realme 15 Pro Review (Long-Term): Does the Game of Thrones Edition Change Anything?

I’ve been using the standard realme 15 Pro as my daily driver for four months. I know exactly how its Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 chipset holds up after countless hours of gaming, I know the real-world limits of its massive 7,000mAh battery, and I’ve learned all the little quirks of its software.

It’s been a reliable, if slightly predictable, mid-range phone.

Then, earlier this month, the Game of Thrones Edition showed up. It’s sitting on my desk right now, and it is anything but predictable. It has a ‘Dragonfire’ leather back that reacts to heat, a massive golden camera module shaped like a dragon’s claw, and a UI skinned to look like something from King’s Landing.

This puts us in a unique position. We don’t have to guess if the Game of Thrones phone is any good. We already know the answer, because underneath all that fire and blood, it’s the same realme 15 Pro I’ve been testing for months.

So this review answers two questions. First: how does the standard realme 15 Pro hold up as a long-term device? And second: is this flashy Game of Thrones package a worthy collector’s item, or just an expensive costume on a phone that was already starting to show its cracks?

realme 15 Pro Review: Unboxing

The unboxing experience for the realme 15 Pro Game of Thrones Edition is completely, wonderfully absurd. It arrives in a massive, heavy collector’s chest, not a cardboard box. We’re talking textured, walnut-finished wood, metal-reinforced corners, and a 3D Game of Thrones nameplate. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect to see on a shelf at a high-end comic shop, not from a phone brand.

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Open it, and it gets even more theatrical. A pop-up mechanism reveals a surprisingly detailed, miniature 3D Iron Throne, which doubles as the most over-the-top phone stand in existence. It’s ridiculous, and frankly, I love it.

The accessories are just as extra. The highlight is the SIM ejector tool, which is a heavy, metal replica of the Hand of the King pin. It’s easily the most over-qualified SIM tool ever made. You also get a mysterious letter that reveals text in sunlight (a neat UV-paper gimmick) and a set of themed stickers.

realme 15 Pro Review: Design and Build

So, does the phone live up to the hype? Visually, it’s just as dramatic. The back is a Dragonfire Black vegan leather that feels great and, unlike the standard 15 Pro, isn’t a fingerprint nightmare. Its main party trick is the heat-sensitive thermochromic finish. Play a game for 20 minutes, and the black back literally shifts to a glowing, dragonfire crimson. It’s a stunning effect.

It’s all held together by a gold-painted metal frame and a massive camera module flanked by engraved dragon claws. The lens rings are even etched with house mottos like Winter Is Coming.

It’s a lot. It’s on the razor’s edge of being incredibly tacky, but the materials feel premium enough that it somehow works.

This flashy, gold-covered phone comes with a solid build. Underneath the Game of Thrones costume is the standard realme 15 Pro’s chassis, which means it has a full IP68/IP69 rating. That’s not just splash-proof. IP69 means it can withstand high-pressure, high-temperature water jets. It’s also MIL-STD-810H compliant, meaning it’s been tested against drops and shocks. This might be the first collector’s item in history that you can drop in a toilet and hose off.

Which makes the camera module all the more baffling.

It looks like a triple-camera setup, but the bottom ring is a dummy lens. It’s a black, empty circle, included purely for symmetry. realme did add a custom RGB “Pulse Light” around the ultrawide sensor for notifications, but it doesn’t excuse the fake lens.

realme 15 Pro Review: Display

The 6.8-inch AMOLED screen on this phone is, in a word, fantastic. It’s a massive, sharp 1.5K panel that curves elegantly into the frame. In real-world use, it becomes incredibly bright, with a peak brightness rating of 6,500 nits, making it legible in harsh, direct sunlight.

Colors pop, blacks are truly black, and it makes watching House of the Dragon a genuine treat. It’s so good that realme didn’t need to lie about the specs. But it did.

realme says the 15 Pro display offers a 144Hz refresh rate. In our testing, this is mostly a fantasy. The phone runs at 120Hz in almost every app, game, and menu. The 144Hz mode appears to be a spec-sheet brag, not a practical feature you will ever actually use. It distracts from what is otherwise an excellent, top-tier display.

realme 15 Pro Review: Speakers and Haptics

The stereo speaker setup is, unfortunately, a letdown. You get a main bottom-firing driver and earpiece for stereo separation, but the result is unbalanced. The audio is loud; yes, it can easily fill a room with a podcast or YouTube video.

But it has no guts. The sound profile is tinny and heavily biased toward high-end treble, which makes dialogue crisp but leaves everything else sounding flat. At high volumes, it’s sharp to the point of being unpleasant. There’s a complete lack of the low-end bass you’d want for dramatic battle scenes or music.

realme 15 Pro Review: Performance

Powering the realme 15 Pro is the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 4, built on a 4nm process. On paper, it promises a big jump in performance. In practice, after months of use, it’s a classic realme story – efficiency and consistency take precedence over brute-force power.

The Game of Thrones Edition gets the top-tier configuration of 12GB of RAM and 512GB of UFS 3.1 storage. And while this new Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 is quick, it trails behind the raw power of rivals running the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 or high-end Dimensity chips.

The benchmarks confirm this mid-range reality:

Benchmark	realme 15 Pro (SD 7 Gen 4)
AnTuTu v10	1064065
Geekbench 6 CPU	1240/3493
PCMark Battery Test	21h 1m

Numbers aside, this is a phone built for stability, not scoreboard glory. realme compensates for the lower peak performance with absolutely massive thermal control. The 15 Pro houses a 7,000mm² vapor chamber, and it shows.

In CPU throttle tests, the phone’s performance was remarkably stable, outperforming hotter competitors like the Motorola Edge 60 Pro. After a grueling 90-minute gaming session, the temperature rose by just 9.6°C. The phone gets warm, but never uncomfortably hot.

In daily use, the realme 15 Pro feels fast, fluid, and reliable. Scrolling, multitasking, and streaming are smooth, with zero lag.

For gaming, titles like Call of Duty: Mobile and Genshin Impact run well, though the frame rates cap at 90FPS. Competing phones might offer 120FPS, but the experience here is unshakably smooth. There’s also a “GT Mode” that unlocks a bit more power for gaming on this edition, enabling it to trigger a special “fire and blood” animation, a nice little touch for fans.

After months of use, the realme 15 Pro’s performance feels like it’s well-controlled, balanced, and efficient. It may not breathe the hottest fire in benchmarks, but its thermal stability and sustained performance make it one of the most reliable mid-range phones you can buy.

realme 15 Pro Review: Software

The realme 15 Pro Game of Thrones Limited Edition runs on realme UI 6.0, built atop Android 15 and while the core experience remains as fluid and feature-rich as ever, this edition stands apart for its deep, system-wide Game of Thrones integration. realme didn’t just slap a wallpaper on it this is one of the most extensive theme customizations in any recent Android phone.

The experience begins at boot, with a custom startup animation featuring the Game of Thrones logo, followed by a choice between two complete themes – Ice and Fire. Switching between them doesn’t just recolor your wallpaper; it transforms the entire system aesthetic, from lock screen to charging animation.

Each theme brings a distinct look:

• Lock Screen & AOD: The Iron Throne dominates the lock screen, while the Always-On Display carries sigil-inspired designs.
• Animations: Even the fingerprint unlock animation turns into a Targaryen sigil flare.
• GT Mode: When you fire up realme’s performance mode, it kicks off with a custom GOT animation.

realme also went beyond typical icon packs. You get two fully redrawn icon sets for system apps styled to match either the Ice or Fire look. Unfortunately, third-party apps don’t get the same treatment; their icons sit inside a generic gold ring, which breaks visual cohesion.

Thanks to the Snapdragon 7 Gen 4’s AI capabilities, realme added a few playful (and sometimes gimmicky) tricks. The most notable is the AI Edit Genie Transformation, which lets you reimagine a person in your photo as a medieval character — armor, gown, or cloak, all generated via text or voice command.

The camera app also includes two exclusive Game of Thrones filters:

• Northland Filter offering cool, icy tones reminiscent of Winterfell.
• Kingdom Filter rendering warmer hues inspired by King’s Landing.

Beyond the theming, realme UI 6.0 remains a solid Android skin, essentially a polished remix of ColorOS 15 and OxygenOS 15. It’s clean, fast, and modern, with no noticeable lag even under heavy multitasking. The usual productivity tools return: split-screen, floating windows, and smart sidebar apps, plus AI Smart Loop for quick sharing and Google Gemini for on-device assistance and Circle to Search.

There’s also a new AI Gaming Coach, though its insights feel basic, thinking temperature and frame rate tips more than actual strategy.

realme’s polish still can’t hide some recurring problems. The phone ships with an absurd 61 pre-installed apps, including several third-party ones, and the familiar double act of duplicate apps (two browsers, two file managers, two contact lists) clutters the experience. Worse, many of these apps are notification-happy.

realme’s update policy is also disappointing. It only offers three Android OS upgrades and four years of security patches. At this price, rivals like Samsung and OnePlus already offer four years of OS updates and five years of security support.

Even the GOT experience feels like a missed opportunity no themed ringtones, no Westerosi boot sound, and only a handful of wallpapers. The Quick Settings and notification panels, surprisingly, remain unchanged.

The AI Edit Genie, while conceptually fun, isn’t quite ready for prime time. Despite realme’s on-device AI claims, it still needs an active internet connection to function. Processing times can stretch past a minute, and results often look inconsistent or washed out. More concerningly, there’s no watermark or disclosure that an image was AI-edited, something realme should definitely address.

realme 15 Pro Review: Cameras

The realme 15 Pro boasts a Triple 50MP setup. In reality, you get a strong 50MP Sony main sensor, a decent 50MP ultra-wide, and a 50MP selfie cam. That third ring on the back? It’s a dummy lens included purely for looks.

The 50MP Sony IMX896 main sensor, complete with OIS, is the undisputed highlight. In daylight, it captures excellent photos: sharp, detailed, and bursting with vibrant (if sometimes too vibrant) color. realme’s processing leans heavily towards punchy, saturated shots that look great on Instagram, though they can occasionally feel overdone. Dynamic range is strong, often handling tricky shadows better than competitors like the Motorola Edge 60 Pro. It’s a genuinely capable, near-flagship-level main camera.

The 50MP ultra-wide should be a strong companion, but it’s plagued by inconsistency. When the light is perfect, it delivers decent shots that match the main sensor’s color profile. But step into less-than-ideal conditions, and problems emerge – noticeable grain, edge distortion, and weak dynamic range. Worse, it lacks autofocus, and at times delivers a sudden, strong blue tint.

Low-light performance is where realme clearly wants this phone to shine. Marketed as an “AI Party Phone,” the 15 Pro delivers sharp, bright, and mostly clean low-light shots, even without Night Mode. Noise control is impressive for the price, and flaring is better handled than on some rivals.

That said, realme’s post-processing engine tends to go overboard. The images can look too contrasty and hyper-saturated, with a slightly artificial sharpness.

There’s also a dedicated AI Party Mode, which feels more like a fun gimmick than a serious camera tool. It offers themed presets like Party, Stage, Silhouette, and Fireworks, each tweaking exposure and color balance to dramatize low-light scenes. Add to that creative lens effects like Starburst and Heart, which turn light flares into shapes. They’re flashy, but undeniably fun.

With no dedicated telephoto lens, the phone relies on a 2x crop from the main sensor. The results are usable but significantly softer than 1x shots, with details quickly turning mushy, especially in daylight.

Portrait mode feels similarly half-baked. While the background blur (bokeh) looks natural, edge detection frequently messes up, and the phone struggles with skin tones and exposure, especially in backlit situations. It’s a step behind competitors.

The 50MP front camera is a solid performer, capturing detailed selfies with reasonably natural skin tones. It even offers 4K video recording at 60FPS, a welcome feature at this price point.

Video quality from the main rear camera is also good, offering 4K at up to 60FPS with effective stabilization (OIS + EIS). Colors are lively, and focus is generally reliable.

realme 15 Pro Review: Battery Life and Charging

If there’s one area where the realme 15 Pro Game of Thrones Edition utterly demolishes the competition, it’s battery life. Forget specs; this phone just lasts. It packs a colossal 7,000mAh Titan Battery, using advanced chemistry to fit massive capacity into a surprisingly slim frame.

realme promises long-term health, too, claiming over 80% capacity retention after 1,600 charge cycles. In the real world, this phone is a battery monster. Heavy users will easily finish the day with 30% or more remaining. For moderate use, it’s a genuine two-day phone.

Charging is equally impressive. The included 80W charger juices this huge battery incredibly fast. It refills a 50% battery in just 25 minutes, which is remarkable for such a large cell.

realme also includes thoughtful battery health features usually found on flagships, like Bypass Charging (powering the phone directly during gaming to reduce heat) and Smart Charging options to preserve long-term capacity.