Realme GT3 review

Standard triple-camera setup with 50MP main sensor

The GT3 inherits the main and ultrawide cameras from its predecessor. The primary shooter uses Sony's IMX766 IMX890 50MP, 1/1.56" in size with 1.0µm pixels. The sensor is aided by OIS and supports multi-directional PDAF, and the lens provides a fairly wide f/1.9 aperture.

Behind the ultrawide, f/2.2 lens sits the popular and affordable 8MP, 1/4.0", 1.12µm sensor, which is a bit of a let-down because Realme's upper mid-range solutions are overdue for an ultrawide camera upgrade.

Instead of a macro camera, the GT3 adopts a 2MP, f/3.3 camera with microscopic lens. We've seen similar solution from Oppo before and it's a bit better to have this one instead of the lackluster 2MP macro unit everyone uses.

There's no change in the selfie camera from last year's GT2. The 16MP, 1/3.0", 1.0µm sensor is paired with an f/2.5 aperture.

Camera menus

The camera app is the familiar Oppo/Realme one. There are fewer menus - most of the modes are now on the main rolodex, which is good.

The viewfinder in the default Photo mode offers AI Scene Enhancement (also known as Chroma Boost or Dazzle Color) - it's like an advanced HDR mode, which may stack several images to offer even further improvements in the dynamic range. Auto HDR is available, too.

Camera modes

There are also three zoom shortcuts - 0.6x, 1x, and 2x.

You can use both the main and the ultrawide camera in the Pro mode, you get to tweak exposure (ISO in the 100-6400 range and shutter speed in the 1/8000s-30s range), white balance (by light temperature, but no presets), manual focus (in arbitrary 0 to 1 units with 0 being close focus and 1 being infinity) and exposure compensation (-2EV to +2EV in 1/6EV increments). RAW is available only on the main camera.

Camera settings

And in line with Oppo and OnePlus' smartphones, Realme's default camera app has a similar behavior in low-light conditions. Even if you disable the automatic Nigthscape (read Night mode) when shooting in the standard Photo mode, the images turn out to be the same. So you are forced to use the dedicated Night mode when the software deems necessary.

Daylight photos

Main camera

The Realme GT3 offers a noticeable improvement in overall quality compared to the GT2 and is now even better at taking photos with the main cam. Stills tend to be sharper and more detailed, even when compared to most of its competitors. Dynamic range is excellent, and the colors are pretty close to natural. The exposure metering does tend to be on the brighter side at times and color temperature is noticeably warmer than before, giving the photos a bit of a pleasant, cozy vibe.

Daylight main camera samples

In more challenging indoor scenarios, the GT3 is still performing excellently. Noise is kept to a minimum, high-contrast scenes retain detail in both, shadows and highlights. Sharpness doesn't seem to suffer either. Overall, the GT3 delivers flagship-level photo quality with its main camera.

Daylight main camera samples

2x zoom

The 2x zoom photos are satisfactory. The GT3 will do a decent job for social media posting, but the crop from the main sensor will never be on par with a dedicated 2x camera with lossless zoom. When you look close enough, you will find quite a bit of grain, loss in sharpness and sometimes loss in detail. Notice the sky in the third shot or zoom in on the indoor samples. That's where you will find most of the noise.

Daylight 2x zoom samples

Although, overall rendition is the same as in the standard 1x mode. We are talking about dynamic range, exposure, contrast and the tendency for a warmer color temperature.

Ultrawide camera

To our surprise, the ultrawide camera produces photos with more lively colors and nice overall contrast. But that's about it. The samples show a low level of detail, insufficient sharpness, limited dynamic range, a bit of noise even in good lighting conditions and there's noticeable color fringing. At the end of the day, the 8MP ultrawide camera is not a great fit for a €650 phone.

We must give at least some credit to Realme for making the ultrawide shots look at least decent. Software optimizations have gone a long way, despite the hardware limitations this sensor poses.

Daylight ultrawide camera samples

Microscopic camera

The native zoom is 20x, and some digital enhancement pushes it to 40x. In our opinion, the former shots look way nicer. There's a little learning curve to it as you have to get really close to the subject. The LED is always active in this mode and helps with additional light, so your subject is well exposed. It's a cool party trick and it's nicer than having a 2MP macro camera.

Microscopic lens: 20x zoom • 40x zoom

Low-light photos

Main camera

As we already pointed out, the camera app behavior is different from before, so there's no difference between the standard Photo mode and the dedicated Night mode. So we will refer to the samples below as just "low-light samples".

In any case, the overall quality at night is impressive - virtually no noise, a high level of detail across the frame, wide dynamic range and impressive sharpness. You can spot fine detail even in the darkest of shadows while the light sources are well-contained and far from blown out. However, they may not be everyone's cup of tea, mostly because of the obvious artificial sharpening, overly warm color temperature and high contrast.

Low-light main camera samples

Keep in mind that most of the scenes above feature warm light sources and the software makes them even warmer., while the extra sharpening and the bright shadows make the whole scene look like it's been artificially rendered. We definitely get that argument, but for the vast majority of people, the night photos will look great, especially for social media purposes.

2x zoom

Expectedly, there's a significant deterioration in quality when shooting in 2x zoom mode, but not as much as we expected. There's definitely some loss in sharpness and fine detail but they are decent enough for social media. The built-in Night mode definitely helps with keeping the noise at bay and maintaining an acceptable level of sharpness.

Low-light 2x zoom samples

The warm color temperature and high contrast are persistent across the 1x and 2x zoom modes, not that we expected any difference.

Ultrawide camera

Even though the ultrawide camera produces more true-to-life colors and hits the right color temperature, it's hard to recommend at night. The sensor struggles to maintain proper sharpness and detail. Thanks to the image stacking, dynamic range is good and noise is rather minimal.

Low-light ultrawide camera samples

Here's how the primary camera on the Realme GT3 stacks against the rest of the competition in the controlled environment of our Photo Compare Tool.

Realme GT3 vs. OnePlus 10 Pro and the Google Pixel 7 in our Photo compare tool

Portraits

The portraits are nice, with plenty of color, detail, wide dynamic range and a good level of sharpness. However, the exposure metering can be a bit off at times. Some of the photos we took have too bright exposure, leaving the subject's skin too pale and bright. Performance is solid even in more challenging lighting conditions with no trade-offs in sharpness, detail or noise.

Portraits

Edge detection is excellent, though, even with subjects on the foreground. We recommend taking more than a couple of portraits to make sure the software has chosen the right exposure.

Selfies

The selfies are unsatisfactory. They are way too soft, lack fine detail and noise starts to creep in in sub-optimal lighting conditions. At least color, dynamic range and contrast are nice. Still, the selfies leave more to be desired for the price class and we don't see any significant improvement over the last generation.

Selfies

Video recording

The video recording options are the usual - up to 2160p@60fps, the ultrawide camera supports only up to 1080p@30fps due to its resolution limitations and EIS is present in all modes. Surprisingly, there's no additional action camera-like stabilization.

In any case, the overall video quality in 4K resolution is pretty nice. We see plenty of detail, the video below is sharp with an impressively wide dynamic range and true-to-life colors. The contrast, however, appears to be a bit off.

The 2x zoom mode is, of course, a simple crop from the main sensor, but it's still in 2160p. As expected, sharpness drops significantly, fine detail is masked and the noise becomes a tad more apparent in some homogeneous areas like the asphalt and the sky.

The ultrawide camera is unsatisfactory when it comes to video recording. Its video output is extremely soft and hazy even in broad daylight. The recording is limited to 1080p as we already mentioned.

At night, the main camera delivers decent enough videos with good contrast, accurate color reproduction and sufficient sharpness. Noise is perhaps the biggest issue, although it's unrealistic to expect zero noise in low-light videos. But we found this one to be a bit too much.

The AI video mode is capped at 1080p resolution, even though other phones under the BBK Electronics umbrella offer this mode in 2160p with the same chipsets. Either way, the AI mode is definitely the better choice for low-light recordings as it clears up most of the noise, brightens up the shadows, reveals plenty of detail and increases dynamic range overall. The trade-off is obviously the resolution and as a result, the 1080p AI video is sensibly softer.

Once you are done with the real-life scenarios, take a look at our video compare tool to see how the Realme GT3 stacks against the other phones we've reviewed.

2160p: Realme GT3 vs. OnePlus 10 Pro and the Google Pixel 7 in our Video compare tool