December is often the month when many smartphone manufacturers reveal their hero products for the upcoming year. In 2023, it seems like this trend is not going anywhere. Joining the fray for the2024 flagshipsis the new Realme GT5 Pro which brings powerful specifications at a competitive price along with some questionable features that you might have forgotten about.
The weeks following Qualcomm’s annualSnapdragon Summittowards the end of the year usually sees many Chinese OEMs share their future product roadmap. The newest device with theSnapdragon 8 Gen 3is the Realme GT5 Pro. While it boasts impressive specifications that would easily compete with the best from Samsung and Google, its availability in countries other than China remain unclear.
However, a closer look suggests that it has a lot in common with the recently announcedOnePlus 12. That is not surprising though, as BBK Group (the holding company of OnePlus, Realme, Oppo, Vivo, iQoo, etc.) is known to do, for better positioning across different markets. For example, the excellentOnePlus Open foldableis practically an Oppo Find N3 with a tweaked software skin for global markets.
But perhaps the most interesting bit about the Realme GT5 Pro is its implementation of air gestures — a feature that originally debuted on theSamsung Galaxy S5all the way back in 2014. As the name suggests, it allows users to control their phone without any physical contact whatsoever. It can be used for multitasking, scrolling between apps, navigating the interface, taking screenshots, scrolling through pages, and more. If that wasn’t futuristic enough for you, then it has one more trick up its sleeve: the Realme GT5 Pro can read your palm print and unlock itself, even when the screen is off. You can check out the video above to get a better idea of how this feature works.
In a statement shared withAndroid Authority,Realme confirmed that the air gesture implementation uses an additional sensor for these capabilities. Since we don’t see any other sensors except the selfie camera on the front of the device, we believe Realme has resorted to some sort of under-display technology to enable the contactless inputs. We’ve seen somewhat similar implementations on other devices such as theGoogle Pixel 4andLG G8as well, but they didn’t always work as intended — which was one of the biggest reasons why air gestures never really became widely adopted. It remains to be seen if Realme has been able to finally get it right.
Apart from that, the Realme GT5 Pro is quite like what you’d expect from a high-end 2024 flagship smartphone: Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, up to 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 1TB of UFS 4.0 storage, and a 12,000 mm2 vapor chamber. Its screen spans 6.78-inches diagonally with a 144Hz refresh rate and a whopping 4,500 nit maximum brightness, joining the OnePlus 12 on the podium ofthe brightest phonescurrently available.
The battery capacity is rated at 5,400mAh and supports 100W fast wired charging and 50W fast wireless charging. As for cameras, the Realme GT5 Pro has a 50MP primary camera with a 1/1.4-inch sensor and an aperture of f/1.69, joined by an 8MP ultra-wide lens and a 50MP periscopic telephoto lens with a 65mm focal length (approximately 3x optical zoom). Other features include dual stereo speakers, IP64 rating, and leather back panel options.
In China, the Realme GT5 Prostarts at CNY 3,300(~$460) while the top 16GB + 1TB model will set you back CNY 4,200 (~590). Historically, Realme has brought its flagships to markets such as Europe and India around MWC in February, but official information is currently scarce.
