Back in May, Realme came out of nowhere with that Aston Martin Aramco F1 collab — the GT 7 Dream Edition. Nobody expected it, and suddenly people were like… okay, Realme is trying something.
Now six months later, we’ve got the follow-up. The Realme GT 8 Pro Dream Edition. Same racing pedigree, full Aston Martin vibe, and a ₹79,999 price tag. For context, the normal GT 8 Pro starts at ₹72,999
But here’s the thing… the moment you open the box, you kind of get it. This variant doesn’t just show up — it performs an entrance. There’s real premium energy here, and after using it, a lot of it actually lands.
There are also a few choices that made me tilt my head a little and go… huh. So let’s break down what Realme nailed, and what probably needed another round of changes.
Realme GT 8 Pro Dream Edition: Top-Notch Unboxing Experience!
The unboxing is dramatic. Like, Realme actually committed to the bit.
You lift the lid and the box opens with these wing-style flaps inspired by Aston Martin’s Silver Wing emblem. Sitting inside is the phone in full Racing Green. The texture on the back has these aerodynamic carve lines — it has grip, it has attitude, it looks fast even when it’s not moving.
Even the SIM ejector tool looks like something pulled out of an F1 pit garage. It’s extra… but it works. Then you flip the phone around and… boom. Aramco. Front and center. Loud and proud.
It kind of steals the spotlight from the Aston Martin badge sitting below it. And look...I understand the sponsorship thing. Aramco is Aston Martin F1’s headline partner. Fair.
But nobody (and I mean nobody) is buying this because it’s an Aramco phone. They’re buying it because it’s the “Aston Martin edition,” and yet the Aston Martin crest feels like it got demoted.
Realme also gives you a tiny Torx screwdriver in the box so you can remove the circular camera plate and swap it for a square one.
It’s cool for about five minutes. You do it once, look at it, realize the phone looks 98 percent the same, and then that screwdriver goes straight back into the box for the rest of its life.
And because of this whole swap system, Realme throws in two cases — one cutout for the round plate and one for the square. Cute idea, but let’s be real — nobody is changing these plates every weekend.
Once you push the branding decisions and the novelty hardware aside, the phone itself is legitimately premium. The Realme GT 8 Pro Dream Edition feels great in the hand.
It’s got a metal frame, a very manageable 214-gram weight, and legit durability with both IP68 and IP69 ratings. This is one of those phones you can actually use outdoors, not just admire on your desk.
Realme GT 8 Pro Dream Edition: 2K 144Hz AMOLED Display
The display is one of those parts you notice immediately. You’re looking at a 6.78-inch 2K AMOLED panel that feels fast from the moment you unlock it. It’s sharp, it’s responsive, and every swipe lands exactly how you expect. Would LTPO have pushed it into ultra-premium territory? Definitely. But even as LTPS, the way it handles brightness, contrast, and colour makes it feel like a proper flagship display.
Now, Realme loves throwing big numbers around and yes, the display technically does 144Hz. The catch is that it only unlocks in a small list of supported games. Everywhere else, the UI is capped at 120Hz. On the plus side, the bezels are super thin and the panel is fully flat, which means zero accidental side touches and no strange edge reflections outdoors.
Brightness is where Realme goes full “spec sheet chaos.” They’re claiming 7,000 nits peak and around 2,000 nits outside. And it actually holds up. Outdoor visibility is solved. Pair that with HDR10, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision, and HDR content pops without blowing out skin tones or nuking shadows.
The stereo speakers are loud, but kind of one-note. You get volume, but not much texture in the highs or weight in the lows. It’s fine for TikTok runs and reels, but not something you’ll brag about.
The good news is that everything else around the display feels locked in. The haptics land clean, and the ultrasonic fingerprint sensor is one of the most reliable I’ve used. It just works every single time.
Realme GT 8 Pro Dream Edition: Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Power
Once you look past the special green paint, the GT 8 Pro Dream Edition is running the same hardware as the standard GT 8 Pro — and honestly, that’s a win. At the heart of it is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, and the phone wastes no time flexing it. Heavy apps, big games, long sessions… nothing makes it hiccup. It stays smooth in the way a proper flagship should.
Benchmarks do bring out the drama, though. During stress runs, the phone can hit around 45°C, which is hot, but not unusual for top-end silicone. In real gameplay, it settles under 40°C even after an hour of BGMI. On Antutu, it drops a 3.8 million score. That’s a step below the OnePlus 15’s 4 million, but still very respectable.
You also get 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 512GB of UFS 4.1 storage, so multitasking never chokes and apps stay loaded for long stretches. My only real “why though?” is the USB 2.0 port on an 80K phone. That one stings.
Now, for the gaming side. BGMI and Call of Duty: Mobile run smoothly, and the display does switch to 144Hz. Realme claims its new Hyper Vision+ AI chip injects extra frames to make gameplay appear smoother, even when the game isn’t actually rendering them. And yes, it does feel fluid.
However, in my testing, COD: Mobile still caps at 60fps if you want max graphics. I unlocked 120fps, but only by dropping everything to Low plus Ultra frame rate.
Realme GT 8 Pro Dream Edition: New Ricoh Cameras!
This is the first Realme phone made in collaboration with Ricoh, and they didn’t treat it like a token marketing badge. Ricoh’s GR series is iconic in the street-photography world, and Realme actually pulls some of that DNA into the camera app.
There’s a dedicated GR shooting mode with 28mm and 40mm focal lengths, a 3:2 aspect ratio, film tones tuned by Ricoh, and a “Snap Focus” mode that lets you raise the phone, tap, and instantly capture fixed-focus shots the way street shooters do.
It’s a surprisingly well thought-out creative tool but strip away the Ricoh flair and the hardware still holds its own. On the back you’re working with a 50-megapixel main sensor, a 50-megapixel ultra-wide, and a 200-megapixel telephoto with 3X optical zoom, which is a first for Realme. Up front, there’s a 32-megapixel selfie camera.
The main camera delivers crisp detail, vivid colours, and strong contrast, though it does nudge toward the saturated side. Night shots lean brighter than necessary at times, but the noise control is solid. Since it’s using the same Sony IMX906 as the OnePlus 15, the results feel familiar.
The 200MP telephoto is easily the most fun lens on this phone. At 3X, portraits and zoom shots look sharp and clean with a nice depth to them. Push up to 6X and you’ll see small losses in texture and clarity. Beyond that, it’s mostly about bragging rights — yes, it does 120X, but the quality falls off well before you get there.
The ultra-wide is the weak link. It works fine in daylight, but fine textures get mushy, and low-light scenes lose dynamic range fast. It gets the job done, but it’s not the lens you’ll reach for unless you have to.
On video, Realme went aggressive. You can shoot up to 4K 120fps on the main and telephoto cameras, or 8K 30fps if you’re feeling brave. You also get 10-bit LOG and Dolby Vision HDR, and the results are genuinely impressive for a phone in this price bracket.
Colour depth is strong, highlights don’t blow out easily, and you can still use pro formats at 4K 120, which is wild. Stabilisation is the only area that needs polish — quick pans, fast movement and low-light clips can introduce wobble or jitter that breaks the otherwise solid footage.
The selfie camera lands firmly in the middle. In good lighting it’s sharp and vibrant, but in poor light it slips quickly. There’s no autofocus either, which hurts group shots or close-range framing more than you’d expect.
Realme GT 8 Pro Dream Edition: Realme UI 7 is here!
On the software side, the GT 8 Pro Dream Edition boots straight into Realme UI 7 on top of Android 16. It’s actually the first Realme phone to launch with it out of the box, so you’re getting the newest version without waiting for an update.
Because this is the Dream Edition, Realme went all-in on the Aston Martin theme. The UI comes pre-dressed in racing green accents, custom icons, and F1-style wallpapers. It’s cool for the first few days, but after that, I switched back to the standard icon pack because it’s cleaner and way easier to live with.
Realme is promising 4 years of major Android updates and 5 years of security patches, which puts it in a comfortably “flagship” upgrade cycle. Not quite Samsung or Google territory, but much better than expected.
The big visual change is something Realme calls “Light Glass.” Think translucent widgets, softer highlights, and a more layered lockscreen that mimics depth. Yes, there’s obvious inspiration from iOS 26, but to Realme’s credit, it doesn’t feel like a copy-paste. It feels like their take on the idea.
Expanded icons are genuinely useful — tap and stretch an app icon, and it turns into a mini widget with shortcuts. It’s quicker than long-press menus and way more intuitive. There are also video lockscreen backgrounds and a revamped theming engine that finally paints the UI more consistently instead of half-colouring everything.
The AI additions are everywhere but not in your face. You get Google’s big hitters like Gemini Assistant, Gemini Live, Circle to Search, and instant translation on-screen. Inside the gallery, Realme adds its own tools like AI Eraser, AI Ultra Clarity, Unblur, Perfect Shot, and a few other smart edits that actually deliver usable results. They’re not “demo features,” they’re things you will genuinely end up using.
Then there’s Mind Space — the same system you’ll find on the Oppo Find X9 Pro and on the OnePlus lineup as Plus Mind. It’s basically a digital catch-all for everything your brain wants to collect throughout the day. Screenshots, notes, links, webpages — dump them all in, and AI organizes the chaos into summaries and reference boards. If you’re a student, a reviewer, or someone who constantly screenshots ideas, this might be your new favourite app.
Realme GT 8 Pro Dream Edition: 7,000mAh Battery & 120W Fast Charging
The 7,000mAh battery on this thing is borderline absurd — in a good way. I was cruising past six and a half to seven hours of screen-on time without trying to baby it.
But, as always, gaming is where the real story shows up. Forty-five minutes of Call of Duty: Mobile knocked off around 11% of the charge. That’s almost double what the OnePlus 15 burns through in the same session, and that phone is literally pushing 165fps. So if you’re grinding competitive matches or long sessions, the battery will remind you it’s human.
Charging is where Realme flexes. With 120W wired charging and Smart Rapid enabled, it jumps from zero to full in about 45–50 minutes. Switch that mode off, and the charge time stretches past an hour, but the phone stays noticeably cooler while it juices up — which I’ll take any day. There’s 50W wireless charging too. Not crazy fast, but perfect for that “drop and forget” desk or bedside setup.
Realme GT 8 Pro Dream Edition Review: Verdict
The Realme GT 8 Pro Dream Edition does not try to blend into the lineup. It walks into the room loud, polished, and very sure of itself. And honestly, a lot of the package backs that confidence — performance is strong, the display feels premium in everyday use, and the Ricoh camera features actually make shooting more enjoyable.
But then you hit a few head-scratchers. A USB 2.0 port on an almost ₹80k phone. An LTPS panel instead of LTPO. A camera plate swap system that feels gimmicky.
Spend a few days with it though, and the real personality shows. This is Realme at its loudest, most experimental, and honestly, most fun.
So is it worth the extra ₹7,000 over the regular GT 8 Pro? If you’re into F1, Aston Martin, or you just want a phone that looks like it came from a pit lane… you already know your answer.
If you just want the performance, cameras and battery without the cosplay? Save the cash — the standard GT 8 Pro gives you the same muscle minus the drama.
