massive 10,014mm² 3D tempered dual vapour chamber, but that still does not do much.
The smartphone persistently got hot while gaming and running benchmarks, and this leads me to believe that the heat issue might be inherent to the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 itself. In fact, I also simultaneously ran all the tests on the GT 6T, and that phone remained noticeably cooler.
Now let's talk about the software. This phone comes with Realme UI 5.0 based on Android 14. When it comes to Realme UI, there are a lot of features, but there's also some bloatware, although it is less than other Realme phones.
However, the presence of Glance lock screen and App Market notifications is pretty annoying, and Realme could have eliminated these since the GT 6 is their most expensive smartphone in India.
Realme UI also gets all the AI goodies from ColorOS and OxygenOS The feature suite is nowhere as comprehensive as that on Samsung’s Galaxy S-series or Google’s Pixel phones, but hopefully it will expand in future.
I quite like the AI Eraser in the Photos app, which can neatly remove small objects from images. But, this feature still needs an internet connection to run properly.
Realme GT 6 Cameras
This smartphone has a triple rear camera setup: 50MP main, 50MP telephoto with 2x optical zoom, and an 8MP ultrawide. Selfies are taken care of by a 32MP front camera.
The camera setup is the second area where the GT6 tries to justify its premium over the 6T: not only does it have a dedicated telephoto camera, but its main Sony LYT-808 sensor is also superior to the 6T’s LYT-600.
The main sensor delivers solid performance in most lighting conditions. Colours are accurate, photos are packed with detail, and dynamic range handles most situations well, though it can struggle in extreme contrasts like shooting directly into the sun.
Low-light performance is respectable, maintaining detail and decent highlight control. Night Mode applies some artificial sky brightening, but it achieves pleasing results for most users.
The telephoto camera is an interesting one. It is a 50MP sensor with a 2x optical zoom. However, it raises a question: the more affordable Realme 12 Pro+ boasts a superior 3x zoom periscope camera. Why wouldn't Realme equip their flagship phone with the same sensor?
However, focal length isn’t my primary concern: it, in fact, is the lack of OIS on this sensor. Consequently, all indoor portrait photos are prone to blur, which is quite disappointing. Edge cutout in portrait photos isn’t great for indoor shots either, and most photos come out to be overly saturated.
However, if you decide to take portrait shots in natural light, the results are quite pleasing. The skin tones come out to be fairly accurate, while the edge detection becomes more precise.
As far as the ultrawide and selfie cameras are concerned, they get the job done with serviceable quality photos.
A highlight of the GT 6 is its ability to record 4K 60fps videos from the main and telephoto sensors, with the selfie camera offering 4K 30fps recording. All video recordings offer a good level of detail.
Realme GT 6 Battery Life
The GT 6 comes with a 5,500mAh battery which is quite a respectable size. Consequently, you can extract over 8 hours of screen time from it with mixed use.
Naturally, heavy gamers might see this number dip. Still, the Realme GT 6 is easily a full day battery smartphone for most people.
The phone supports ultra-quick 120W fast wired charging, and Realme is also kind enough to bundle a compatible adaptor with this phone.
It gets you from 0 to 100% charge in a mere 30 minutes - a game-changer for those who are always on the go. Talking from personal experience, the convenience of such crazy-fast charging is quite addictive!
Realme GT 6 Review
Priced at ₹35,999 (including launch offers), the Realme GT 6 is an interesting contender for those looking for a powerful smartphone which can take social media ready photos and offer good battery life.
However, it's not without competition. The iQOO Neo 9 Pro is another strong contender in this price bracket. Then, value-conscious users who can live with slightly less power might find the Realme GT 6T a more attractive option.
Still, the Realme GT 6 is a capable smartphone that delivers on its core promises, and I’m glad that the GT series is back in India.
