RedMagic has a fast turnaround of its premium gaming smartphones; the main line handset is updated every year, but between those moments is an interim “S” release handset to keep the current handset at the top of the gaming smartphone tree in terms of performance and capability.
This month’s launch of the RedMagic 9S Pro is 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 top of the line six months ago has slipped back. Not so much as those browsing Facebook and playing a little bit of Immaculate Grid would notice, but those playing competitively recognise every dropped frame, slow input reaction, and shorter reduced resolution.
The 9S Pro takes the learnings of the last six months, and builds them into a refreshed RedMagic 9, and Nubia’s gaming brand can climb back up the gaming smartphone league tables. What are the highlights of the new iteration?
The biggest eye-opener is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Leading Version. It’s a bit of a mouthful but the key fact is that this is an overclocked version of the popular 8 Gen 3 system-on-chip, lifting it to 3.4GHz for the CPU and 1GHz for the GPU. We’ve seen those numbers before on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 For Galaxy, which lay at the heart of the S24 series smartphones. It looks likely that this was a six-month exclusivity deal.
The upshot of this is an AnTuTu benchmark score of 2,369,542 points, which RedMagic claims as the highest score of any Android device. That will likely be eclipsed in the near future, but with the fast product cycle of gaming smartphones all looking for a tiny advantage, this is the biggest “tiny advantage” on the 9S Pro.
This typifies the Redmagic approach. For those who are very heavily into their gaming and are looking for even a tiny advantage, that overclocking is enough to sell the handset. For someone who enjoys gaming and has a gaming handset already, I don’t think it’s enough to upgrade a handset bought in the last year or two, but the option is there.
Any gaming computer—be it a deskbound monster, a handheld PC, or a cutting-edge smartphone—must deal with one big bad boss… heat. Running the CPU/GPU combinations at high performance will create significant amounts of heat that need to be drawn away from the silicon and out of the device, preferably without burning the user.
Smartphones are particularly vulnerable to heat. There is such a small surface area on a phone that can be used to radiate heat, there are large elements such as the battery and the display getting in the way, and by being a gaming device, there is a lot more of the phone in contact with your hands than there would be on a candybar phone 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 pull cool air through the chassis, over the internal radiators, and push the hot air out of the phone is a key contributor to the performance offered by the 9S Pro.
The fan retains its impressive 22,000 rpm specification, and RedMagic brings a larger vapor chamber and a new recipe of cooling gel inside the handset to keep the temperatures down (the company quotes up to 19 degrees of cooling potential).
Much like the upgrade to the Snapdragon from the 9 Pro to the 9S Pro, RedMagic is offering an iterative upgrade at the very top end in the cooling system. On a per-game basis, it would take an incredibly detailed examination of the phone to nail down exactly how much raw performance and actual benefits are on offer between the 9 Pro and the 9S Pro. Still, some specifications stand out as making a difference to all gaming, not just the competitive top end.
The display, while retaining the same resolution as the 9 Pro now offers adaptive refresh rates of 60 Hz or 120Hz and HDR10 support. The former offers a choice of smoother graphics or better battery life, while HDR10 offers more compelling visuals.
Nubia’s RedMagic series has something that every smartphone manufacturer wants to capture for their phone… a unique sense of identity.
The RedMagic has a sense of design that continues to shine through. It’s not the most fashionable of design because there’s not a single curved edge or raised portion in the design of the 9S Pro; it is a genuine slab of a phone. The screen is smooth and flat that goes right into the corners of the handset. The rear of the handset is also perfectly flat, with my review unit using smokey glass to expose the battery, Qualcomm logo , and brand identifying marks in a slightly “internal” look.
The RedMagic series has a sense of purpose. It’s a brutal-looking phone that hides away its finest while it screams power and function at you. The focus on being a gaming phone first means it can happily compromise in certain areas—the camera feels very much like “will this do?”—because it is not an all-rounder. It’s designed to play games, and it plays games very well.
Putting aside the pro gamers who need the best hardware for competitive events, the question of buying or upgrading 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. Suppose you’re already on the gaming smartphone bandwagon. In that case, the question is harder; much will depend on the balance between having the latest specs as opposed to enjoying the presumably already high specifications of your current gaming phone. How much would the new specs and potential be worth to you, and is that less than the cost of an upgrade?
If you need a gaming phone, you’ll always consider the phones with the latest and most up-to-date specs. In general, that means RedMagic, and in particular, you need to consider the RedMagic 9S Pro.
Now read more about the ReadMagic 9 Pro and why some consider it the phone of 2023…
