Chinese smartphone brand realme has officially taken the wraps off a smartphone we have been following closely for weeks – from when it was first announced in China to when we actually got a release date – the relame GT Neo5.
Now, the GT Neo5 is not like any other smartphone that we have seen from realme, and those have been many. It has the privilege of being the world’s first mass-production smartphone to feature 240W fast charging.
A 30-second charge, which as a Kenyan you can safely call “kichwa tu”, gets one a whole 2 hours’ worth of phone calls, when one uses the device’s charger and cable, which are packaged in the box.
The charging cable is a 12A one, an industry first while the charger itself uses gallium nitride instead of silicon, making it capable of handling higher power levels without getting hot and charging faster than the silicon found on conventional chargers. Please take note of this as GaN chargers, as they are commonly referred to, are slowly becoming a thing. You can already order one from your favourite mobile accessories brand.
realme also says that any old Super VOOC and VOOC chargers lying around should be able to work fine on the GT Neo5 and charge it to their maximum ratings. For the uninducted, VOOC and Super VOOC are the proprietary charging standards of Oppo, realme’s sibling (more like a mother since realme started out as an Oppo sub-brand), and are found across the BBK (mother company) family of device brands, including OnePlus.
A 10-minute charge sees the device go from nothing to full.
And, don’t worry about the battery degradation – you’ll still be at 80% by the time you clock 1600 charging circles, over twice the industry rate, realme says. Assuming one charges at least once per day, that’s at least 4 years of usage before the 4,600mAh battery capacity drops by 20%. I don’t remember keeping a daily driver smartphone for that long so, 99% of the users of the device will be just fine both in the short term and in the long term.
Before you get too carried away, the official unveiling we are talking about took place in China, where the device is available for purchase, at least for now.
While realme is remaining coy on whether the device will make its way to the international market, we do know that the 240W fast charging feature, which is its main attraction, will be making its way to another realme device, the realme GT3, the brand’s next flagship device for the global market, which launches later this month. We are keeping our eyes on it to see whether it will be the GT Neo5 with a new name or a completely different device.
The 240W fast charging aside, the realme GT Neo5 also packs a 6.7-inch 1.5K AMOLED display, a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset, 16GB RAM and a choice of either 256GB or 1 terabyte onboard storage.
It runs on Android 13, layered behind the realme UI 4.
On the camera front is a 50-megapixel main sensor with optical image stabilization (OIS), an 8-megapixel ultrawide and a 2-megapixel microscope lens. A 16-megapixel wide selfie lens adorns the front.
Now, the 240W GT Neo5 is not the only one. realme is also offering a 150W GT Neo5 which shares some of the specifications and features of its very fast charging sibling like the customizable rectangular LED light at the back (a la Nothing Phone) and also varies from it. It has a beefier 5,000mAh battery, for instance, that is juiced up through an 8A charger and more memory options (buyers have a choice of either 8, 12 or 16GB) but just 256GB internal storage. The rest of the features and specifications are standard across the two devices.
Pricing, at least in China, starts at just over Kshs 46,000 for the base model (8GB RAM + 256GB storage) GT Neo 5 with 150W fast charging and goes all the way to an equivalent of about Kshs 65,000 for the top-end model (16GB RAM, 1TB storage) with 240W fast charging.
