Pursuing once again the best gaming experience

RedMagic has a rapid recovery of its premium gaming smartphones. the mainline handset is updated every year, but in between there’s an interim “S” edition handset to keep the current handset at the top of the gaming smartphone tree in terms of performance and features.

The start of this month RedMagic 9S Pro it’s one of those mid-cycle refreshes, but don’t let that fool you. Gaming hardware is one of the fastest moving parts of the smartphone ecosystem. what was at the top of the line six months ago has receded. Not as much as those who browse Facebook and play a bit of Immaculate Grid would notice, but those who play competitively recognize every dropped frame, slow input response, and smaller reduced resolution.

The 9S Pro takes the learnings of the last six months and integrates them into a refreshed RedMagic 9, and Nubia’s gaming brand can once again climb the smartphone gaming league tables. What are the highlights of the new iteration?

The biggest eye-opener is the flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. It’s a bit of a mouthful, but the bottom line is that this is an overclocked version of the popular 8 Gen 3 system-on-chip, bumping it up to 3.4GHz for the CPU and 1 GHz for the GPU. We’ve seen these numbers before on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 For Galaxy, which was at the heart of the S24 series smartphones. It seems likely that this was a six-month exclusivity deal.

The result of this is one AnTuTu benchmark score 2,369,542 points, which RedMagic claims is the highest score of any Android device. This will likely be eclipsed in the near future, but with the rapid product cycle of gaming smartphones looking for a tiny edge, this is the biggest “tiny edge” on the 9S Pro.

This characterizes the Redmagic approach. For those who are very into their games and are looking for even a tiny edge, this overclocking is enough to sell the handset. For someone who likes gaming and already has a gaming headset, I don’t think it’s enough to upgrade a headset bought in the last year or two, but the option is there.

Any gaming PC—whether it’s a desktop-connected monster, a laptop, or a cutting-edge smartphone—has to deal with one big bad boss… heat. Running CPU/GPU combinations at high performance will generate significant amounts of heat that must be removed from the silicon and out of the device, preferably without burning the user.

Smartphones are particularly vulnerable to heat. There’s so little surface area on a phone that can be used to radiate heat, there are large components like the battery and screen that get in the way, and because it’s a gaming device, there’s a lot more phone contact with your hands than you would was on a phone candybar browsing Facebook.

Nubia followed many gaming laptops and desktops by adding a fan to the RedMagic phones. The signature fan remains to this day, and its ability to draw cool air through the chassis, over the internal heatsinks, and push hot air out of the phone is a key factor in the performance the 9S Pro delivers.

The fan maintains its impressive 22,000 rpm specification. and RedMagic brings a larger vapor chamber and a new cooling gel recipe inside the headset to keep temperatures down (the company claims up to 19 degrees of coolability).

Like the Snapdragon upgrade from the 9 Pro to the 9S Pro, RedMagic offers a repeat upgrade on top of the cooling system. On a game-by-game basis, it would take an incredibly detailed examination of the phone to ascertain exactly how much raw performance and real-world benefit is on offer between the 9 Pro and the 9S Pro. However, some specs stand out as making a difference in all games, not just the competitive top.

The display, while maintaining the same resolution as the 9 Pro, now offers adaptive refresh rates of 60Hz or 120Hz and HDR10 support. The former offers a choice of smoother graphics or better battery life, while HDR10 offers more immersive graphics.

Nubia’s RedMagic series has something every smartphone manufacturer wants to capture for their phone… a unique sense of identity.

RedMagic has a sense of design that continues to shine. It’s not the most modern design because there isn’t a single curved edge or raised section in the 9S Pro’s design. it is a genuine slab of a phone. The screen is smooth and flat that goes right into the corners of the handset. The back of the handset is also perfectly flat, with my review unit using smokey glass to reveal the battery, Qualcomm logo and branding cues in a slightly ‘interior’ look.

The RedMagic series has a sense of purpose. It’s a brutal looking phone that hides its best while screaming power and function. Focusing on being a gaming phone first means it can happily compromise in certain areas—the camera is a lot like “will this do?”—because it’s not a complete solution. It is designed to play games and it plays games very well.

Leaving aside professional gamers who need the best hardware for competitive events, the question of whether to buy or upgrade to the RedMagic 9S Pro is all about what you have right now. If you don’t have a gaming phone but want to get started, the 9S Pro offers great value for many against these high specs. Let’s say you are already into smartphone gaming. In this case, the question is more difficult. A lot will depend on the balance between having the latest specs, as opposed to enjoying the possibly already high specs of your current gaming phone. How much would the new specs and features be worth to you and is it less than the cost of an upgrade?

If you need a gaming phone, you’ll always look at phones with the latest and most up-to-date specifications. In general, this means RedMagic, and specifically, you should consider the RedMagic 9S Pro.

Now read more about the ReadMagic 9 Pro and why some consider it the phone of 2023…