realme GT Master Edition Review - SD778G is capable!
We share our thoughts and experiences with the new realme GT Master Edition after two weeks of use.
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| realme GT Master Edition |
In July 2021, realme announced the realme GT Master Edition globally. Several months later, it was teased to arrive in the Philippines.
In our unboxing and first impressions of the realme GT Master Edition, we loved how it looks and the paper specs. Now we will share our in-depth experience with the new smartphone.
To recap, the new realme GT Master Edition features a 6.43-inch Samsung AMOLED FHD+ display with a 120Hz refresh rate. Inside the phone is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G 5G SoC, 8GB RAM, 128GB/256GB of storage, and a 4,300mAh battery with 65W SuperDart charging.
In the Philippines, the realme GT Master Edition starts at PHP 18,990.
But how does it perform after two weeks of daily use? Let's find out!
For our review part 1: realme GT Master Edition Unboxing and First Impression!
Multimedia Experience
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| realme GT Master Edition's Super AMOLED display! |
As previously mentioned, in front of the phone is the 6.43-inch Samsung Super AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate, a 360Hz touch sampling rate, 1,000nits peak brightness, and a 2400 x 1080 resolution.
Vibrant, smooth, and bright display!
Surrounding the display are slim top and side bezels. The bottom bezel is thicker than the other sides. On top is the slim slit where the earpiece is located. On the top-left corner is the punch hole that houses the selfie camera.
The panel gets really bright with a peak brightness of 1,000 nits. Under direct sunlight, the display is still readable. The viewing angles are also good. There is some loss of brightness and contrast when the display is viewed off-axis but the differences are far from dramatic.
Images from the panel are rich, vibrant, with decent sharpness and detail. The contrast is deep enough too.
It supports 10-points of multitouch that are responsive, accurate, and quick. We did not notice a delay, misread taps, or gestures.
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| Bottom firing speaker |
At the bottom of the phone are the speaker and the 3.5mm audio jack. Unfortunately, the earpiece on top of the display is for calls only and is not used for stereo.
The bottom-firing speakers produce sound with a decent maximum volume. At 80 percent, the sound is full, clear, and pleasing to the ears. At maximum volume, the sound becomes tingy and somewhat distorted. The sound is loud enough to fill a small room. It may struggle with larger rooms or environments with loud ambient sound.
It has two microphones that make the microphone recording decent. It can pick up audio from under a meter away. The noise cancellation is good enough that our callers never complained about voice quality.
Cameras
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| realme GT Master Edition designed by Naoto |
At the back of the phone is a 64MP f/1.8 main camera, 8MP f/2.3 ultra-wide camera, 2MP f/2.4 macro camera with an LED flash.
The stock realme camera app has several modes that include: Photo, Video, Night, Portrait, 64M, Starry Mode, Dual-View video, Slo-Mo, Timelapse, Movie, Expert, Pano, Text scanner, Ultra-macro, and street.
The Expert or Pro mode allows for control of ISO (100-6400), Shutter Speed (1/8000s to 32 seconds), White Balance, AF, and EV (+-2). Users can also switch between the main and the ultra-wide camera.
Rear Camera Samples
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| Main camera daylight |
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| Ultra-wide camera daylight |
In daylight, the images from the ultra-wide and main cameras produced decently sharp and detailed images with saturated colors and decent contrast.
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| Rear portrait mode |
Portrait mode adds an artificial bokeh behind the subject and the realme GT Master Edition manages to do so well. The Bokeh isn't as natural as we would like but it is one of the better ones out there.
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| Main camera indoors |
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| Ultra-wide camera indoors |
Indoors, the story remains the same, the images produced have decent sharpness and detail while the colors are very saturated. The contrast is decent too.
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| Main camera close-up indoors |
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| Rear macro camera indoors |
The main camera produces sharp, detailed, and vibrant close-up images indoors; however, the minimum focus distance is somewhat lacking.
When using the actual 2MP macro, the images are soft with a lot of noise with unappealing colors. We recommend using the main camera instead.
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| Main camera low light |
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| Ultra-wide camera low light |
In low light, the 1x and ultra-wide images both have increased grain and has resulted in reduced sharpness, detail, and contrast. The colors are still vibrant though. However, the noise is well controlled.
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| Main camera Night mode |
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| Ultra-wide camera Night mode |
Night mode is available for the 1x and the ultra-wide camera. The feature manages to dramatically reduce noise and improve sharpness, detail, and contrast which makes it the best mode for low light images with static subjects.
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| Selfie camera |
On the punch hole of the phone is a 32MP f/2.5 Sony Selfie camera.
Selfie Camera Samples
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| Selfie daylight |
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| Selfie portrait |
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| Selfie Indoors |
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| Selfie lowlight |
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| Selfie Night Mode |
For selfies, the realme GT Master Edition's front-facing camera manages to produce decently sharp, detailed, and saturated selfies in daylight and indoors. In low light, the selfie gains noise and grain that reduces the sharpness and detail but it does retain the vibrant colors. There is a Night Mode selfie which improves the sharpness and details but for static subjects.
The rear cameras can capture up to 4K at 30fps without stabilization or up to 1080p at 60fps without stabilization. While the Selfie camera can capture up to 1080p 30fps. Users can use the EIS but it does add a significant crop to both the rear and front-facing video recording.
The resulting footage from both cameras is decently sharp with vibrant color but is shaky.
Note: We will upload our video samples here. Stay tuned!
Performance
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| Qualcomm Snapdragon 778's performance |
Inside the realme GT Master Edition is the 6nm 2.4-GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G 5G octa-core processor, Adreno 652L GPU, 8GB RAM, and 128GB/256GB of storage.
SD778G is fast and capable!
It managed to score an impressive 536,212 in AnTuTu where the temperature of the phone only raised by 1.7 degrees and where it lost only 4 percent in the battery during the test.
While in GeekBench the phone scored 788 in single-core tests and scored 2800 in multi-core tests.
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| 3DMark and CPDT benchmarks |
In the 3DMark Wild Life benchmark, the phone scored 2,501 and had an average of 15 frames per second. While in the CPDT disk tests, the internal storage managed to score 519.05 MB/s in sequential write speeds and scored 480.88 MB/s in sequential read speeds.
In terms of synthetic benchmarks, the realme GT Master Edition manages to score like flagships in the last 12 months.
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| Genshin Impact |
Surprisingly, even tho the SD778G has a ton of power, it only managed to unlock the Low graphics settings as the default in Genshin Impact. Don't take us wrong, it's good but other phones with similar benchmark scores were able to unlock the Medium Graphics settings as the default.
Playing Genshin Impact at low is smooth. The graphics are okay but understandable given how demanding Genshin Impact is. Users can also opt to select the lowest graphics setting and increase the framerate cap to 60 for the smoothest experience.
After playing an hour of Genshin Impact, the realme GT Master Edition only had a slight increase in temperature. The heat management is good.
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| Call of Duty: Mobile |
In the latest version of Call of Duty: Mobile, the phone managed to unlock the Max Frame rate setting and the Very High Graphics setting. However, if you pick the Max Graphics setting, you can only play at the High graphics setting. We picked this as we wanted to take advantage of the high refresh rate display.
Gameplay on High with Max frame rate is a smooth gameplay experience. The phone did warm up after an extended play session but it never got uncomfortably hot.
The In-Display fingerprint scanner is quick to set up and it detects and scans the fingerprint right away. Unlocking the phone is instantaneous and is accurate. It struggles when our fingerprint is dirty.
While the Face Unlock with the selfie camera is also easy to set up and works just as fast as the fingerprint scanner as long as you are looking at the camera. It detects our faces and unlocks the phone instantaneously in both well-lit and poorly lit environments. The screen brightens up when in a darker environment too.
The phone works with OTG when the feature is enabled manually. The WiFi, Bluetooth, 5G, and LTE connections are fast, stable, and reliable. The GPS acquires our location immediately and accurately.
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| PCMark Battery test and Battery usage |
Inside the phone is a 4,500mAh battery with 25W Adaptive fast charging via USB-C. It managed to last for 9 hours and 23 minutes. While in our real-world use where we use the phone as our daily driver, it managed to last for 6 hours and 16 minutes of on-screen time after a loaded 9-hour workday.
We ended our 9-hour workday with 15 to 20 percent battery left. This means that it will last a typical 9-hour workday but may fall short if you were expecting it to last the whole day.
It takes the phone under 60 minutes to charge from 0 to 100 percent.
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| realme UI 2.0 |
For software, it is running on the latest Android 11-based realme UI 2.0. It features minor tweaks and visual changes from the original realme UI while adding the new features of Android 11. If you liked the older realme UI then you will like this one however, if you never liked it then, this won't make you like it.
Pros - Premium looking design, lightweight, powerful performance, good display, fast charging, 120Hz display is great
Cons - Fingerprint magnet, the battery is just enough, Macro camera needs improvement, OIS would have been great for video
realme GT Master Edition Specs
CPU: 2.4GHz 6nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G 5G octa-core processor
GPU: Adreno 642L
RAM: 8GB LPDDR4X
ROM: 128GB/256GB UFS 2.1
Back Camera: 64MP f/1.8 w/ PDAF, EIS + 8MP f/2.3 119-degree ultra-wide-angle + 2MP f/2.4 4cm macro + LED flash
Selfie Camera: 32MP f/2.5 Sony
Battery: 4,500mAh w/ 65W SuperDart Charge
OS: Android 11 w/ realme UI 2.0
Connectivity: WiFi 6, 5G, 4G LTE, Bluetooth 5.2, OTG, FM Radio, NFC, GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, Galileo, QZSS, dual SIM
Sensors: Accelerometer, light, orientation, proximity, gyroscope, sound, magnetic
Others: In-Display fingerprint sensor, face unlock, stereo speakers, Hi-Res Audio, USB-C, Tactile Engine Linear Motor, Vapor Chamber Cooling System, Colors: Voyager Grey, Daybreak Blue
Dimensions: 159.2 x 73.5 x 8.0 mm (Daybreak Blue), 8.7 mm (Voyager Grey)
Weight: 174 g (Daybreak Blue), 180 g (Voyager Grey)
Price: PHP 18,990 (128GB), PHP 21,990 (256GB)
Verdict
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| realme GT Master Edition using Chrome |
The realme GT Master Edition is a good looking and lightweight smartphone with powerful performance and a great display but with some caveats.
The Battery charges quickly but the capacity could be lacking for people who need an all-day workhorse.
Our main concerns are with the cameras. The cameras are both good and bad. While the main and selfie cameras perform well in almost all situations, the ultra-wide struggles in low light. The rear macro camera is almost useless as the main camera can also shoot really close. In video recording, the output is decent but could use better stabilization.
Aside from the cameras, the body is a fingerprint magnet. Otherwise, the realme GT Master Edition is a good performing phone for the price. And if users can live with those concerns, it is of great value. It will struggle with the competing OnePlus Nord 2 tho.
What do you guys think?
Build/Design - 4
Multimedia Experience - 4.25
Cameras - 4
Performance - 4.25
Average - 4.125/5
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