Realme GT 3: everything you need to know

If you care about charging speeds above all else then the Realme GT 3 is for you, as this new mid-ranger charges at a remarkably fast 240W.

That’s almost ten times the charging power you’ll get with a Samsung Galaxy S23, and while that’s the headline feature of Realme’s new phone, it’s not the only thing worth talking about.

Below then, you’ll find all the information on the Realme GT 3, including how much it costs, when you’ll be able to buy it, and its various specs and features.

Cut to the chase

• What is it? The latest powerful mid-ranger from Realme
• When is it out? Hitting stores soon
• How much will it cost? $649 (roughly £540 / AU$960)

Realme GT 3: release date and price

The Realme GT 3 was announced on February 28, 2023 at MWC 2023, though confusingly it’s actually a rebadged Realme GT Neo 5, which was unveiled in China a couple of weeks earlier on February 9.

In any case, the phone will be sold globally as the Realme GT 3, and we know it will be going on sale in Europe soon, though there’s no exact date yet. It may well land in Australia as well, but details of a launch there haven’t been confirmed, and we wouldn’t expect to see it in the US.

Despite that, oddly the only price we have for it is in dollars, with the Realme GT 3 set to cost $649, which equates to around £540 or AU$960.

Realme GT 3 design and display

The Realme GT 3 has 6.74-inch 1240 x 2772 AMOLED screen with a very high 144Hz refresh rate, 451 pixels per inch, and a peak brightness of 1,400 nits.

It has a matte glass back in a choice of white or black shades, and it also strangely has a huge camera block, which for some reason additionally houses a fake Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chipset visible under the surface. It’s an odd design, and part of the camera block can also light up to alert you to notifications.

There’s a punch-hole camera in the top-center of the screen, and the Realme GT 3 comes in at 163.9 x 75.8 x 8.9mm and 199g.

Realme GT 3 camera and battery

You get a triple-lens camera on the back of the Realme GT 3, made up of a 50MP f/1.9 wide camera with optical image stabilization, an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide with a 112-degree field of view, and a 2MP f/3.3 microscope camera, for extreme close ups and tiny subjects. That’s one of this phone’s more unusual features.

The phone can also shoot video in up to 4K quality at up to 60fps, and there’s a 16MP f/2.5 camera on the front.

Moving on to the battery, and that’s 4,600mAh, which is a middling capacity. However, as noted above it supports 240W wired charging, which is ridiculously fast. That’s enough for it to go from zero to 100% in just 9.5 minutes according to Realme.

It can also hit 20% in just 80 seconds, and a 30-second charge is enough for up to two hours of use the company claims.

For reference, the Samsung Galaxy S23 only supports 25W charging, the Galaxy S23 Ultra tops out at 45W, and even most genuinely fast charging phones fall well short of this, with the OnePlus 11 for example charging at up to 100W.

Realme has also said that the battery should hold on to over 80% of its original charging capacity for at least 1,600 charging cycles, which is notable since fast charging can sometimes wear a battery out faster.

There’s clever tech on board which likely helps with that, as the phone can use AI to detect the situation in which you’re charging it and adjust accordingly. If you’re charging it overnight for example then it will hold at 80% until just before you wake up, while if you’re away from home it might judge that you need charge quickly, and go straight to 100%.

However, there’s no wireless charging here, so it’s not a complete charging win.

Realme GT 3 specs and features

The Realme GT 3 is powered by a Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chipset. That’s one of the most powerful chipsets from 2022, but not as good as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 that we’re seeing in most 2023 flagships. Of course, this is more of a mid-range phone, so that tracks.

That chipset is joined by a choice of 8GB, 12GB or 16GB of RAM, and 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB of storage. At the top end that’s more storage than most phones offer, and up there with the most RAM you can get on far more expensive handsets.

The Realme GT 3 also supports 5G, has an under-display fingerprint sensor, and runs Android 13, overlaid with the company’s Realme UI 4.0.