Popping a smartphone on overnight charge is no major inconvenience, unless you forget and run out of juice mid-chat. Thankfully device manufacturers have been steadily increasing fast-charging speeds of late, making full top-ups possible in minutes. The fastest to date has just been launched by Shenzhen's Realme.
The Realme GT Neo 5 smartphone is currently only available in China, and even if it goes global, folks in the US are unlikely to be invited to the launch party.
It's headline feature is a 4,600-mAh battery that supports 240-W fast-charging over USB-C using the supplied 20-V/12-A adapter – which offers 2 hours of talk time for 30 seconds on charge, can get to 20% capacity in just 80 seconds, 50% in 4 minutes and fully charged in under 10 minutes.
Realme has secured TÜV Rheinland safety certification for peace of mind, and the handset benefits from a multi-component cooling architecture that includes dual-phase heat dissipation, a large vapor chamber and phase-change materials.
Super-fast charging aside, the smartphone features a 6.74-inch, 2,772 x 1,240-pixel AMOLED display with a 144-Hz adaptive refresh rate, 1,400 nits of peak brightness and support for 100% of the DCI-P3 gamut, while mobile gamers will appreciate the 1,500-Hz touch response.
It's built around a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 mobile platform, which is not Qualcomm's latest and greatest but should still prove quite the performer, with support from 16 GB of LPDDR5X RAM and up to 1 TB of storage.
Mobile photography and movie-making needs are met by a 50-MP main camera that's based around Sony's IMX890 sensor and features optical image stabilization, plus an 8-MP ultra-wide and a 2-MP macro shooter. To the right of the camera bump is a funky rectangular RGB LED "halo" for charging status and notifications. And there's also a 16-MP selfiecam punch-holed in the display for 1080p video chats.
Rounding out the key specs, the handset sports Bluetooth 5.3 and dual-band Wi-Fi in addition to 5G mobile connectivity, runs Realme's UI 4.0 that's based on Android 13, and rocks Dolby Atmos speakers.
The GT Neo 5 240W model starts at CNY 3,199 (about US$470, though as already mentioned, it's unlikely that this smartphone will reach North American shores). A 150-W version with a slightly bigger battery and more RAM/storage options is also available.
Product page: Realme GT Neo 5