realme GT 7 Ultimate Review: A 7,000mAh Battery Champ That Outlasts the Competition

Months after the realme GT 7 Pro launch, the company is now launching the GT 7. This is a slightly lower-end model, with the new MediaTek Dimensity 9400e chipset, and a huge 7000mAh capacity battery. Showing that realme is really looking to create a battery champ here. But is that really what the GT 7 is all about?

We’ve spent a few weeks – almost a month – using the realme GT 7 and the realme GT 7 Dream Edition. And honestly, I’m pretty impressed with the phone. This phone does start at €749.99, which does put it about €100 below the GT 7 Pro. It’s a pretty solid price for the GT 7, but is it enough to be your next smartphone?

realme GT 7 Review in under 100 words

The realme GT 7 is a new battery champ, both in terms of battery life and charging. It also sports pretty decent performance, and camera chops. All that while being priced pretty low, starting at €799.99. We believe that the realme GT 7 is actually a better value than the realme GT 7 Pro that launched last November.

realme GT 7 Review: Hardware and Design

The hardware of the realme GT 7 does actually reflect that of the GT 7 Pro, a bit. One of the bigger changes you’ll notice here is that it is not made of glass and metal. It also does not have a quad-curved display. Instead it has a flat display with a plastic back and a frame that is apparently metal but definitely feels plastic.

realme has been touting that this is the first smartphone using Graphene, and that’s true, but you won’t see it by just looking at the phone. Graphene is used internally, primarily to keep the phone cool when the processor heats up. Graphene is able to provide 24x the thermal conductivity compared to standard fiberglass covers. And it brings a pleasant “skin-touch temperature”. But we’ll talk more on that with the performance, benchmarks and thermal tests section.

The phone itself actually feels really nice in the hand. The back is slightly curved, with flat sides. There’s a fairly small camera bump, especially when compared to other phones on the market today, like the OPPO Find X8 Ultra that I’ve been using for the past couple months. realme also has a nice accent for the power button and around the camera module, which looks great on this IceSense Blue color that I have.

It’s a good-looking phone, though I actually prefer the design of the Dream Edition more. The GT 7 Dream Edition is very similar, though it does have some Aston Martin Formula One Team design aesthetics. It does have the Aerodynamic Two-wing design which is inspired by the iconic Formula One high-speed airflow trails. Along with the Aston Martin green color, and the iconic silver wings badge. It looks really great, and it’s actually the model I’ve preferred to use over the regular GT 7. The GT 7 Dream Edition will cost a bit more at €899, but the only internal difference is the jump to 16GB of RAM versus 12GB. So we’re reviewing both phones together here.

realme GT 7 Review: Display

realme has outfitted the GT 7 with a stunning 6.78-inch display. This is an AMOLED display with a resolution of 2780×1264 and it maxs out at 120Hz. It does get insanely bright too, with a peak brightness of 6,000 nits. Or high brightness mode of 1,600 nits. That puts it on par with a lot of other flagship phones that cost twice as much.

It’s a really good looking display that I’ve truly enjoyed watching content on, as well as playing games. The colors are vibrant and pretty accurate. This is also thanks to realme using HDR here. So this displays supports Dolby Vision and HDR10+.

And as far as brightness goes, no complaints here. I’ve used this device while traveling to Paris for the launch event today with realme, and had no problems using this outdoors in direct sunlight. It’s easy to see, and it actually still stays fairly cool, despite the sun directly hitting the display.

I really like the fact that realme decided to skip out on the quad-curved display this time around. And keep that unique to the GT 7 Pro. Making this look great, and not have to worry about mistakenly scratching the display, since it is flat.

realme GT 7 Review: Performance

One of the biggest questions I had about the realme GT 7 was about its processor. It’s a variant of the Dimensity 9400, which I’ve used in the past, and absolutely loved. But the Dimensity 9400e is a bit slower, making it more efficient (hence the “e”) there.

This model of the Dimensity 9400e runs even slower than what MediaTek announced. So we’re looking at one Cortex-X4 core at 3.4GHz, three Cortex-X4 cores at 2.85GHz, and four Cortex-A720 cores at 2.0GHz. So it’s no wonder that this phone is so much more efficient than the GT 7 Pro, which has the Snapdragon 8 Elite inside. It’s also paired with 12GB of RAM and 16GB on the Dream Edition.

To be honest, I had absolutely no issues using this phone. It was still smooth as can be, it also stayed fairly cool, even during our thermal tests. Sure it wasn’t as fast as the realme GT 7 Pro, but outside of gaming, I don’t think you’d notice. And even while gaming, there wasn’t many issues either. In fact, the realme GT 7 performed better because of the graphene and the more efficient chipset.

Benchmarks

For every phone that we review, we run a series of benchmarks on the device. This helps us figure out if a phone is really tight on thermal throttling, and to see how well a device is actually going to perform.

First up is Geekbench 6. For these benchmarks, we’re going to compare it to the realme GT 7 Pro (Snapdragon 8 Elite) and the OPPO Find X8 Pro (Dimensity 9400). Giving us a good idea of how the realme GT 7 and the Dimensity 9400e stacks up.

With Geekbench 6, this is going to test out the processing cores as well as the GPU with raw performance.

So as you can see from the scores above, the realme GT 7 does sit pretty far behind the other chipsets on the market, but it’s really only noticeable in the single-core and in the GPU test.

Moving on to AnTuTu, we’re seeing the same sort of difference between the three devices. Where the Snapdragon 8 Elite is the highest, followed by the Dimensity 9400 and the Dimensity 9400e.

Finally, our last benchmark is exporting a 60-second video from Capcut at 4K60 and timing how long it takes. The realme GT 7 was able to export it in 7.45 seconds. Which is pretty respectable, but again, it’s behind the OPPO Find X8 Pro and the realme GT 7 Pro. The GT 7 Pro was ahead by more than a full second.

What these tests show us that the realme GT 7’s Dimensity 9400e is indeed slower, as the clock speeds show us. But it’s still ahead of some of the chipsets we saw last year. And you’ll really see the difference when we get to the battery life.

Thermals

Where we can really see the difference with the Dimensity 9400e and the Graphene inside the GT 7, is with the thermals. For the thermal testing, we run three tests. First we run 3D Mark Extreme Stress Test. This is going to push your device to the absolute limit, and the purpose of this one is to see how thermal throttling works. For instance, on the Razr Ultra 2025 we recently reviewed, it couldn’t even finish the test because of thermal throttling.

Here’s the temperatures for each phone in this test.

What this shows is that the realme GT 7 really doesn’t have any issues with thermal throttling. Now the next two tests show how cool the GT 7 can actually stay, with the graphene for the battery.

Next up is playing Genshin Impact for a full hour at max graphics settings and max brightness. Then measuring out the temperature.

Here, we can see that graphene played a pretty major role in keeping the temperature down. Of course, having a slower and more efficient SoC also helped.

Finally, we record 4K60 video for 10 minutes, recording the temperature at 5 minutes and again at 10 minutes.

What our testing found is that the realme GT 7’s thermals perform quite well. Seeing temperatures we haven’t seen on any other device, and we’ve tested almost 100 phones with these same tests. So that’s quite telling. Definitely good to see, and it does also back up realme’s claims.

realme GT 7 Review: Battery Life and Charging

Coming into this review, our expectations were quite high for the battery life on realme GT 7. Especially after reading realme’s reviewer’s guide and knowing the battery capacity here. realme is touting that you could play PUBG at 120fps for 7 hours straight on this phone. In an another scenario, realme also touts you can play PUBG for 2 hours, YouTube for 2.5 hours, Whatsapp for an hour, Instagram for a little over an hour, and Facebook for about 1.5 hours. Giving you 7.8 hours on-screen time and still having 51% battery life. Now we’re not sure about that, but we can say that battery life is great here.

In real-world usage, we’ve been able to get over 10 hours of screen on-time multiple times on this phone. Of course, we could likely get more if we really pushed it all the way down to 1%, and didn’t let it sit on standby overnight. But I’d say for most people, the battery life is great.

Now what about charging? Well, it’s great too. We’re looking at 120W charging speeds here, which realme touts you can get a 50% charge in 14 minutes, and a full charge in 40 minutes. That’s pretty accurate in our testing too.

Benchmarks

For benchmarking the battery life and charging, we start by charging the phone to 100% and continuing to let it charge to make sure it is fully charged. Then we load up a video on YouTube and play it at full brightness before unplugging it. Then let the phone play the video on repeat until it dies (really, until it gets to 1% so we can then do the charging test). In this test, the realme GT 7 hit 23 hours and 35 minutes. That’s slightly longer than the realme GT 7 Pro, but lower than the Find X8 Pro.

As you can see, the charging speed is about the same as the GT 7 Pro, despite the larger battery, but still about 15 minutes faster than the Find X8 Pro, which is rather impressive.

Now, if you don’t have the charger that comes in the box with the realme GT 7, it does still support USB-C PD, which maxes out at around 25W. Not that fast, but better than some other OPPO and OnePlus devices.

realme GT 7 Review: Software

On the software side of things, the realme GT 7 also delivers. It’s running on realme UI 6.0 which is based on Android 15. It’s essentially the same as ColorOS and OxygenOS 15, which is one of my favorite Android skins these days.

As is the case with any software these days, realme also has a suite of Ai features here. Including the AI Translator, AI Eraser 2.0 and AI Tools 2.0. There’s also a bunch of other AI tools here thanks to Google Gemini. With AI Translator, you can do screenshot translation, simultaneous interpretation and face-to-face translation. I’ve been using this while in Paris this week for the realme GT 7 launch event, and it has worked out quite well.

The software here all works quite well and is pretty speedy on this Dimensity 9400e chipset as well.

realme GT 7 Review: Camera

The realme GT 7 doesn’t have the best camera setup on the market, even at this price point of about €799.99, however I do think it holds its own. Particularly the primary camera sensor. There is a 50-megapixel f/1.8 aperture Sony IMX906 for the primary camera. Which performs just as you’d expect.

The primary sensor provides some pretty good looking photos, colors are also about as accurate as you’d expect. I still think no one is able to match the color accuracy that Motorola has on the new Razr’s this year, thanks to their PANTONE partnership. But the realme GT 7 does quite well here.

realme has also included a 50-megapixel 2x telephoto lens, this is a 1/2.8″ sensor with a f/2.0 aperture. So it is quite small compared to other telephoto lenses on the market. And it’s quite noticeable in the results from this camera. It can take good photos, but once there is some movement involved, the photos don’t look as great. It’s not bad, but realme is also sensor-cropping here for 5x zoom shots, and again the photos don’t look bad, but when there’s movement, the photos do start to fall apart.

Then there’s the ultrawide, which is just a 8-megapixel sensor that is 1/4″ which is incredibly tiny. realme kind of fools you into thinking its larger, because it crams that camera and the flash into a spot that looks like its the same size as the other cameras. I don’t so much mind that this lens is small, I hardly ever use the ultrawide sensor myself. But it is nice to have, when you do need it.

Overall the camera experience is good, but not the best. And that’s where I have to keep coming back to the price. A lot of the phones I’ve reviewed recently are much higher priced than just €799.99. Like the Galaxy S25 Ultra, OPPO Find X8 Ultra, and the Xiaomi 15 UItra. And with the realme GT 7, the company definitely focused more on the battery capacity and charging speed, versus the camera. Which I’m perfectly fine with. Not everyone wants or needs the absolute best camera on a phone, just one that can capture the moments as they need them.

Should you buy the realme GT 7?

Now for the real question, should you buy the realme GT 7? Well, unfortunately, it’s not coming to the US. But I’m sure you already knew that. Having said that, I have been using it here in the US on T-Mobile and have gotten nearly identical network experience as with my OnePlus 13. So if you were to import it, you’d likely be perfectly fine.

Given the starting price of €799.99, I do think this is a pretty competitive smartphone. However, if you’re looking for an incredible camera at this price, you might want to look elsewhere. For just a bit more, around €849, you can pick up the OPPO Find X8 which does have a better camera but slower charging and less battery capacity.

The realme GT 7 seems really focused on longevity, with its 7,000mAh capacity battery and 120W charging. Also the fact that realme is touting the ability to play a game at 120fps for 7 hours straight on a single charge. If that’s what appeals to you, then the realme GT 7 is a great option.

You should buy the realme GT 7 if:

• You want incredible battery life.
• You want incredibly fast charging speeds.
• You want a gaming phone that doesn’t look like a gaming phone.

You should not buy the realme GT 7 if:

• You want the best camera experience you can buy for this price.
• You want a phone with better build materials (glass, metal, titanium, etc).