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Realme has always offered great value smartphones. As another Oppo-derived brand, it shares the same lineage as OnePlus but operates primarily in the lower segment, offering similar features at a lower price point. After a slight change in identity, Realme is back to making incredible flagship killers, a category that OnePlus created and has long dominated. Its latest smartphone, the Realme GT 6, has a luxurious feature set that can compete head-on with flagships.
In addition to its wealth of hardware features, this roughly $650 phone also comes with AI features built in that will help it make its way into the flagship segment. These AI features are integrated with core Android functionality to improve the user experience without coloring it with gimmicks.
AI is certainly an overused word in marketing, so making it actually useful is the fundamental challenge Realme is tackling. Rather than adding an entirely new set of features like AI chatbots, image generators, etc., the brand is adding AI to existing established Android features with the express aim of making AI useful rather than just an addition to a feature list.
AI that interprets screens
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The centrepiece of Realme’s AI feature set is Screen Recognition, and contrary to a bland name that probably gives away its capabilities, the feature is convincingly powerful: it’s designed to scan the content of every screen across different apps to detect any media and text.
Realme has assigned the simple and satisfying gesture of tapping and holding the screen with two fingers to invoke Screen Recognition: when this is triggered, the on-screen content freezes and a scanning animation appears at the top.
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That’s not the overtly smart part. The AI bits come to life when you select an image (or a video still) or text from the screen and drag it to the edge of the display. This activates what Realme calls the AI Smart Loop. While the persistent AI connotations might sound a bit troubling, the Smart Loop feature really helps bring the intelligent features to the forefront.
Smart Loop intelligently determines the format of the information being dragged and automatically suggests the most relevant apps. Find an interesting image on the web, scan it with screen recognition, and Smart Loop will recommend social media and chat apps you can share it to. What’s more, when you drag an image over an app’s icon (such as Instagram), Smart Loop will update to expand its capabilities, including sharing it as a story, feed, or post.
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The same thing happens if you drag it to another app like Facebook or X (formerly Twitter), or a chat app like WhatsApp or Telegram. No more having to take multiple steps to reply to a tweet or post with a relevant classic meme.
Similarly, if screen recognition detects an email address or phone number, it will suggest related apps. Similarly, it will recommend Google Maps if it finds a physical address, which is super handy if you found the business on a social media app like Facebook or Instagram. One powerful feature is that you can drag any image into Google Lens and let it do the rest of its magic.
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In addition to these apps, Smart Loop also lets you add media and text to what it calls the File Dock, which is like a persistent clipboard that you can access from the side of the screen, and the stored information won’t be automatically erased unless you delete it manually. This feature is extremely useful when you need to copy countless things from a single page in random order.
The suggestions from Smart Loop are usually helpful, but not always accurate. To get around this, drag the image to the arrow, and the loop will rotate to accommodate more apps, much like a rotary phone. It will cycle through the remaining apps, so you can drop your media wherever you want.
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These are Android options where you long-press on an app icon to access app shortcuts. This has been a core part of Android for over five years. What makes Realme’s implementation even more appealing is that it cuts down the steps needed to save media, copy text, or even scan for useful information. Instead of tapping the screen multiple times, you can store or access a variety of things with a single tap followed by dragging your thumb across the phone screen a few times.
Realme GT 6 AI Screen Recognition
What’s even better is that the gestures are intuitive and don’t require much practice to get used to. You can see the AI Screen Recognition in action in the image above.
I find these features much easier to use than Google Assistant’s existing Screen Context or Circle to Search on Samsung and Google’s top-end smartphones.
Unobtrusive images
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The ability to remove unwanted objects from images is already present in many smartphones, but Realme is looking to perfect it. In the GT 6, Realme is bringing the AI Smart Delete feature that cleverly removes distracting objects from your photos.
But what can Realme actually achieve with a feature that almost every Android smartphone manufacturer already offers, and even Google as part of Google Photos? Realme claims that it’s better than existing options on mobile, and it is.
The vibrant colors of this image convey a joyous evening as the sun peeks out from behind the clouds after hours of rain. But the fast-moving Honda looks out of place in the calm surroundings. I used Google’s Magic Editor to remove the sedan, resulting in the image on the right.
Original image (left) and edited with Google’s Magic Editor. Tushar Mehta / Digital Trends
Now, using Realme’s proprietary AI Eraser, the results are much more natural and convincing, as can be seen below: The tool leaves no trace of the car in the image on the right, seamlessly imaging the median strip and the trees in the background.
Original image (left) and image edited with Realme’s AI Object Removal feature. Tushar Mehta / Digital Trends
Well, for once I had a chance, I took another look at it: Using Google’s Magic Editor to remove the clumps of grass and car debris from the background, I was left with an abstract mosaic of unrecognizable surfaces.
Original image (left) and edited with Google’s Magic Editor. Tushar Mehta / Digital Trends
By establishing patterns and reducing the chances of it being mere coincidence, images retouched with Realme’s Object Eraser (shown below, right) are a more natural extension of the canvas. It even manages to recreate leaves falling on the asphalt, giving it a more authentic look.
Original image (left) and image edited with Realme’s AI Object Removal feature. Tushar Mehta / Digital Trends
I don’t know why Realme’s implementation is more effective than Google’s, but I would definitely go with the former. Outside of Realme, I’ve seen a similar level of accuracy with the AI Regenerate feature in the desktop version of Adobe Photoshop recently. The fact that Realme produces similar results to the desktop app is commendable.
Images invisible to the naked eye
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Cameras were one of the first features on Android phones to be labeled AI. For almost a decade, brands have been talking about AI in photography and videography, but in practice, its application has been limited to adding color filters and applying comprehensive settings to make photos and videos look more appealing. Of course, Google remains the exception, with its ability to computationally enhance the output of its cameras.
While more brands are slowly catching up with Google with special partnerships with camera brands and smartphones with dedicated processors for better quality images, Realme claims to use AI to improve camera performance.One standout feature is the AI-enhanced video mode.
Even in extremely dark situations, the Realme GT 6 dramatically improves video quality in two ways: first, the so-called AI Night Vision feature increases the amount of light captured by the camera, and second, the recorded videos are clearer and more detailed thanks to this feature.
Video of Realme without (top) and with AI Night Vision. Tushar Mehta / Digital Trends
Improving video is much harder than producing the same effect in photos. A phone needs to process dozens of frames per second, which depends on the hardware. The Realme GT 6 deserves praise for significantly improving video visibility without the need for more powerful hardware or a dedicated coprocessor.
You can see the improvements for yourself in the comparison above.
Eye protection
Me pretending to yawn to test Realme’s eye protection. Tushar Mehta / Digital Trends
I spend most of my waking hours staring at a screen, and I’m sure this trend is widespread given modern society’s aversion to blue light, so I get excited when manufacturers step up and think about eye health.
Modern devices are equipped with blue light filters, brightness limiters, and other mechanisms to reduce the effects of screens that aren’t immediately noticeable and are only felt through nausea or other terrible sensations, and flagship devices automatically adjust colors based on the surrounding environment and time of day. So what can mobile operators do beyond these existing measures to keep users’ eyes as safe as possible?
Realme has the answer, and even its eye protection features incorporate AI: in addition to the standard mechanisms of cutting blue glare and automatically adjusting the screen color, Realme uses the front camera to detect signs of fatigue: if you yawn or blink less than usual, it will treat this as a sign of fatigue and change the screen color to suit your eyes.
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The feature works with or without the existing Bedtime mode (which intensifies the yellow tint of the screen), especially when you’re reading, watching videos or using social media. It also takes into account the light around you and signs of fatigue. The degree of blue light filtering is much more subtle and increases very gradually compared to the standard Bedtime mode, helping to put your eyes into a calmer, more relaxed state.
I wish Realme would also add the ability to fade the color at night, rather than making it harder to completely separate from the phone, but the current implementation is a step in the right direction.
A giant step that provides an unforgettable lesson
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Over the past few months, we have witnessed a surge in the application of AI in mobile phones. Despite an entire industry clamoring for phones to be able to think, these capabilities have been largely limited to flagship devices with ample processing power.
Realme, on the other hand, is making a significant effort to make its features available to a wider audience. Naturally, features are limited at this stage, but the effort is moving away from gimmicks and focusing on things people are likely to actually use. Because Realme shares resources with Oppo and OnePlus, these may be available through upcoming OnePlus phones in the US, and won’t necessarily be limited to flagships.
But there is one big caveat that can’t be ignored. Realme relies on AndresGPT, Oppo’s self-learning large-scale language model, which is much better at Chinese than English. However, an aspect that can’t be ignored is that most of the data processing is done on the cloud, at least for non-flagship models like the Realme GT 6. As the AI race heats up, data privacy will become an issue that brands will have to address. Until then, it’s best to avoid scanning your personal data and media with these AI-powered features.
But private media and texts aside, Realme’s AI features show promise and could fantastically improve the way you use your phone while reducing the number of steps it takes to get something done. This is how Realme wins the smartphone AI game.
Finally, buying the phone may be harder than you think, as Realme doesn’t officially sell it in the U.S. In Europe, the Realme GT 6 can be purchased for a starting price of 600 euros (around $645), reaching a maximum price of 800 euros.
