The Realme GT 7 Pro is the early bird of 2025 flagship Android smartphones – it’s the first to use the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, and it got in our hands before the ball even dropped on 2024.
It’s also looking to compete on price with upcoming and almost definitely more expensive flagship phones, with the price of the global version likely to be in the $900/€800 range, depending on market. As usual, the lower price means you’ll have to accept some less-than-premium features, but as we’ll discuss in our Realme GT 7 Pro review, this is still a solid flagship device that could prove to be a great value pick for a lot of folks.
Design and build
A flagship smartphone has to look the part, and the Realme GT 7 Pro certainly does! The phone has an aluminum frame with glass on the front and back. There are a few colors available, but the standout is the Mars Orange colorway we got on our review unit, which has a nice textured burnt orange look on the back.
The camera module at the top left isn’t too pronounced, and has a nice metallic border that matches the color of the phone. There are curved edges all around the phone, both on the back and on the display in the front.
The phone is 8.6mm thick and weighs 223g, and has a 6.78-inch display. That’s a little heavier than we usually see for flagship smartphones, likely because of the much larger 6,500mAh battery that we’ll talk about later in the review. Despite the extra weight, I never found the phone any more unwieldy or uncomfortable to hold than similarly sized phones.
The glass panel on the front is Corning Gorilla Glass 7i, which, while solid, isn’t their top-of-the-line Victus glass. The phone is also rated both IP68 and IP69, which requires some explanation. IP69 is a new rating, and isn’t necessarily a one-step improvement over IP68 (which indicates the phone is dust-proof and waterproof when submerged). IP69 says nothing about being able to submerge the phone in water, but specifically that it can withstand blasts of pressurized water. Practical terms? The phone should survive an accidental trip in the washing machine.
Performance
The Realme GT 7 Pro uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, also known as Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, with (in our review unit) 16GB of RAM. This is the chipset that will likely be in most Android flagships in 2025, and is going to enable terrific performance, fancy camera features, and much else. In the GT 7 Pro, the main benefit is to performance – the phone runs and scrolls smoothly, and tackles high-end mobile gaming as well as any top-tier phone out there, save for enthusiast-focused gaming phones.
Practical performance testing was an adventure with this phone – while I was reviewing the device, I received multiple updates that improved both performance and battery life. Before those updates, I was able to play Genshin Impact on maxed out settings at a steady 60fps for an hour or two, which did make the phone noticeably warm and, as we’ll get to later, wreaked havoc on battery life. After those OS updates, operating temperatures seemed much more stable without too big of a hit to performance, and battery life was much improved.
This might become a theme among Snapdragon 8 Elite phones. The chipset dispenses with cores dedicated to efficient operation – the 8-core CPU uses Qualcomm’s new performance-oriented Oryon cores, of which there are two prime cores (4.32GHz) and six performance cores (3.53GHz). All gas, no brakes. It’s going to be a challenge to harness all that power without tanking battery life, which is likely why we see such an enormous 6,500mAh battery in this phone. Clearly, Realme is still in the process of figuring it out, but the fact that updates have come early and often, and have made a noticeably positive difference, is encouraging.
Speaking of operating temperatures, this phone has a dual vapor chamber cooling system that, post-update, seems to be doing the trick. My guess is that it has its hands full with the Snapdragon 8 Elite, and that other flagship phones this year are going to need to nail their cooling systems to be successful. So far, Realme seems to be moving in the right direction.
There are a bunch of settings tweaks to optimize for performance when gaming or watching videos, and most do so at the cost of battery life, which is to be expected. Realme also has a GT mode that you can turn on or off system-wide, but it’s not doing anything too special – it’s basically a one-button toggle to max out screen resolution (which is maxed out by default), lock the phone to its max 120Hz refresh rate (instead of dynamically adjusting it), and boost performance. I’d only use it for fast-paced games – otherwise, the hit to battery life isn’t worth it.
Connectivity is a mixed bag. The phone does not have eSIM compatibility, a microSD card slot, or tri-band Wi-Fi 7, in case any of those are dealbreakers for you. The USB port is a USB 2.0 rather than 3.0, which only matters if you use a cable to transfer files, as transfer speeds will be slower. It doesn’t affect charging speeds, which, as we’ll see later, are spectacular. And, if you want your phone to be an all-in-one remote control, there is an IR blaster.
Realme opted to use an in-display ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, which works much better in wet conditions. You can also unlock the phone with facial recognition, which works very quickly.
Display and audio
The display on the Realme GT 7 Pro stands out as much as the chipset. It has a 6.78-inch 2780×1264 Eco2 LTPO AMOLED panel from Samsung that has up to a 120Hz refresh rate and support for Dolby Vision processing and HDR10+. Individual pixels can get as bright as 6500 nits, which is very, very bright, but that’s just for contrast – overall, max screen brightness is 2000 nits.
At max brightness, this display really impresses. Darker scenes have more discernible detail, colors are bright but not saturated, and the whole picture looks clean and crisp. There’s a vivid color profile you can switch on to saturate colors, but I didn’t prefer it.
There’s also an image sharpener and color brightener that you can turn on, as part of Realme’s O1 Ultra Vision Engine, which is meant to upscale lower quality videos. I tried watching some truly ancient YouTube videos with those features turned on and off – there was actually a little screen flare that showed when the upscalers kicked in, but I can’t say I noticed that much of a difference.
The Realme GT 7 Pro has stereo speakers, and they complement the excellent display. Audio is clear and distinct, and sound gets very loud at max volume without becoming tinny, distorted, or muddy. They don’t replace a good pair of headphones, but if you don’t want to use headphones, you won’t feel like you’re missing out by just using the phone’s speakers.
Battery life
The Realme GT 7 Pro has a 6500mAh battery capacity (5800mAh in India), which is an eye-opening number considering most flagship batteries were in the 5000mAh range last year. Pump the brakes on better battery life, though – while battery life is good, it’s not far removed from where flagship phones were last year. I suspect that any phone using the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset this year is going to need this big of a battery to support a chipset that puts power before everything.
An hour of watching video at max brightness only ticked off 6% of the battery for me, which actually is a pretty solid improvement over last year’s flagships. High-performance gaming is where things went off the rails a little – with max brightness, resolution, and frame rate turned on, playing Genshin Impact on max settings in performance mode took the phone from 23% to dead in a little over a half hour. Performance was amazing, but it sure didn’t last long!
Then, Realme’s software updates kicked in. Once those got pushed through, the same video test only knocked off 4% of the battery, and gaming under the same conditions for an hour ticked off 19%, which is more in line with the kind of battery life we saw in flagship phones last year.
When idle, the phone is basically off. I left it on the desk for a couple days and didn’t touch it, and came back to 99% capacity, which is great news for anyone trying to get more than a day’s worth of battery life out of their phone. I was able to push two days pretty consistently, although I wouldn’t bank on a full two days – it’s still a phone you’ll want to charge every night.
Or, you can just take the 120W charging brick with you everywhere, and that’ll solve your battery problems. Using superVOOC charging, the phone can go from dead to 50% in about 15 minutes.
The only downside here is the lack of wireless charging. That’s getting to be more important now that newer wireless charging gear is getting more efficient and faster at charging devices.
Camera
The camera module is the main sacrifice to drive the price down, if you’re considering the most expensive options in the iPhone 16 Pro or the inevitable Samsung Galaxy S25 line. The 50 MP main camera (a Sony IMX 906 sensor) is solid, but the 50 MP periscope zoom telephoto camera (a Sony IMX 882 sensor) takes a small step back, and the 8 MP ultra-wide camera might disappoint folks looking for flagship quality. On the other side, there’s a 16 MP selfie camera that can only take video in 1080p, so folks looking for a vlogging phone probably won’t be won over.
The Realme GT 7 Pro’s 50 MP main camera is the best of the three – great color reproduction without oversaturation, and mostly good balance in shots with dynamic range. There’s some overexposure in the brighter picture at the basketball game, but otherwise solid. Zoom in and you’ll see that object and people definition isn’t great, but for sharing and posting, the results don’t disappoint. This is also the camera you’ll lean on for video, as it features optical image stabilization and can take up to 8k video (at 24fps).
The 50 MP periscope zoom camera has a less powerful sensor, and a little clarity is lost. The camera can take pictures at up to 3x zoom – the 6x zoom option is a crop, but the results aren’t bad, and markedly better than pictures taken with digital zoom. Colors appear a little more washed out at 6x zoom, though. The periscope zoom camera can take up to 4k 30fps video, but if you’re going to use it for high-action events like sports games, it’s probably worth it to go down to 1080p for more frames.
The 8 MP ultra-wide camera is the least impressive of the bunch. The camera lacks autofocus, making it tough to use for anything other than still, sweeping landscape shots. Even then, there’s a lot more blurriness in the details compared with photos taken with the other two cameras. They’re not bad results, but considering that the GT 7 Pro will be competing with other flagship phones in 2025, they’re likely going to lag behind the rest of the pack.
In portrait mode, I still saw the great color reproduction from before, but I wish the focus area was larger on some of these shots. You can adjust that after the fact with the phone’s editing tools, but that doesn’t always end up clean, either. I also found myself needing to move farther away from my subject than I wanted at the phone’s prompting, particularly in the shots with flowers, so focus in general was a weak point here. Too bad, because otherwise I was pretty happy with how these turned out.
Thanks to the phone’s waterproofing, there’s also an underwater mode, which in addition to adjusting settings sets more photography controls to the phone’s power and volume buttons (although you can still use the shutter button on the display, which works just fine underwater). Probably will be pretty neat for snorkeling trips, and taking a shot of a reflection from underwater is cool!
Street mode helps to frame shots optimally around a subject – point the phone, tap on your subject, and the phone will zoom in to for clarity and framing. It seems to just center the subject, which maybe isn’t what you always want, and it doesn’t deal with fast-moving subjects too well. I found it to be of limited usefulness compared to the other modes.
There is also a night mode, but the camera software is good enough to where it isn’t necessary – just pointing and shooting at night is fine. The results are OK, although lights get overexposed and blurry, which might be a bummer if you’re trying to take photos of your street’s holiday lights or something along those lines.
Software
The GT 7 Pro runs Realme UI 6.0 over Android 15, which is mostly fine. There are a handful of preinstalled apps like Netflix, AliExpress, and TikTok, but overall Realme showed restraint as bloatware goes, and most of it can be uninstalled. There are some minor UI gripes – I don’t like that I can’t jump straight to my Gmail inbox with a tap if I have notifications for several emails, but have to jump into a specific email first – but nothing I found too offensive.
There’s also an iPhone-like live alert feature, which opens up a little command bar around the front camera lens. Handy for controlling music from the home screen, and I really preferred it for timers as opposed to a floating window (that always seems to be in the way, no matter where it is!).
There are AI features, of course, some from Google (like the excellent Live Captions) and some from Realme. The latter are mostly for picture editing – specifically, Unblur, Eraser, Ultra Clarity, and sketch to image, all of which are accessible through Realme’s Photos app. Sketch to image in theory allows you to sketch an item, which AI will recognize and turn into a much better looking image, but as many others have reported, this feature was not ready for launch and is still not usable as of publication.
The other AI features are usable, but they’re not good enough yet. AI Ultra Clarity outlined subjects in an unnatural way, but introduced blurring around some objects were there wasn’t any before. Unblur wasn’t much better, and I think in some cases actually made blurry subjects even more blurry.
The AI Eraser was awful at background filling in place of removed objects and people, often inserting random objects or windows, or looking like a bad use of the smear tool. Google’s suite of AI editing features on the Pixel line isn’t perfect, either, but it’s far ahead of what you get here.
Sustainability
Realme didn’t do too badly here! The IP68/IP69 ingress rating is the best it gets, and while we would’ve liked to see Corning Gorilla Glass Victus protecting the display from shattering, Gorilla Glass 7i isn’t bad. They’ve cut down on the amount of plastic used in their packaging, too.
Realme is guaranteeing 3 years of OS upgrades and 4 years of security patches for the GT 7 Pro – while we’d love to see the same kind of seven-year guarantees Samsung has been promising, this is a step in the right direction.
Pricing and availability
The Realme GT 7 Pro is available in China, and Realme does have a global version that they are pushing out, plus an India-specific version that has a smaller 5800mAh battery. The phone can be purchased with 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB of storage, and with either 12GB or 16GB of RAM (the 1TB option only comes with 16GB of RAM). In addition to the Mars Orange colorway, the phone also comes in Galaxy Grey and White.
Pricing is an adventure. The global rollout is happening now, but prices vary wildly by country and retailer. In some places, it’s near $550 or $600, which is a steal. Other markets or retailers are near $900/€800, or more. If you’re looking to buy, it’ll be worth the time it takes to go deal hunting, especially during the holiday season.
Bottom line
It’s kind of hard to say whether or not you should buy the Realme GT 7 Pro – none of its competitors have been released yet! It’ll be taking on other Snapdragon 8 Elite phones that will launch early next year, and it remains to be seen how those future phones will look in terms of performance and price – and how efficiently they’ll be able to manage this juiced up new Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset.
What we can say is that while the camera quality probably isn’t going to be in the top half of the class, everything else about this phone is very impressive. Display, gaming performance, and battery life are all terrific, and the corners cut to bring down costs – USB 2.0, Gorilla Glass 7i, and a lack of wireless charging – are fairly minor, even if they may be dealbreakers to some.
I think it makes sense to jump on the Realme GT 7 Pro if you want to be an early Snapdragon 8 Elite adopter and want a really solid smartphone for gaming. It’s a good thing for Realme that they got those software updates out quick, because the awful battery life for performance gaming got fixed overnight, and it would’ve made it really hard to recommend this phone. Getting that fixed put the GT 7 Pro in a good spot, and reassures us that Realme is committed to finding problems and supporting their devices.