When realme Malaysia launched the realme GT 7 Pro in November 2024, it was perhaps the first flagship featuring a Silicon Anode battery. It's also packed with the powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, so it's currently one of the best high-performance phones available.
What can Malaysians expect from realme's latest flagship phone? And is it worth getting over older, or upcoming flagship devices? Read on and decide for yourself.
Design – Low profile for a flagship phone
The realme GT 7 Pro features a fairly simple design for a flagship phone. At a glance, you might think it's a colourful mid-range phone and the back has a matte surface that doesn't leave fingerprints. Also, the camera bump isn't as thick as other flagship phones that offer more advanced cameras (like the vivo X200 Pro or OPPO Find X8 Pro).
The unit we were loaned sports an orange-red coloured design called Mars Design. It's supposed to resemble the colour of the planet Mars, with a wavy pattern to accentuate the look. It's not what you'd typically expect for a flagship smartphone, but we do like that it's different. Of course, the phone is also available in other colours like Galaxy Grey, which doesn't have the wavy pattern.
realme GT 7 Pro rear design
Thin camera bump
Matte aluminium frame
What do you think of the pattern?
The realme GT 7 Pro's frame is made of non-glossy aluminium. When held, it has a solid build quality that feels on par with any flagship phone. Its weight of just 222 grams also makes it comfortable to hold.
Like most flagship phones today, this phone has an IP69 waterproof rating. That means it'll have no issues surviving a sudden downpour or accidental splashes. You could even submerge it up to a depth of 2 metres for 30 minutes.
Tech specs and features – Fully equipped for 2025
Here are the full specifications for the realme GT 7 Pro:
- Display: 6.78-inch AMOLED screen, 2780×1264 resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, 6500 nits peak brightness, 120% DCI-P3 color gamut , supports Dolby Vision, HDR10+
- Chipset: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite
- RAM: 12GB RAM
- Storage: 512GB
- Rear cameras: 50MP main camera with OIS + 50MP telephoto camera + 8MP ultra-wide camera
- Front cameras: 16MP selfie
- Battery: 6500mAh battery with 120W SUPERVOOC fast charging
- Operating system: realme UI 6.0 based on Android 15 (3 years of major Android updates, 4 years of security updates)
- Others: Supports Wi-Fi 7, NFC 360°, Bluetooth 5.4 wireless connectivity, IP69 waterproof rating
- Colour: Mars Orange or Titanium Grey
- Price: RM3699
As part of a new generation of flagship smartphones, the realme GT 7 Pro has all the expected functions and components. This includes an AMOLED screen with 1.5K resolution, 120% DCI-P3 colour gamut, 120Hz refresh rate and 6500 nits peak brightness. The screen can produce stunning images for video viewing, with very thin bezels on all four sides. It also has three 50MP cameras and a large 6500mAh battery.
Beautiful AMOLED screen on realme GT 7 Pro
Beautiful colours for games and movies!
The main star is definitely the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, which is manufactured on TSMC's 3nm process node. It delivers improvements of up to 45% in CPU and up to 40% in GPU performance compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which is rather significant. More on the performance later.
Apart from the latest Qualcomm chipset, another feature that impressed us was the 120W SUPERVOOC fast charging. realme has included the 120W charger in the box, which is a nice bonus for those who want faster chargers. Unfortunately, this phone does not support wireless charging.
Like most flagship phones launched in 2024, the realme GT 7 Pro offers AI-based features like AI Recording Summary, AI Smart Loop 2.0, AI Sketch to Image, and AI photo editing functions. The first one allows you to create a text summary of a long audio recording, as well as provide transcriptions for it. The summaries produced can be quite accurate, and the transcriptions also matched the spoken dialogue. However, it has limited compatibility as it only supports English, Chinese, and Hindi.
Another AI feature is AI Smart Loop 2.0, which lets you share files or photos faster. To do that, you need to drag the file you want to share to the side, access the app wheel, and select which app you want to share the file to. Supported apps include social media apps, messaging apps and Google search. For other photography-based AI functions, check our performance section.
We tried using AI Recording Summary to summarise a video on YouTube and the results were quite accurate!
AI Smart Loop 2.0 streamlines the process of transferring files to other apps
Performance – A huge leap compared to SD 8 Gen 3!
In some years, the jump in performance of Qualcomm's flagship chipsets isn't that apparent. But that's not the case with the Snapdragon 8 Elite. To give you an idea of how well it performs, here are the Geekbench and 3DMark benchmarks for the realme GT 7 Pro.
Geekbench results
3DMark results
The Snapdragon 8 Elite significantly outperforms the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in CPU performance. It's even more noticeable than the jump from Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 to Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. This is because the Snapdragon 8 Elite uses the same Oryon CPU cores used in the Snapdragon X Elite chipset that is designed for PCs.
For perspective, the difference in multi-core performance of the SD 8 Gen 3 and the SD 8 Gen 2 in Geekbench is 1700 points. That's the average performance jump you can expect between each generation of Qualcomm flagship chipset. However, the difference between the SD 8 Elite and SD 8 Gen 3 is 2300 points. This huge leap in performance is not only because of the new CPU but also due to the switch to the 3nm process.
So, what does this performance boost mean in terms of everyday use? This chipset will definitely be preferred by gaming enthusiasts, as it makes mobile games (especially more demanding ones) perform much better. You can choose from three performance levels, namely GT Mode for the highest performance, Balanced Mode to balance performance and battery consumption, or Low Power Mode if you want to prioritise longer battery life.
To test gaming performance, we played several popular games with high graphics requirements like Genshin Impact and Call of Duty Warzone. And we're happy to say that we enjoy smooth gameplay and consistent frame rates, even on high graphics settings. Moreover, the chip didn't throttle performance even after we played for over an hour. The temperature never exceeded 40°C, which means the realme GT 7 Pro's cooling solution held on well.
Here's a test our BM team did on YouTube:
In terms of battery life, you can expect the 6500mAh capacity battery of the realme GT 7 Pro to last a day with confidence, even if you played games with GT Mode enabled. In fact, it's more than enough for normal users who would only browse social media, watch videos, listen to songs, or take the occasional photo. For such users, the phone has no problem lasting up to 1 and a half days.
For charging, the 120W charger can fully charge the phone from 0% in just around 40 minutes. That's more than fast enough even for people who are always out and about. Sure, it's not the 240W charger of the realme GT3. But in our opinion, that's overkill anyway. Unfortunately, this phone lacks wireless charging.
Charging from 7% to 99% takes 38 minutes
Next, let's move on to camera performance. The realme GT 7 Pro sports three Sony IMX 50MP sensors - IMX906 for the main camera, IMX355 for the ultra-wide camera, and IMX882 for the 3x periscope telephoto camera. Overall, the phone can produce beautiful pictures in almost every situation. In bright light situations, each lens can output photos with clear details, good dynamic range (for a phone), and natural colour reproduction.
Even in low-light situations, the realme GT 7 Pro can capture decent shots with low noise and sufficient detail. However, we have to say that this phone isn't on par with more camera-focused flagship phones due to the more limited zoom. But considering what else it offers, its camera performance is more than satisfactory.
Main camera
Ultra-wide camera
3x zoom telephoto camera
Night mode
Selfie
Selfie, portrait mode
The telephoto camera has quite a bit of zoom capability, with optical zoom up to 3x and digital zoom up to 120x. The image quality looks decent up to 10x zoom, but photos look grainy and lose a lot of detail beyond that. It does have post-processing that can improve the quality of zoomed images, but the results may sometimes look weird and fake.
For AI-based image editing, functions like Sketch to Image will turn any sketch in your photo into a more beautiful object, but bear in mind that this function can only be used 10 times a day. AI Eraser can also remove unwanted objects or people in photos, and the results are sometimes good, sometimes not. Then there's AI Unblur, which is supposed to produce clear details for blurry shots but again doesn't always seem to do it that well.
The AI Sketch to Image function allowed us to add this rickshaw
Unfortunately, AI Sketch to Image can only be used 10 times a day
The AI Eraser function allowed me to erase individuals in the background
Left (before), right (after) - AI Unblur doesn't seem to work all that well
For video recording, the realme GT 7 Pro can record at resolutions up to 8K 24fps and the video quality looks beautiful. With optical image stabilisation (OIS), videos recorded with the main camera look stable even if you're recording videos while moving. However, it lacks optical stabilisation, so vloggers may experience shaky vlogs.
Conclusion – The new flagship era has arrived!
When it launched, the realme GT 7 Pro set a new high standard for flagship phones in 2025, mostly thanks to the massive leap in performance offered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset. If you consider mobile gaming performance a priority, realme GT 7 Pro would definitely be an attractive device. Its camera performance is decent too, making it a great phone for RM3699.
However, if you want a phone with a more powerful camera or more versatile AI functions, you may want to look elsewhere. Alternatives include the vivo X200 Pro (RM4699) and OPPO Find X8 Pro (RM4999) which have flagship chipsets from MediaTek and Qualcomm. These two phones definitely perform much better in the camera department. Both phones are also priced higher, so that's something to note.
For those who want to go all in on mobile gaming, our recommendations include the ROG Phone 9 (RM3999) and the iQOO 13 (RM3499). These two also sport the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, so it might not seem like there are any differences in performance. But if you are looking for a phone with a different look or better cooling performance, you may want to consider them instead.
So, what do you think of the realme GT 7 Pro? Would you be keen on buying one? Let us know in the comments on our Facebook page, and stay tuned to TechNave for more reviews on the latest mobile devices.
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