Realme GT master explorer edition
Earlier on this year Realme 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 favour 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 aluminium 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.
Design of Realme GT master explorer edition-
The GT master explorer edition comes in a voyager grey or voyager apricot. Being the vegan leather finish you can also pick them up in glass finishes as well though I especially like this grey finished leather back. We get a 4500 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 front vegan leather or glass back and of course an aluminium 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. 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 millimetres thick depending on the version that you get.
Display of Realme GT master explorer edition-
The back design looks absolutely phenomenal but what about the display. Well we are welcome to a 6.5 inch super Amoled 20:9 aspect ratio curved display. It is full HD plus it has a DCI P3 rating of 100 with HRD 10 plus. 1100 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. 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 1100 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 grey 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.
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Camera of Realme GT master explorer edition-
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 Realme 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. 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 millimetre ultra-wide sensor, which is 16 megapixels. We also have a 24 millimetre 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 41 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 ultra-wide and 1080p is the max resolution that we can use when using ultra wide. 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 brighter but it does take away in terms of image quality. Talking about image quality ultra-wide 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.
Software of Realme GT master explorer edition-
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 Realme 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 an 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.
Gaming performance of Realme GT master explorer edition-
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 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 Realme should be hitting 120 fps but it is not hopefully. This gets changed with a future software updates of the phone.
Battery performance of Realme GT master explorer edition-
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 Realme master edition which is paired with a snapdragon 778G 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 Realme 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.
Conclusion-
The Realme GT master explorer edition is certainly a master craft 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.
