As most of you likely know, OPPO, OnePlus and realme are all part of the same company, the former BBK group. Which spun out vivo in the past few years, so that vivo and iQOO are no longer siblings to OPPO. And with that, we get some very similar devices under different brand names. Like the OPPO Find X9 Pro and the realme GT 8 Pro.
In recent years, OPPO has treated its own brand as the top dog in this trio, as it should. With OnePlus being in the middle, mostly serving India and the US, and realme at the bottom mostly serving the lower-end and mid-range market (at least in terms of pricing). But for the end of 2025 going into 2026, realme and OnePlus seem to have swapped places.
OnePlus has now moved back to being a performance king, giving us downgrades in the camera department on the OnePlus 15. The camera is still good, even great in some environments. But the OnePlus 13 had a better camera setup, and that might be due to Hasselblad.
Meanwhile, realme has taken the reigns of offering the best all-around flagship experience with the GT 8 Pro. Which is a phone that I still call a “gaming phone” mostly because of the “GT” in its name.
The realme GT 8 Pro is essentially the OPPO Find X9 Pro
When you look at the specs between the realme GT 8 Pro and the OPPO Find X9 Pro, you’ll see that they are very, very similar. There are some differences, like a 6.79″ display on the realme and a 6.78″ display on the OPPO, or a few tenths of a millimeter difference in the dimensions. But for the most part, these are the same phones – aside from the processor.
That was typically what happened with OnePlus. The OnePlus 13 was very similar to the OPPO Find X8 Pro last year, with the biggest difference being the design and the processor.
The cameras are even very similar, not quite the same, but very similar. With a 50MP primary and a 50MP ultrawide, along with a 200MP 3x telephoto. The OPPO Find X9 Pro has those same cameras, but with slightly larger apertures and sensor sizes. So technically, OPPO is still better here. But in testing these side-by-side, I have not noticed a huge difference in camera quality.
realme has a real winner on their hands
I’ve been using the realme GT 8 Pro (and the Dream Edition) as one of my daily drivers for the past month or so, and I’ve really enjoyed it. I’ve enjoyed it so much that after reviewing a couple of other phones, I went back to the GT 8 Pro. The design is just so good, it feels great in the hand, realme handled the thermals of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 very well too.
Just about every aspect of this phone is great. Battery life is very good, despite having a smaller cell at 7,000mAh. It still lasts me a full day and then some. It actually lasted a very similar amount of time as the OnePlus 15. But where realme excels is in charging, since it does have 120W charging. Now technically, the OnePlus 15 also has this, just not in the US, where we are located.
Even after playing a few hours of MLBB, the realme GT 8 pro barely lost any juice, and did no get very warm either. Sure this is only a 144Hz display, while OnePlus 15 does have that 165Hz display, but very few games can take advantage of that higher refresh rate. So that’s not something that I care all that much about – right now.
That said, the display on the realme GT 8 Pro is simply stunning. It’s a 6.79-inch AMOLED display with a 144Hz refresh rate, and it gets insanely bright too. realme says up to 7,000nits of peak brightness, or 2,000nits in high brightness mode. Basically, what you need to know is that, brightness is not an issue here.
That Ricoh camera is incredible
One of the new things this year for realme is their partnership with Ricoh. This is something that a lot of the Chinese OEMs are doing now, and producing some incredible cameras. OPPO has Hasselblad, vivo has ZEISS, Xiaomi has Leica and now realme has Ricoh. Which is a very popular camera and imaging company, founded back in 1936. And we’re seeing their imaging prowess here on the realme GT 8 Pro.
Not only has Ricoh helped with the color-science here, but they have also included a Ricoh GR mode. So in the camera app, you’ll see “RICOH GR” to the right of the default “PHOTO” mode. This mode will allow you to shoot at 28mm or 40mm, and have full pro controls if you wanted. And choose different filters, like positive, negative, and black and white. It really makes shooting with this phone a whole lot of fun.
Below, I’ve included a ton of photos that I’ve taken with the realme GT 8 Pro over the past few weeks. I’ve been very impressed with the camera; it was really the only downside of the GT 7 Pro last year.
Now before we move on from the camera, we do need to talk about that camera plate. realme has made it so you can swap out the camera plate on the GT 8 Pro. Allowing you to go from a round camera module to a squircle camera module. Now this does not change the camera experience at all, it’s just a small cosmetic change. And when you buy the squircle camera plate, you do get a new silicon case with it, so that it fits the new shape of the cameras.
It’s pretty cool, but for me, it’s not a selling point. It’s not a make it or break it feature.
OPPO, please bring realme to the US
Finally, I’m going to make this plea to OPPO and I hope they are reading this. Please bring realme to the US. If you’re going to send OnePlus down this path of being a performance phone, then we need to have realme available in the US, or even bring your own brand over here. Many of us would love to be able to purchase the Find X9 Pro and know that it would work on US carriers without any problems.
But, and I can’t stress this enough, we cannot have OnePlus fizzling into the background and potentially disappearing from the US. I know that the US Government is investigating OnePlus, whatever. Americans cannot afford to lose OnePlus. That would leave us with only Samsung, Google and Apple, and to an extent, Motorola. That’s not a lot of choice for a country with 330 million people, and the third largest smartphone market.
