I took the Game of Thrones smartphone to a real castle to see if it could stick the (King's) landing

Date:
Sat, 11 Oct 2025 14:00:00 +0000

Description:
Realme has made a Game of Thrones smartphone, and I took it for a spin around some European landscapes.

FULL STORY ======================================================================

Ive seen my fair share of pop culture special edition smartphones in my day: the Batman Rog Phone 6 , an Iron Man Poco X7 Pro , and the Star Wars -themed Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Plus , to name a few. But recently, I was sent a
device from a franchise whose universe has absolutely nothing to do with smartphones: meet the Realme 15 Pro Game of Thrones Limited Edition.

Perhaps I shouldnt have been as surprised as I was to see a Game of Thrones smartphone appear at my door in 2025. Despite the mixed (read: furious) reaction to the show's final season in 2019, the fact that Game of Throne s spin-offs are still on our screens makes it clear that interest in the franchise is still high ( House of the Dragon season 3 and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms are both slated for a 2026 release).

This spin on the Realme 15 Pro maintains most of the specs of mid-Julys basic model, but with a few hardware and software changes that Ill get into later. Im sorry to say now that, as far as I can tell, neither the base model nor
the Game of Thrones Limited Edition will go on sale in the US or UK, based on precedent from Realme.

I was sent the Realme 15 Pro Game of Thrones Limited Edition at an
interesting time that is to say, the day prior to my travelling to some medieval towns on a holiday. Admittedly, Game of Thrones wasn't filmed at any of these locations: Salzburg in Austria, with its imposing fortress and looming mountains, and then Munich in Germany, where everyone was dressed in traditional garb (for Oktoberfest, not in Lannister gold and red, unfortunately). But the timing gave me an idea, and so I took the phone with me to test out some of its new features. A real twist on a Realme (Image credit: Future)

Before we get to the IRL performance of the Realme 15 Pro Game of Thrones Edition, let's take a closer look at its hardware.

Spec-wise, its the same as the base model: it has a 6.8-inch, 1280 x 2800, 144Hz display, a Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 chipset paired with 12GB RAM and 512GB storage (the base model has a few more variants), a 7,000mAh battery with 80W charging, and two rear 50MP cameras (one a wide-angle, the other an ultra-wide). Appearances suggest that there are actually three rear cameras, but one of these is presumably a light sensor or similar.

Before we even get into the Game of Thrones elements of the device, I want to flag two features of the phone that I really liked. First, around the ultra-wide camera lens, theres a circular LED indicator, which will light up if youve got a notification, are receiving a call, are listening to music, or another customizable trigger is, well, triggered. I really liked this as a noninvasive notifier if I received a message while on silent mode, and I wish more phones had similar (it used to be more of a feature, but I havent seen
it much recently).

Secondly, while most phones have a white flashlight on the back, the Realme has two, with a warmer red one joining the cool white one. This was fun for portrait photography as it let you play with the colors of a snap, adding a front-facing fill lighting as the camera app lets you vary the intensity of both lights. It also added a little bit of color when I was using the torch
to look around in the dark.

Now, onto the Game of Thrones additions. The phone comes in a pretty big box with some show-inspired extras like character postcards, a pop-up phone holder, and, perhaps my favorite of the lot, an ornate SIM card removal tool. (Image credit: Future)

Perhaps the most noticeable design trait of the new Realme is the Targaryen dragon on the back, as well as the shows logo on the back and the dragon
claws on the raised camera section. Look closely and you can see the various House banners chequered on this section, and around the two larger camera mounts are sayings from the show (of course, Winter is Coming is one).

According to Realme, the black-leather back of the phone is color-changing
and will turn red if warm water is applied. My first instinct was to put the handset in a mug of warm water to see what happened, but despite the
IP68/IP69 and MIL-STD-810H ratings, it didnt feel that wise to dunk a smartphone in liquid as soon as I received it. Maybe once this article goes live

There are software tweaks to the phone, too, thanks to the addition of some themes. You get Game of Thrones -inspired animations, a fingerprint scanner, backgrounds, and interface logos, which mostly affect the pre-installed apps, but occasionally Id download an app logo thatd be fully Thrones -ified.

Another feature stood out to me when I was reading the review guide: Realme has added a few Game of Thrones -inspired camera filters, modeled after the color grade of certain locations of the show. And when I saw this, knowing that I was about to visit Austria the next day, the lightbulb in my head went off: I needed to take the phone with me. Arming up (Image credit: Future)

I know, I know, camera filters arent exactly the sexiest feature a phone can have, but I was curious after sample pictures provided by Realme showed them to have a more dramatic effect than most.

The filters are inspired by the looks of locations in Westeros and, more specifically, the color grades used in these settings. The first is called Northland, evidently inspired by Winterfell and the North, which has a cold, blue look. The other is called Kingdom, which evokes ideas of Kings Landing with its warmer appearance. In all honesty, the filters simply change the color balance of a snap, but from my testing, it was still enough to change their overall feel.

And what was that testing? Mostly, it was me taking pictures of Salzburgs Fortress Hohensalzburg, and the Untersberg mountain outside town, as these felt like Game of Thrones -y subjects to me.

Most of the pictures youre about to see were taken on the Realmes main
camera, simply because I dont like the way ultra-wide snaps look (and I dont imagine Game of Thrones cinematographers used such lenses anyway).

I played around with a few modes, so youll see some tilt shift and night mode in use below, and I also cropped a couple of the snaps to match the 16:9 aspect ratio of the show. However, beyond cropping, nothing below has seen
the light of Photoshop. And because Im not reviewing the phone itself I'm just looking at the Game of Thrones elements Im not going to get bogged down with a full analysis of the snaps.

I took loads of pictures during my holiday, but given that half of the trip was to Oktoberfest, Im too smart to share them all instead, Ive picked five. To best test the filters, I took almost every single vacation snap three times: in the default camera mode, with the Kingdom filter, and with the Northlands one. I know, Im great fun on holidays. Through the lens

Im going to start with my favorite photo, partly because it looks great looking out over kilometers of land, and partly because it took me ages to
get to the lookout vista and I want to brag about it. In the near ground you can see some trees while the middle distance has the Fortress Hohensalzburg and in the far distance, beyond some clouds and mist, you can see the peak of Untersberg. Image 1 of 3 Test photo 1, standard mode. (Image credit: Future) Image 2 of 3 Test photo 1, Kingdom mode. (Image credit: Future) Image 3 of 3 Test photo 1, Northlands mode. (Image credit: Future)

In the standard picture, theres quite a warm color profile anyway, and thats because I took the photo shortly before sunset they call it the golden hour for a reason. Seeing those streaks of gold on the branches of the tree, and the citadel further away, I was curious to see what the warmer image would make of it.

So, we move to Kingdom, and the warm look adds a nostalgic hue, even if the yellower look leads to a reduced contrast with the sunny belts on the walls. Its a great way to look at holiday snaps, reflecting the haze of time (and, given the second half of the trip, the haze of memory) but I dont remember Game of Thrones looking so cozy.

Thats where Northlands comes in, sapping out the warmth. However, in the
show, these areas are bleak and unforgiving, which the Austria-Germany border here certainly isnt, and so I cant help but feel that the filters coloration is at odds with the subject. Image 1 of 3 Test photo 2, Northlands mode. (Image credit: Future) Image 2 of 3 Test photo 2, standard mode. (Image credit: Future) Image 3 of 3 Test photo 2, Kingdom mode. (Image credit: Future)

That dissonance isnt the case when we get a little closer to the fortress, though, as my second test photo shows this one was taken in the town of Salzburg itself, looking up at the castle on the hill. In the Northlands picture, its stark protrusion into the sky, combined with the color scheme, makes it look cold and imposing.

However, the gray of the castle and sky feels a little bit too similar to
make the picture distinct, or add that much (possibly an issue with my own photography, as much as the subject). In fact, a problem I constantly found with Northlands is that it crushed the dynamic range to such a degree that pictures lost nuance, and sometimes so much color that they looked almost monochromatic.

The walls are clearly a different shade in both my standard and Kingdom pictures, but these images are also pretty similar to each other. Thats another thing I noticed during my testing a picture taken at the right time of day didnt benefit much from the warmer white balance. Image 1 of 3 Test photo 3, standard mode. (Image credit: Future) Image 2 of 3 Test photo 3, Northlands mode. (Image credit: Future) Image 3 of 3 Test photo 3, Kingdom mode. (Image credit: Future)

This picture shows that more than most. Youre seeing these snaps of a dark gate back-to-back, so you can easily tell which has the Kingdom filter on,
but when I foolishly changed the order when preparing to upload these photos, I couldnt tell at a glance which was which. This is largely true because this was taken with Night Mode, which often results in yellowy pictures on most phones. Image 1 of 3 Test photo 4, standard mode. (Image credit: Future)
Image 2 of 3 Test photo 4, Northlands mode. (Image credit: Future) Image 3 of 3 Test photo 4, Kingdom mode. (Image credit: Future)

I played with tilt shift a fair bit during the camera tests, and thats
because I often find it takes its most interesting pictures of cityscapes or when youre at a distance from your subject, using the linear-blur effect to isolate one specific element of the snap. In this picture, I did it for the first row of buildings over a river, while losing everything else.

Its also an image that interestingly illustrates the filters and the effect
on the photo. On the standard snap, you can see that the buildings have slightly different colors, adding a quirky pastel look which is commonplace
in European cities.

Now to Northlands. This desaturates the row of buildings so they all appear white or gray if you hadnt seen the previous picture, youd be hard-pressed
to be able to tell which colors the buildings were previously. It looks clean and clinical but also slightly unwelcoming and devoid of warmth just like Winterfell in the show.

Then onto Kingdom, which retains the colors of the original picture but adds some vibrancy and warmth to the surrounding blurred areas, too. Immediately, this seems more inviting, like a little toy town you can rush into and explore. Admittedly, the Salzburg in this picture doesnt have that in common with Kings Landing, which saw more than its fair share of murder, war, and death, but its a great counterpoint with the other versions of this picture anyway. Image 1 of 3 Test photo 5, standard mode. (Image credit: Future)
Image 2 of 3 Test photo 5, Kingdom mode. (Image credit: Future) Image 3 of 3 Test photo 5, Northlands mode. (Image credit: Future)

For the last picture, were looking at mountains again not the staggeringly beautiful Unterberg, which towers over the town and captured my imagination for every second I was in the city, but from the ramparts of the fortress to glimpse at the Bavarian Alps.

This isnt exactly an artistic picture, but I am always captivated by
mountains in the distance and wanted to see how well the phone camera would pick up the cloud-hidden peaks in the distance. And I think its another example of how the color filters and the emotional attributions we assign to them can manipulate our viewing of an image.

In this line-up, I think I prefer the Northlands filter, particularly the slight contrast between the mountains' different shades of gray, and the
cloud that cuts through them. The peaks look imposing, looming up into the distance, and yet somehow alluring. It's just a shame that the filter makes the foreground houses and castle roof look too blue.

In the standard picture, those closer elements look natural, and the verdant greenery of the landscape looks safe and calm compared to the misty
formations of the background. Then in Kingdom, the same juxtaposition stands, but with the warm yellow haze looking almost sickly, and I'm not sure the filter's effects add much to the shot.

I enjoyed testing the camera's filters because even when they didn't add much to a shot, or even made it look worse, they were more heavy-handed and effective than the standard ones you see on a smartphone. They let me play with the white balance and look of a shot without having to spend too much time in Pro mode to deliver the same effect. And for some of the shots, I really like the resulting images.

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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/phones/realme-phones/i-took-the-game-of-thrones-smar tphone-to-a-real-castle-to-see-if-it-could-stick-the-kings-landing


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