Realme GT Neo 3T review

Realme UI 3.0 and Android 12

The Realme UI 3.0 is already quite familiar as it runs on Realme's latest devices and some of its older phones. It's based on Android 12, but it would still make older Realme users feel at home. Feature-wise, the Neo3Т offers just about the same amount of customizations and tweaks as its more expensive siblings in the GT family.

Visually, the OS hasn't changed much either. Realme UI has a colorful UI with customizable UI elements and its own iconography for the notification shade and the general Settings menu. The app drawer hasn't been tweaked either, but we did notice a bit of inconsistency with the swipe up and swipe down gestures on the Home screen when opening/closing the drawer. A small annoyance that shouldn't bother most users.

Home screen, recent apps, notification shade, general settings

Realme also kept the so-called Icon pull-down gesture. Swiping alongside the left or right edge of the screen crams icons at the bottom half of the screen to be easily reached with your thumb. The gesture works pretty reliably as well.

By default, the swipe down gesture on the Home screen opens up the so-called global search, but you can always set the notification shade instead.

Icon pull-down gesture

When it comes to Android 12-specific features, most of them are under-the-hood changes. However, the privacy-focused efforts from Google are translated into Realme UI 3.0. The so-called Privacy dashboard is one example. It's a unified view for all your permissions and user data settings. It gives you information on which apps and how often they access your information or ask for certain permissions. It looks and feels like the Digital wellbeing dashboard introduced with Android 10.

Privacy dashboard

In addition to those privacy features, Android 12 lets you choose the accuracy of your location shared with certain apps. Let's say you want to share an approximate location with some apps instead of your exact location. And also, when an app is accessing your mic or camera, a green dot will appear in the upper-right corner of the screen so you'd know what's going on.

For a more in-depth look at Android 12, we suggest reading our full Android 12 review as we will try to focus on the Realme UI itself in the following paragraphs.

As before, Realme UI offers deep customization of the interface by letting you choose accent colors (or a combination of accent colors), wallpapers, icons, the shape of the quick toggles, as well as the font and size. All of these settings are found in the Personalization sub-menu.

Personalization options

The Dark mode isn't a new feature, especially for Realme's UI, but with the second iteration of the OS, you get some additional options. Scheduling the Dark mode is possible, of course, and forcing it on third-party apps is also available. However, we were surprised by the color schemes, as the Dark mode now offers three variations - dark gray instead of black and a bit lighter gray. The gray color has been proven to be just as effective as the pitch-black color when it comes to energy consumption. So going for a lighter gray might be a sweet spot for users that are hesitant to use the conventional Dark mode.

The Always-on display customizations aren't left out. You can customize it to your liking or choose from the default presets. Scheduling is also an option.

Always-on display

Under the Special features sub-menu, Realme put the Smart sidebar and Flexible windows features, both of which boost multitasking. When turned on, the sidebar offers quick access to some of your favorite apps. The system allows you to adjust the position of the sidebar, which is crucial because it might interfere with the back gesture if you are using the standard Android gestures. Anyway, tapping and holding on an app icon enters split-screen mode while a single tap opens up the app in a floating window or, as Realme calls it, "Flexible window". The supported apps can be opened in small, draggable and size-adjustable windows.

Smart Sidebar and Floating window

A few good words about the vibration motor - it seems to be improved upon as the haptic feedback feels precise, punchy and strong. It feels great alongside the whole frame of the phone when typing or during certain actions when navigating through menus and apps.

The good old screen-off gestures that allow you to launch certain apps or the flashlight by drawing letters on a locked screen are here to stay.

Screen-off gestures

In the Realme labs, where the company likes to introduce experimental features, there's one that caught our eye. You can stream music to a Bluetooth headset and wired headphones simultaneously. Pretty neat if you are traveling with a friend and want to listen to the same tunes.

Realme labs and advanced fingerprint reader features

Lastly, let's talk about the fingerprint reader. It's fast, it's accurate and reliable. This one seems to be placed at the right spot where your thumb falls naturally.

Two new features are now available with the fingerprint reader, though. One of them is the built-in heart rate monitor, which seems to be rather okay in terms of accuracy in the user's resting state, but it's largely inconsistent also. A Quick launch option is now available and seems to be taken straight from OnePlus' OxygenOS. You just tap on the fingerprint scanner and hold until icons for your pre-defined apps appear. Dragging your finger on one of them launches the app in question.

All in all, though, the Realme UI 3.0 looks snappy, offers some new features and looks and feels the same as the previous iteration of the software, for better or worse. It's also highly customizable, and that's something a lot of Android users are looking for. Bonus points for that.

Synthetic performance

The Realme GT Neo3 borrows the Snapdragon 870 SoC from last year's GT Neo2, while the chipset itself has been released in the beginning of 2021 but it's still quite powerful as it's based on the 2020 flagship Snapdragon 865. It's manufactured on the 7nm node from TSMC and has an octa-core CPU that consists of higher clocked 1x 3.20 GHz Kryo 585 along with 3x 2.42 GHz Kryo 585 cores and 4x 1.80 GHz Kryo 585 cluster for energy efficiency. This leaves the Adreno 650 GPU to take care of the graphically-intensive tasks.

Without further ado, let's have a look at how well the Snapdragon 870 is implemented in the current configuration and how it stacks against competing chipsets in rival devices.

GeekBench 5 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Realme GT Neo3
  4079
• Realme GT2 Pro
  3501
• Realme GT2
  3487
• Realme GT Neo2
  3186
• Realme GT Neo 3T
  3180
• Samsung Galaxy S21 FE 5G
  3049
• Xiaomi 11T
  2834
• Poco X3 Pro
  2574
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G
  2225

GeekBench 5 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Realme GT2 Pro
  1238
• Realme GT2
  1131
• Samsung Galaxy S21 FE 5G
  1096
• Realme GT Neo 3T
  1023
• Realme GT Neo2
  1019
• Realme GT Neo3
  968
• Xiaomi 11T
  742
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G
  736
• Poco X3 Pro
  735

AnTuTu 9

Higher is better

• Realme GT2 Pro
  966251
• Realme GT Neo3
  819348
• Realme GT2
  810512
• Realme GT Neo2
  726039
• Realme GT Neo 3T
  726007
• Samsung Galaxy S21 FE 5G
  719696
• Xiaomi 11T
  590837
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G
  437872

GFX Aztek Vulkan High (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Realme GT Neo3
  43
• Realme GT2 Pro
  39
• Realme GT2
  38
• Samsung Galaxy S21 FE 5G
  38
• Realme GT Neo 3T
  34
• Realme GT Neo2
  33
• Xiaomi 11T
  29
• Poco X3 Pro
  27

GFX Aztek Vulkan High (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• Realme GT2 Pro
  46
• Realme GT2
  30
• Realme GT Neo3
  28
• Samsung Galaxy S21 FE 5G
  25
• Realme GT Neo2
  24
• Realme GT Neo 3T
  24
• Xiaomi 11T
  20
• Poco X3 Pro
  18

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Realme GT2
  56
• Samsung Galaxy S21 FE 5G
  56
• Realme GT Neo3
  53
• Realme GT Neo2
  49
• Realme GT Neo 3T
  49
• Realme GT2 Pro
  48
• Xiaomi 11T
  40
• Poco X3 Pro
  38
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G
  22

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (offscreen 1080p)

Higher is better

• Realme GT2 Pro
  95
• Realme GT2
  68
• Realme GT Neo3
  60
• Realme GT Neo2
  59
• Realme GT Neo 3T
  59
• Samsung Galaxy S21 FE 5G
  57
• Xiaomi 11T
  47
• Poco X3 Pro
  45
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G
  25

3DMark Wild Life Vulkan 1.1 (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• Realme GT2 Pro
  9487
• Realme GT2
  5879
• Samsung Galaxy S21 FE 5G
  5432
• Realme GT Neo3
  5428
• Realme GT Neo 3T
  4255
• Realme GT Neo2
  4250
• Xiaomi 11T
  4172
• Poco X3 Pro
  3401
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G
  2014

It appears that the GT Neo 3T's Snapdragon 870 implementation is successful as it performs just as expected. The device's performance is mostly on par with the competition and falls short to the Snapdragon 888 and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1-powered alternatives. It's also less potent than the Dimensity 8100 powering up the GT Neo3, but that was expected.

Notably, the GT Neo 3T outpaced the GT2 Pro in some of the onscreen tests due to resolution differences. Despite the GT2 Pro being significantly more powerful, it struggles to maintain the same frame rate at 1440p+ resolution.

Sustained performance

The Realme GT series this year are partially defined by their big cooling solutions that should keep the chipsets running for longer without throttling too much. We found the GT2 Pro, the GT2 and the GT Neo3 to be quite resilient during long workloads. The Neo 3T features the same stainless steel vapor chamber in addition to the 8-layer structure that consists of graphite sheet, another vapor chamber, diamond thermal gel, copper foil, gel, silicon film + copper foil and another sheet of graphene. Realme says it's the largest cooling area featured in a Realme device - 4,129mm2.

We put that to the test using a CPU stress test at 100% utilization for an hour. The results are excellent, as expected. The first few minutes were a bit of a bumpy ride but the CPU maintained a solid 90% of its performance before utilizing its full power for a good 10-15 minutes.

CPU throttle test: 30 min • 60 min

As you can see, the graph was hovering around 100% before defaulting to around 90% for the rest of the test. The lowest it got was 87% of its maximum performance - a great result. And since it uses a plastic build, not a lot of heat has been dissipated to the frame and back panel so the handset remained relatively cool to the touch throughout the whole test.