The matte finish means it should stay free from fingerprints and marks, while the color - Paper Green in our photos - is minty fresh, and a great choice for the arrival of springtime. It feels lovely, with a really subtle texture and a warmth you don’t get from glass or metal. Made from a bio-based polymer, the rear panel has been laser engraved with a fine zigzag pattern, and it instantly reminds you of really high-quality letter writing paper. Once again Realme has partnered with Japanese industrial designed Naoto Fukasawa and this time the chosen theme for the design is paper. I haven’t used the main camera outside of the 150-degree wide-angle mode much yet, so can’t judge its performance, but I have been holding the phone enough to recognize its wonderful design.
Unfortunately the GT 2 Pro doesn’t have an optical zoom to go along with the wide-angle feature, which is unfortunate given almost all flagship phones have at least a 2x or 3x optical zoom today. The ultra-wide camera is one of Samsung’s 50-megapixel ISOCELL JN1 sensors, and it’s joined on the back of the GT 2 Pro by a 50MP Sony IMX766 camera and a macro lens for the 40x magnification. Like the feature on the Find X3 Pro, it’s fun and different, but you probably won’t use it all that often. Yes, the super close-up camera mode has migrated over to the GT 2 Pro, and it provides a 40x or 200x super zoom, opening up a world invisible to the naked eye. What about the rest of the camera? Oppo (which is part of the same family as Realme, OnePlus, and Vivo) removed the microscope camera from the Find X5 Pro, but when you dig into the camera app menu on the Realme GT 2 Pro, you’ll find out where it has gone. The circular photos it takes are presented in a square box with an ugly black border that doesn’t lend itself to social media or viewing on a big screen. That said, Realme has added a Fisheye mode that is a gimmick. I found I experimented more with the 150-degree wide-angle shots, and often really liked the results. So many gimmicky features don’t enhance the experience or boost creativity, and end up being used once in a very specific situation. The 150-degree wide-angle photos are highly shareable, which means I want to go out and take them. This is why I think it’s more than just a gimmick. This mode isn’t about realism, it’s about fun. Nothing is 100% realistic in the photos but it doesn’t matter.
Detail is revealed where you may expect to see shadows, and there’s a slight fish-eye effect but not so drastic it ruins the scene. Colors aren’t over-saturated, just brighter, and blue skies have a light, airy, spacious tone. It’s not just that you see more, but because Realme has added a very strong HDR effect there’s a hyper-real look to the photos, but in a pleasing, eye-catching way. When you start taking photos with it, the results are startling. Realme is the first to widen that field of view on a phone, taking it to 150-degrees. They have become a staple addition since LG pioneered the camera with the LG G5 in 2016. Most wide-angle phone cameras, or ultra-wide as many phone makers like to call them, have a 120-degree field of view, helping capture the glory of a landscape or wide-open area more effectively than the main camera.