Realme GT 8 Pro review: A chaotic mix of brilliant cameras and baffling design choices

Smartphones are more than the sum of their parts, or at least, the best ones are. The Realme GT 8 Pro has everything it needs to be a serious contender, but has the company brought it all together to create a winner? It’s certainly hard to say what more it needs to do, but as I’ve found out during my time with it, there’s a danger it’s got a little too much going on. Here’s what I mean.

Price, specs, and availability

At the time of writing, Realme has not confirmed the price or final availability of the GT 8 Pro. However, a global launch outside China, but not including the U.S., is highly likely.

There are two versions of the Realme GT 8 Pro. The standard model comes in Dairy White or Urban Blue in either 12GB/256GB or 16GB/512GB configurations. The Realme GT 8 Pro Dream Edition is co-branded with the Aston Martin Formula One team. It comes in a special Aston Martin Racing Green color and features custom software and is only available with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage space.

Design with a bizarre twist

Swappable camera face plates?!

The design is the aspect of the Realme GT 8 Pro that feels like a bit too much, or more specifically, one part of it. You can swap the plate over the rear camera module for one with a different shape. Why? I really don’t know.

Realme supplies a little Torx screwdriver to undo the two screws that hold the circular plate in place, which then reveals a “bare” camera module, ready to be covered by a square plate. The standard GT 8 Pro does not come with a second plate, but the Dream Edition does.

I suppose it’s a bit of fun, but I can’t imagine taking the time to change the plate more than once, as all it does is vaguely change the look of the phone, with neither being hugely better looking than the other.

Dream Edition mistake

One big problem

I’ve been using the GT 8 Pro Dream Edition ahead of my review, and although I love the color scheme and the cool Aston Martin F1 wallpaper, I have a problem with the branding on the back of the phone. I understand Aramco — an oil company — is the Aston Martin F1 team’s headline sponsor, but there is no good reason why its branding overpowers the Aston Martin crest on the back of the phone. No one, not one person, will be buying this because it’s an Aramco phone, and everyone will be considering it because of the Aston Martin connection.

I’m sure the branding negotiations were long and tedious, but someone with good design sense should have argued harder about why Aramco’s name shouldn’t be the most visible brand on the back of the phone. It puts me right off and sends me into the waiting arms of the Urban Blue GT 8 Pro. Realme has used a leather-like material on the back, which feels great, with a subtle texture and natural warmth, complete with a lovely matte finish. It may not have the Aston Martin name anywhere on it, but at least no one will think I’ve made a bizarre decision and bought an Aramco special edition phone.

Weird branding aside, the Realme GT 8 Pro has an ergonomic shape for great in-hand comfort, a reasonable 214 g weight, a metal frame, plus an IP66, IP68, and IP69 dust and water resistance rating. It feels very similar to the OnePlus 15 in hand, and that’s no bad thing.

New camera, ready for the street

Ricoh joins the fray

The GT 8 Pro is the first smartphone to showcase Realme’s new partnership with Ricoh. It’s the start of a four-year deal, and Realme’s first time collaborating with a camera maker. Ricoh’s GR range of cameras are often used by street photographers, and the pair is emphasizing this ability on the GT 8 Pro.

The camera has a 50-megapixel main, a 50MP wide-angle, and a 200MP telephoto with a 3x optical zoom. Ricoh has worked on the software, and there’s an entirely separate mode which features a 28mm and 40mm zoom, a default 3:2 aspect ratio, a distraction-free viewfinder mode, various Ricoh-tuned filters, and a special raise-to-shoot, fixed-focus Snap Focus Mode.

It feels far more in-depth than you’d expect for a first release, and there are a lot of fun features to experiment with. The Ricoh GR Film Tones (or filters to you and me) genuinely change the look of the photo without going over the top, and I felt I needed time to truly appreciate where they worked best. I like this, especially the black and white filter. You can see a gallery of regular photos above, and Ricoh mode photos below. There’s real depth to the Realme GT 8 Pro’s camera, and it will keep me coming back.

The emphasis on street photography may be a bit of a misplay, though. I get that it’s Ricoh’s thing, but regular people won’t care, and may see the Realme GT 8 Pro’s camera as either beyond them, or not suitable for their vacation of night-out snaps.

There’s indeed a lot to the camera, with some fairly complicated terminology (using millimeters for focal length, for example), which may also make the camera daunting for newcomers.

All the special features would be for nothing if the camera quality wasn’t very good, but thankfully, that’s not the case. It’s versatile, captures realistic colors, and packs in detail. It does suffer a little from the same contrast and exposure issues seen on the OnePlus 15, as both use the same Sony IMX906 sensor.

Performance and charging

Hot stuff, again

It’s the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor inside the Realme GT 8 Pro, making it powerful, capable, and, yes, quite hot. Performance is fantastic when you’re just doing normal things, and when you’re playing relatively standard games too. The problems arise when you really push the phone hard in benchmark stress tests.

The Realme GT 8 Pro seems to run even hotter than the OnePlus 15, and it overheated immediately after completing the 20-minute 3DMark Solar Bay Extreme Stress Test. During the test, the phone’s chassis became almost too hot to hold. Realme recommends you adjust various settings, ensure ambient temperatures aren’t too high, and not have the brightness above 50% to test the chip, which shows it’s aware of problems.

It’s also not the first time Realme’s GT series has been released on the edge of what it’s capable of, as the Realme GT 7 Pro also overheated with the Snapdragon 8 Elite inside until a software fix arrived. I expect a similar software update to arrive in the near future, ready to help keep the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 under control.

Battery life expectations

Long-lasting

However, while these tests are not really representative of real-world use, they can expose cooling and efficiency issues. For example, the 20-minute test took almost 20% of the battery from the Realme GT 8 Pro, which is close to double the figure recorded on the OnePlus 15 and other modern, high-performance phones.

If you plan to play a lot of graphically intensive games, the Realme GT 8 Pro’s battery may expire more quickly than other phones.

Outside of this, the Realme GT 8 Pro’s 7,000mAh battery has made testing it out quite hard because it lasts for ages with normal use. Four to five hours of screen time reduces the battery to around 40%, and I’ve easily got two days from a single charge. There’s a choice of 120W wired charging, which takes 45 minutes to fully charge the battery, or slower 50W wireless charging.

What about the software?

Frustrations can occur

The Realme GT 8 Pro has Android 16 with Realme UI 7, and it’s quite similar to OnePlus’s OxygenOS 16 and Oppo’s ColorOS 16. They all share the same structure, Settings menu, and basic navigation.

You’ll also find a variety of AI features on the GT 8 Pro including Mind Space, which is also on the OnePlus 15 as Plus Mind, and various pre-installed apps like Zen Space, which you’ll find on other phones running the same software too. It’s not the most unique software.

The biggest issue with Realme UI 7 is the amount of pre-installed, non-Realme apps. These include Temu, LinkedIn, and Netflix. Additionally, Realme UI 7 allows notifications from its various standard apps, filling up the notification shade with pointless messages.

I dislike having to spend time making phone software work acceptably. It’s a very different experience to starting with a relatively blank slate, then customizing the software to work in a way you like. However, once you’ve sorted the software out, it’s no different to using OxygenOS 16, making it smooth, fast, and reliable.

Should you buy the Realme GT 8 Pro?

The Realme GT 8 Pro is a hard sell. It’s feature-packed, but not all of its ideas work, and while the software is tried-and-tested, Realme’s version is less enticing than OxygenOS 16, for example.

The camera is a really exciting start to the Ricoh partnership. It’s varied, takes a different direction to the competition, and is fun to try out. Battery life is great, but concerns over performance, cooling, and efficiency are valid. All this means the Realme GT 8 Pro isn’t bad, but the OnePlus 15 is the safer choice, even if the camera is not as engaging.