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Realme GT 7 Pro is the first to bring the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset to the country. What kind of surprises does it offer?
How does the first Snapdragon 8 Elite phone in India perform for its price?
The flagship battle of 2025 has started a few months before the year actually turns. Realme is the surprising pick for this battle with its new GT 7 Pro model that became the first phone in India to launch with the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset. The new hardware promises top-end performance, and the leaks of the benchmark results have got people excited.
The GT 7 Pro model brings the best of the mobile chipset along with a premium package and some other goodies. But does the Rs 59,999 price tag for the Realme GT 7 Pro give us a device that will sell out of the shelves in seconds? We went looking for the answer in the past few weeks.
Got The Looks
The GT 7 Pro is a good-looking device and is built with its stature in mind. The aluminium frame, the frosted glass finish on the back panel and the quad-curved display make that fairly obvious to the eye. The tall profile is also evident and the wider dimensions could make it harder for some people to use with one hand. The back of the phone doesn’t have any appealing module or design but it just works for us and might do for many people.
Realme has also upgraded the durability of the device which now gets IP68 and IP69 rating. In simple terms, the phone can handle high-pressure water for a few minutes which can be helpful if you spill something on the device. It also supports underwater shooting now, which is a surprising addition to this series.
Display Brings A Smile
Realme has not cut any corners with the display on the GT 7 Pro and the results are noticeable from the moment you turn it on. The LTPO AMOLED panel delivers a varying refresh rate up to 120Hz depending on what you are doing on the screen.
The use of a quad-curved display makes a difference in handling but you tend to notice the limitations of the screen which easily picks up smudges in certain angles.
The overall performance is quite good, the brightness levels are one of the best we have seen this year, and the colours produced by the panel mostly stay true to the nature of the content. Having said that, Realme has gone with the Corning Gorilla Glass 7i protection for the display which does seem less durable compared to the Victus series.
Enter The Flagship Mode
Realme stole everyone’s thunder by launching its Snapdragon 8 Elite phone before anyone else did. But with this new power comes more responsibility. So, does the GT 7 Pro manage to make the best of the new chipset? In our daily usage, the hardware showed no strain and was able to handle anything that you feel like throwing at it.
Nothing really fazes the chipset, except for some toasty benchmark tests that did push the degrees a notch higher than what we would have liked. In fact, some instances resulted in the phone forcing us to shut down the apps and keep it idle for a few minutes. But Realme issued an update during our testing phase which helped with the heating issues and gave us better results.
The raw numbers tell you half the story about the GT 7 Pro but when you put it through the daily grind, the hardware will let the phone do its job and there is very little to complain about.
Now, coming to the software, the Android 15-based Realme UI version has the obvious Ai additions and some new features. The UI is similar to 14 so there wasn’t much that we expected to see here. The AI features include AI studio, some tweaks in the camera app, and yes, the Ai eraser is there too. We felt the experience was a mixed-bag and Realme needs to work on the refinement of these tools in the coming updates.
But the number of preloaded apps on the phone did surprise us, even though you can uninstall most of them. For a phone that costs over Rs 50,000, these apps might be useful to some people but ideally we would like them to decide if they want to install themselves. Also, Realme is offering only 3 years of upgrades for the GT 7 Pro which isn’t ideal for a flagship device. You do get it with 4 years of security updates.
Yes, The Cameras
Realme has finally worked on giving better cameras on its GT model and they work in most cases. The primary 50MP with OIS and the telephoto 50MP with OIS showed their quality and ability to capture photos with detail and sharpness in most conditions. The low light photos from the main sensor were mostly good but you tend to lose some details while zooming in for more data.
The telephoto lens gives you crisp portraits and the object details are clear with the colours remaining natural. However, the 8MP ultrawide sensor could not stand up to its peers and deliver average photos with details looking soft.
Runs Really Long
Realme has launched the GT 7 Pro in India with a 5,800mAh battery which is 700mAh less than the 6500mAh unit on the Chinese variant. But you still get the 120W wired charging support which allows the phone to charge from 0 to 100 in under 30 minutes.
The PCMark score of around 18 hours with the Indian variant is one of the best we have managed so far with the new chipset and in real usage you can easily get the phone to run for over 1.5 days and more. You do get a USB C charger in the box that supports 65W PD charging for other devices.
Realme GT 7 Pro marks the Snapdragon 8 Elite era in the country and shows us a powerful picture of this new hardware. The phone itself has an appealing design, not-so-heavy frame and reliable main set of cameras. The battery life is good and the display brightness is one of the best in the segment. The OS could use some refinement and Realme should cut down on the pre-loaded apps for a device in this range. Having said that, this is a capable premium phone that will have plenty of rivals in the weeks to come.
