We’ve reviewed Realme’s lineup of smartphones from the budget C series like the C33, C30S, C35, and C25Y, to the midrange Realme 9 series which includes the Realme 9i and the regular Realme 9. It was high time to check out its flagship GT series and we start with the Realme GT Neo 3.
UNBOXING
The GT Neo 3 comes in this sleek black box and inside the box is the phone, the back cover, documentation, sim ejector tool, 80W charging brick and type-c cable.
DESIGN
Realme GT Neo 3 comes in various colours with our unit shipping in Asphalt Black, Sprint White and Nitro Blue. The latter two feature Realme’s racing stripe back design. The Sprint White version has black stripes running across the left side of the back while the Nitro Blue version has black stripes.
Our unit has a more laid-back aesthetic. The phone is slim and lightweight at 188g – perfect for those of us who don’t like using hefty phones.
The back is glass with a lightly frosted finish and uses AG Glass Process to prevent fingerprint smudges.
It has a plastic frame and the display is protected by Gorilla Glass 5. The right side has the power button while the left side has the volume button.
At the bottom is the type-c charging port, bottom-facing speaker, microphone, and sim card slot. There’s no headphone jack here. At the top, we have another speaker and a secondary microphone.
Coming to the front is the 6.7″ AMOLED screen sporting a 120Hz refresh rate and 1080p resolution. This is a 10-bit colour display with a 100% P3 Color Gamut with HDR10+ support.
All the bells and whistles plus realme even included a dedicated display processor which makes the gt neo 3’s screen. It’s beautiful and crispy and fast – perfect for consuming multimedia content from Netflix and that high refresh rate makes interacting with the phone buttery smooth – scrolling through apps and gaming is just delightful.
The stereo speakers come through when streaming music, watching movies or listening to podcasts.
It ships with a fast under-display fingerprint reader with face unlock for biometrics.
In terms of design, the realme GT Neo 3 nails it.
PERFORMANCE
Going under the hood, we have MediaTek’s Dimensity 8100 5G(5nm) processor paired with Mali G610 MC6 GPU. We also have 8GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage. You can expand the RAM with up to 8GB of virtual RAM so you have 16 GB of RAM on hand. This combination makes the phone fast in real life. The Dimensity 8100 even beats the Snapdragon 888 and 8 Gen 1 in terms of synthetic benchmarks.
The phone handles everything you throw at it – from simple tasks to heavy multitasking and gaming. There’s the added GT mode that further enhances the gaming experience by enhancing the refresh rate and touch sampling rate.
Realme GT Neo 3 came with Android 12 and realme UI 3 and immediately got updated to Android 13 and Realme UI 4.0 early this month. It also has the January 2023 Android security patch.
Android 13 brings with it new Material You colour schemes and new cinematic wallpapers. Material You theme now supports more third-party apps as opposed to just supporting Google’s apps.
Realme UI 4.0 now shares most features with ColorOS 13 and this is not surprising as both OPPO and Realme live under the same BBK electronics umbrella. The UI is flexible and customizable.
Both Realme UI and Android 13 plus the RAM and the fast processor make the GT Neo 3 one of my favourite smartphones this year.
This is a 5G phone and we are happy to report that it was reaching speeds of up to 280Mbps making it rank high among the fastest 5G phones we’ve reviewed so far.
The good thing is that it’s also slated to get Android 14 and Realme UI 5.0 when it launches late this year.
BATTERY LIFE
Realme GT Neo 3 not only has fast software performance but also when it comes to charging. It has 80W SuperDart Fast charging to juice up the 5000mAh battery from empty to 50% in 10 minutes and another 20 minutes to full charge.
Realme has been pushing the edges of fast charging as there’s a version of the GT Neo 3 that supports 150W fast charging and they’re slated to launch GT Neo 5 later next month with 240W fast charging.
For those concerned about the fast charging, Realme assures consumers that their phone should still have 80% of its original battery capacity left after 1600 charge cycles which is equivalent to four or five years of use. Also, realme GT Neo 3 has a Dual Charge pump parallel architecture that reduces heat concentration and long-term damage.
That huge battery gives you up to two days of use with medium to light use. With heavy use, you can go to bed with like 25% on average to do some late-night scrolling on TikTok or Instagram.
CAMERAS
So far, the realme GT Neo 3 has ticked off most checkboxes when it comes to design, software and battery life and charging but how do its cameras perform?
You’ll be glad to know its cameras outperformed my expectations. When it comes to smartphone photography, Realme doesn’t disappoint and especially the GT Neo 3.
The phone comes with a main 50MP Sony IMX766 sensor with an 8MP ultra-wide and 2MP macro camera. We also have a 16MP selfie camera housed at the centre punch hole cutout. You’ll notice that the primary camera is the same one on the Find X5 Pro – OPPO’s flagship. The main lens has a super large sensor size that heavily improves lowlight photography. It also ships with OIS and EIS.
The camera performance is really impressive from both the main and selfie camera. The shots come out with incredible colour, sharpness, detail, dynamic range and even skin tones.
These cameras are incredible not only during the day but also when the sunsets thanks to the dedicated night mode.
Realme GT Neo 3 shots video up to 4k 60fps on the main camera and 1080p 30fps on the selfie camera.
This excellent camera performance makes the realme GT Neo 3 my favourite camera smartphone of 2023 and I loved taking shots using this phone.
VERDICT
Overall, I loved using the GT Neo 3 – it handled everything I wanted it to with no fuss. Ultrafast charging, ultrafast performance, dependable camera performance, crisp display and nice design. It should be high on your list of flagship phones to get if you’re planning to upgrade.
