Forget Samsung Super Zoom: new Android flagship brings revolutionary telephoto camera،
We’re heading towards the end of 2023, and you might think that all smartphone launches are now behind us, but a few Chinese companies have taken up the challenge to prove you wrong! We are waiting for the official reveal of the Nubia Red Magic 9 Pro and Honor 100 series, as well as the subject of today’s article, the Realme GT5 Pro. Now, those of you who closely follow the Chinese smartphone market already know that the Vanilla GT5 version became official in the Far East on September 4, but since then Realme has been presenting the Pro model as a game-changing device. ‘industry. Today, on its official Weibo page, Realme pulled back some of that curtain, showing off some of the Realme GT5 Pro’s camera capabilities. And it looks like the Galaxy S24 Ultra now has a real competitor on the horizon. Will the S24 Ultra Super Zoom survive this coming battle? Let’s see what we got out of this weird little camera ad.
Hello the new king of the telephoto lens?
The main talking point of the announcement was the GT5 Pro’s periscope telephoto lens. It features an IMX890 sensor made by Sony with 1/1.56 size and 50 MP resolution, coupled with QBC (Quad Bayer encoding where four adjacent pixels capture a single color) and 4-1 pixel binning in addition. This sensor was unveiled a year ago as a high-performance upper mid-range solution, mainly for the main camera in upper mid-ranges and even for some flagships, such as the OnePlus 11.
It’s worth noting that using QBC to capture a single color with four pixels, combined with pixel binning, improves low-light sensitivity and has the potential to produce great low-light photos. It’s a great base platform.
So what’s different? Realme says this is the first time this deep-field sensor has been used in a periscope telephoto lens. The Realme GT5 Pro’s telephoto lens supports 3x optical zoom, 6x lossless zoom, and up to 120x super zoom. Putting such a large sensor in a periscope camera comes at a price, literally, and according to Realme, it’s the most expensive periscope zoom camera in a smartphone.
Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 + IMX890 = ?
The other part of the equation is, of course, Qualcomm’s latest silicon, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Xiaomi has already launched its 14 series in China, equipped with the aforementioned processor, but we still don’t know much about it. the ISP capabilities of the new chip.
Realme introduces a new “light and shadow super engine” that uses all the capabilities of Snapdragon 8 generation 3, from what we can deduce from the Chinese translation, this is an enhanced HDR mode. The new silicon can also process a single image 44% faster than the previous model.
Rumored specifications of the Realme GT5 Pro
| Specifications | Realme GT5 Pro |
|---|---|
| Height and weight | 160.84 x 78.09 x 7.65mm, 240g |
| Display | 6.78-inch OLED display, 144Hz |
| Processor | Snapdragon 8 generation 3 |
| RAM, storage and price | 16/256 GB |
| Software | Android 14 with Realme UI on top |
| Cameras | 50MP main camera (Sony LYT-T808) 50MP Telephoto Lens (Sony IMX890), 3x Optical, 6x Lossless, 120x Super Zoom 32MP selfie camera |
| Battery size | 5,400mAh |
| Charging Speeds | 100W wired 50W wireless |
Conclusion and reflections
The Realme GT5 Pro will launch in China in the coming days, and we’ll know for sure how good its telephoto lens really performs when we take a few samples with it. We have to be very skeptical, because phones from the Far East often rely on big claims and figures in the technical sheet, while the end result is not that spectacular.
That being said, it will be very interesting to see such a large sensor with QBC technology and pixel-binning working under a telephoto lens.
