Hail the new telephoto king?
The main talking point of the announcement was the periscope telephoto camera of the GT5 Pro. It features an IMX890 sensor made by Sony with a 1/1.56 size and a 50MP resolution, coupled with QBC (Quad Bayer coding where four adjacent pixels capture one color only) and pixel 4-1 pixel binning on top of that. This sensor was unveiled a year ago as a capable upper-midrange solution, primarily for the main camera of upper-midrangers and even some flagships, such as the OnePlus 11.
It’s worth noting that using QBC to capture a single color with four pixels, coupled with pixel-binning, does improve low-light sensitivity and has the potential to produce great low-light shots. It’s a great base platform.
So, what’s different? Realme says that this is the first instance where this large-bottom sensor has been used in a periscope telephoto camera. The telephoto of the Realme GT5 Pro supports 3x optical zoom, 6x lossless zoom, and up to 120x Super Zoom. Putting such a large sensor in a periscope camera has 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, the latest silicon from Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Xiaomi already launched its 14 series in China, sporting the aforementioned processor, but we still don’t know much about the ISP capabilities of the new chip.
Realme teases a new “super light and shadow engine” that utilizes the full capabilities of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, from what we can deduce out of the Chinese translation, it’s an enhanced HDR mode. The new silicon can process a single image 44% faster than the previous model, too.
Realme GT5 Pro rumored specs
| Specs | Realme GT5 Pro |
|---|---|
| Size and Weight | 160.84 x 78.09 x 7.65mm, 240g |
| Display | 6.78″ OLED, 144Hz |
| Processor | Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 |
| RAM, Storage and Price | 16/256GB |
| Software | Android 14 with Realme UI on top |
| Cameras | 50MP main camera (Sony’s LYT-T808) 50MP telephoto (Sony IMX890), 3x optical, 6x lossless, 120x Super Zoom 32MP selfie camera |
| Battery Size | 5,400 mAh |
| Charging Speeds | 100W wired 50W wireless |
Conclusion and afterthoughts
The Realme GT5 Pro will launch in China in the following days, and we’ll know for sure how capable its telephoto camera really is when we snap some samples with it. We have to be healtly skeptics, as many times phones from the Far East rely on big claims and numbers in the specs sheet, while the end result is not that spectacular.
That being said, it will be very interesting to see such a big sensor with QBC tech and pixel-binning work under a telephoto lens.
