It’s been a really long time since I’ve gotten my hands on a realme phone, and this realme GT Neo2, is worth the wait! So check out my unboxing and first impressions of the phone below.
Unboxing
So the unboxing experience was pretty pleasant indeed where the box comes in black, from a horizontal position the box has the “5G” on the top right, “GT NEO2” in the middle and “realme” down below, which goes towards the bottom with another realme logo over there.
At the back in a vertical position, there are some of the key specs of the phone.
Then at the side of the box, you will find the model name, the color variant that you choose, and the RAM and storage specs as well.
Opening the box you will find a smaller box which has a text that says “Hey, welcome to realme family”, in there you will find the safety guide. Then you will find the phone itself.
Underneath, you will find:
- a matte black colored soft silicone case
- a USB-A to USB-C cable
- a SIM ejector pin
- and finally, there is the 65-watts SuperDart Charging Brick
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Build Quality
First, from a build quality and design perspective, the obvious thing that really stood out was the very cool, striking, high saturated green color, which realme aptly calls this NEO Green and it is available in NEO Blue as well.
The rear has a matte finish, which is obviously something that we all can really appreciate since it is anti-fingerprint, and according to realme, it has a 7 nano multilayer process that is scratch resistant and reflects light.
It also feels really nice on the hands, since it has a matte finish at the sides as well, and has quite a thin 8.6mm body. Then the slightly glossy black stripe across the phone surely gives a very distinctive character to the phone.
The camera arrays are towards the left side of the phone with a very thin camera bump but a medium-sized camera array box, but it will wobble quite a bit when you place the phone to type on a surface.
Then looking at the ports and buttons, looking below, other than the USB-C port there is one of the two stereo speakers over there where the other is at the earpiece area where these speakers have Dolby Atmos High-Resolution audio support, and you will find the SIM ejector slot over there, which supports up to 2 SIMs.
On the left, there is the volume rocker and the power button is on the right.
Looking in front, it has a flat-screen display with a camera hole punch towards the top left and since it is an AMOLED panel, there is an In-Display fingerprint sensor that unlocks really quickly.
So overall, I would say that I really like the design and the build quality, and whether or not you are a fan of a Neo-green color, I am very certain that if you have the phone in your hands and see it in real life, you will really appreciate it even more.
Display
Now looking at the display, as mentioned, the phone has an AMOLED display at 6.62-inches in size, and if you are a regular viewer in this channel, I did mention many times that NOT all AMOLED panels are created equal as this realme GT NEO2 comes with a high-quality E4 panel.
Now this is not for the sake of sounding cool or what as this E4 panel reduces 15% power consumption, has a high 5 million to 1 contrast ratio and it is one of the most color-accurate displays, not only watching videos on the phone was really nice, with vibrant and sharp display quality.
During my first impressions, just browsing and just using the phone was really a pleasant experience. What’s extra sweet is that the display has a refresh rate up to 120Hz, which is adaptive based on your usage to go from 30, 60, 90 and of course 120Hz for better battery consumption, where you can also toggle over at the options between Auto Select, Standard and High.
The screen also goes very bright up to 1300 nits of peak brightness and based on playback on Netflix, it has Widevine L1 Full HD playback compatible, there is no Dolby Vision but playback was really nice and bright.
Cameras
Now in terms of the camera:
- the main rear camera is 64-megapixel f 1.8 aperture 26mm wide lens
- an 8-megapixel f 2.3 16mm ultra-wide-angle lens, and;
- a 2-megapixel f 2.4 macro lens
Then the front camera comes with a 16-megapixel f 2.5 26mm wide camera.
Based on my quick test shots, the front camera’s pictures were great too both for the regular and the portrait selfie as well, and the rear lenses are really nice with flagship level quality for the ultrawide and the main lens as well, which of course I am looking to test the camera out further during my full review, so in case you haven’t done so.
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(Left: Regular selfie, Right: Portrait selfie)
As for the video, the rear camera maxes out at 4k 60 frames per second and the front camera can only record up to 1080p 30fps.
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Image Stabilization for the front was really good with the stabilization toggle turned on, with just decent dynamic range and the video quality for the rear lens was excellent on the stabilization on 4k and of course the overall video quality on 4k was really good as well. (Check out the video recording sample on my YouTube video)
Specifications
Next, looking at the specs of the device, it comes with the Snapdragon 870 5G Chipset, with the Adreno 650 GPU.
And the variant that I have is the 12 gigabytes of RAM and 256 gigabytes of storage UFS 3.1 storage and speaking of the RAM you can add up to 7GB of virtual RAM, which is sweet.
Then as for battery, the phone has 5000 milliamps of battery, which was obviously a plus as well. I shall see how it performs during my further daily usage.
And the phone has fast charging up to 65-watts SuperDart Charge where the charger comes inside of the box, as how it has always been for realme smartphones, which apparently can charge the phone from 0 to 100% in just 36 mins. However, there is no wireless charging, so keep that in mind.
In terms of software, the phone comes pre-installed with Realme UI 2.0 on top of Android 11. It’s been a while since I have used the Realme UI and it feels very fresh and nice and so far I have no complaints and it does feel like it is a really good Android skin to use daily, with nice pre-installed icons and quite a clean navigation on multitasking and menu system as well.
Now speaking of experiences, realme has really pushed the boundaries by really making the device cool, where it has an 8-layer cooling system, with a Diamond Thermal Gel and a Stainless Steel Heatsink in between there as well, so we shall see whether or not it has any heat issues when I use the phone daily or take it up a few notches during my usual gaming test when I do my full video review, especially with the GT Mode 2.0.
(Source: realme)
(Source: realme)
So as of the recording of this video, there was no official price for the phone that has been announced yet here in Malaysia, so stay tuned for that, where I will either update at the pinned comment below on the pricing or let you guys know in my full video review.
So guys, with this, do let me know what you guys would like to know specifically about the realme GT NEO2 in the comment section below, and either I will reply to your comments directly down there or I might be answering them when I do a full video review on the phone.
Price Announcement:
realme GT Neo2 (12+256GB)
– Retail Price: RM 2,099
– First sale price: RM 1,999
– First sale on 11.11 @ realme Official Store Lazada & Shopee– Purchase Link:
https://invol.co/cl73nee (Shopee)
https://invol.co/cl73nf3 (Lazada)
