Recently, smartphones have grown significantly in terms of performance, which opens up enormous opportunities for the development of the gaming industry. This is a profitable and extremely promising market, the importance of which is difficult to underestimate. But why is there a sharp jump in the quality of mobile games? There are many reasons, but the main two. First of all, this was due to the use of powerful hardware, and the second reason is a wide audience reach, which guarantees a decent fee for the developer who creates a truly suitable product.
As a result, gaming smartphones appeared, including the Nubia Red Magic. The new product is notable not only for its powerful hardware, but also for its unique design, as well as an advanced cooling system that avoids throttling. Let's do a full review and see how good the smartphone really is.
Features of the Nubia Red Magic smartphone
The first thing that sets Nubia Red Magic apart from its competitors is its striking design. Almost along the entire length of the back of the device there is an RGB strip that can glow in 16.8 million colors.
This solution looks very nice, especially when you use your smartphone in the dark. RGB lighting effects are tied to eSports and perfectly complement the experience. A review of the ZTE Nubia Red Magic showed that the ribbon flickers while gaming, watching a movie or listening to music. This solution looks simply amazing, especially when you listen to music. Then the lighting effect goes in time with the music. If desired, the light effect can be turned off in the settings, but it is unlikely that you will have such a desire.
The second feature is a special key on the case. It is located on the right and activates the enhanced performance mode, which squeezes out the full potential of the smartphone. It also locks the navigation keys, which allows you to avoid false clicks in games and notifications so that nothing distracts you from the gameplay.
Operating system and interface
The Nubia Red Magic phone runs on Android 8.1 Oreo with the proprietary Nubia Red Magic OS user interface, which I didn’t really like as there is no support for Google services. Although the notification menu is not poorly designed, the settings menu is not intuitive.
Additionally, the RGB lighting strip on the rear panel can only be turned on after pressing the Compete button. Every 10 seconds you will also receive a notification that the Compete button is enabled. It's very annoying.
Design ZTE Nubia Red Magic
The front side of the ZTE Nubia Red Magic smartphone is occupied by a 6-inch diagonal display. It is large and with minimal frames around the perimeter, which allows you to immerse yourself in the gameplay and not be distracted by anything. This is facilitated by the now popular 18:9 aspect ratio and the absence of a notch above the screen, which almost all manufacturers have begun to implement. This makes the phone much more convenient to use, and it also looks more beautiful. Although the screen is large, the body fits well in the hand and is comparable in size to 5.5-inch models.
A standard set of sensors, a speaker and a selfie camera were installed above the screen, which, by the way, takes photos very well.
To control the Nubia Red Magic smartphone, it is proposed to use virtual navigation keys. The bottom edge is empty, which was done for two reasons - to avoid false clicks and to make the case more compact, which is very important given the diagonal of its display.
Nubia Red Magic looks especially beautiful at the back, where there is a dual camera, an RGB LED strip and red holes in four places, which are needed for effective cooling of components. There is also a fingerprint scanner, which is very easy to find by touch thanks to its unusual hexagonal shape. Nubia Red Magic is assembled from durable metal, which is pleasant to the touch and does not cause concerns in terms of reliability. The body is assembled monolithically - no matter how hard you press on it, there are no creaks or backlashes. All elements fit perfectly together.
The unique design of the case improves air exchange by 73%, making it possible to get the most out of the hardware's capabilities. This is the first smartphone in the world that simultaneously uses an internal and external cooling system, the effectiveness of which is ensured by continuous air circulation. Inside the case there is three-layer graphite. It is assembled tightly, which guarantees minimal heat generation. The design of Nubia Red Magic turned out to be very specific, but it will definitely find its fans.
The bottom edge is occupied by a USB Type-C port and a microphone.
At the top there is a 3.5 mm hole for a classic wired headset, which is already a pleasant surprise.
On the right is the power button, volume rockers and a special “GameBoost” key. The latter is responsible for activating the enhanced performance mode.
Nubia Red Magic display
The smartphone has a large 6-inch display, which occupies 78.5% of the entire front panel area. This is facilitated by minimal bezels and the use of a modern 18:9 aspect ratio. In size it is comparable to 5.5-inch devices. The display is covered with Dinorex T2X-1 tempered glass with an oleophobic coating, which provides a high level of protection against scratches. But for greater reliability, it is better to stick on protective glass, which is inexpensive, but will save the ZTE Nubia Red Magic in case of a fall.
The screen not only has maximum viewing angles, but also features high image clarity. This is not surprising, because with a pixel density of 402 ppi it is impossible to see individual pixels. The display occupies 78.5% of the total area, which was achieved by reducing the frames. Many expected a 120Hz display from a gaming smartphone, but this remains the crowning feature of the Razer Phone. Otherwise, this is a high-quality matrix with an impressive brightness reserve of 410 cd/m² and maximum viewing angles. In the settings, you can adjust the color temperature, as well as enable reading mode, in which eye strain is minimized due to the absence of harmful blue radiation.
Nubia Red Magic - smartphone specifications and performance
The first and not the most pleasant point is that the Nubia Red Magic smartphone uses a previous generation processor - Snapdragon 835, which, although not much, is inferior to the 845 in performance. Although its power is sufficient with a large margin, no matter what game you run on Nubia Red Magic, everything will run on maximum graphics and without the slightest slowdown.
The processor is assembled using an energy-efficient 10-nm process technology, which uses battery power as economically as possible. It consists of 8 cores, half of which provide maximum performance and accelerate to 2.35 GHz. The rest are energy efficient and are used when performing simple tasks, which again improves autonomy.
Installing games in Nubia Red Magic happens literally instantly due to the fact that the smartphone has 128 GB of internal memory in UFS2.1 format with a read speed of 740 MB/s.
RAM 6Gb or 8Gb is the maximum possible amount today, which allows the smartphone to store many open applications in memory. There is NFC, which will greatly simplify payment for purchases in modern cities.
Specifications
| Size: | 171.7 x 78.5 x 9.65 mm; |
| Weight: | 215; |
| RAM: | 8/12 GB; |
| Built-in memory: | 128/256 GB; |
| Display: | 6.65 inches, AMOLED (1080 x 2340 pixels), ~388 ppi, Corning Gorilla Glass; |
| CPU: | Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SM8150 (GPU: Adreno 640); |
| Camera: | Main camera - 48 MP (f/1.70); Front camera - 16 MP; |
| Battery: | 5000 mAh (with fast charging function); |
| OS: | Android (9.0 Pie); |
pros
Excellent performance Game mode Affordable price Quality cameras Battery life
Minuses
Weird software No NFC standard No wireless charging
Video review of the Nubia Red Magic 3 gaming smartphone:
Characteristics of Nubia Red Magic
- Processor: 8-core Snapdragon 835 with a clock speed of up to 2.45 GHz.
- GPU: Adreno 540.
- Screen: 6-inch with a resolution of 2160 x 1080 pixels and an aspect ratio of 18:9, pixel density - 403 ppi, LTPS, NEG T2X-1 glass.
- RAM: 6/8 GB.
- Built-in memory: 64/128 GB, memory cards are not supported.
- Main camera: one 24 MP Samsung ISOCELL sensor, 6-lens optics, f/1.7 aperture, LED flash.
- Front camera: 8 MP with f/2.0 aperture.
- Battery: 3800 mAh.
- Operating system: Android 8.1 Oreo with Nubia Red Magic OS proprietary user interface.
- Sound: TAS2555, DTS Sound.
- Networks: GPS, GLONASS, Beidou Bluetooth 5LE, Wi-Fi (802.11b/g/n/ac), 2.4/5 GHz.
- USB Type-C, 3.5 mm headphone jack, fingerprint scanner.
- Dimensions: 158.1 x 74.9 x 9.5 mm.
- Weight: 185 grams.
Buy a smartphone
Nubia Red Magic 3 or Black Shark 2: Performance
Red Magic 3 and Shark 2 are gaming and flagship smartphones, so they are powered by the best mobile processor of 2020 - Snapdragon 855. Both offer different memory versions: 6, 8 and 12 GB of RAM or 64, 128 and 256 GB of internal memory. You should pay attention to the internal memory, since none of the smartphones support microSD cards.
The hardware is practically the same on these devices, but the Nubia Red magic 3 scores around 400,000 points in AnTuTu, while the Black Shark 2 smartphone scores only 360,000 points.
I have already said that the Nubia smartphone has active ventilation cooling, while the Xiaomi device uses liquid cooling technology. To be honest, I don't know which cooling is better. A detailed performance test and temperature measurements must be performed.
Nubia Red Magic 3 runs Android 9.0 Pie out of the box with Redmagic 2.0 user interface. Black Shark 2 also runs on Android Pie but features Joy UI. Both smartphones have gaming modes and additional features.
I can't pick a winner in this category, so smartphones get one point each.
Gaming test Nubia Red Magic
The Nubia Red Magic phone review moves on to the gaming test, which we will start with PUBG - one of the most demanding and interesting games. The battle royale format is now generally very popular, and the emergence of gaming smartphones contributes to the development of this genre, which is what we are seeing at the moment. Nubia Red Magic is a breath of fresh air for gamers, as the FPS value even exceeded 60 frames per second on the minimum graphics during the first roll. At maximum, fps remains stable around 40, but the problem here lies in the game itself, which does not yet provide access to the maximum frame rate.
The characteristics of the Nubia Red Magic are very powerful, so to maintain a high level of performance during long gaming sessions, an advanced cooling system was required and it is there. Several air ducts are installed on the body, due to which it was possible to increase heat transfer by 73%. Inside, a 3-layer graphite layer is used, which gives 117% better heat dissipation compared to a conventional single-layer one. When the device is in standby mode, the temperature of its internal components does not exceed 27 degrees. After 30 minutes of playing PUBG, the body heated up to 37 degrees. 3 minutes after leaving the game the temperature returns to its previous state. The cooling system works very efficiently, so throttling is out of the question.
Smartphone with a breeze: review of ZTE Red Magic 3
In May, the guys from ZTE Nubia presented a new gaming smartphone Red Magic 3
: for only 500 Euros, this year's flagship features and unique gaming features are offered. Inside is the best Snapdragon 855 processor today, 8 + 128 gigabytes of memory, or 12 + 256 and three colors to choose from: absolutely dull black, bright red and camouflage for the 12/256 version.
A 48 megapixel camera from Sony with the now popular IMX586 sensor (it will require a separate video), dual and very loud speakers, two additional buttons on the side for aiming and shooting, a 5000 mAh battery, and inside the main hit is active cooling using tiny, but a very brave fan, designed to remove heat from the copper and graphite elements inside the case. Let's figure out what kind of beast ZTE has turned out to be as a third gaming smartphone.
The smartphone is huge:
the first thing that catches your eye is the elongated 6.65” display, made according to the AMOLED standard (with support for wide dynamic range or HDR). The biggest gaming smartphone, apparently. Resolution 2340 by 1080 pixels, density 387.5 pixels per inch, rounded corners. Very similar to modern Samsung - rich colors, high brightness, so movies, games or viewing photos go with a bang, but reading books is not always convenient.
The system is bare Android 9 with a small hub for games. Naked Android is dull, slow and makes you miss MIUI. If I were an apple grower, I would probably hang myself from such beauty.
The gaming hub is nice - you can customize controls, lighting, performance, notifications and fan mode. The hub is turned on with a separate key. If a game from the collection is already running, then side buttons, power and a cooler are added to it, and unnecessary notifications are blocked. But aiming, shooting and any other functions (depending on the game) can be assigned to the index fingers. The buttons on the end work best in games that previously seemed awkward. A great example is PUBG, where without additional buttons you can only hang out at the bottom of the rankings. And people buy buttons on Ali for all their smartphones, but here they have become part of the design, which is why they work many times faster.
Gaming performance is simply awesome, but either the temperature and frequency sensors are not working correctly, or there is a catch in the operating modes. With Automatic Performance, the case barely gets warm even after a couple of hours, but Performance makes the back a bit hot, to say the least. From the hub's point of view, this is a difference between 40 and 43 degrees, which looks a little dubious.
Because other programs show 60-65 degrees on the hottest core at maximum load, which is closer to reality. But the frequencies are kept vigorously from medium to maximum, which allows you to boost any game except ARK (there is a problem with optimization).
Turning on the cooler helps cool the filling to 37-38 degrees (according to the hub) or 50-55 according to the throttling test, but is it worth the trouble, because the cooler is noticeably noisy. Due to its size, it does not hiss or buzz, but whistles at speeds of up to 10 thousand revolutions per minute. I thought I would get used to it, but my hand itself reaches out to turn off the knob even in the most important batches.
Much more important than a cooler would be a built-in program for recording video from games. Google got really stubborn and a couple of years ago banned recording sound from the system, so now all applications record sound only from the microphone. Xiaomi has the latest recording of system sounds through a proprietary application. But I had to take AZ Recorder and you know what – you can clearly hear that same cooler on the microphone. And the microphone is blocked by the hand with a normal gaming grip. This is a fiasco, bro!
What then works from the gaming possibilities? Battery, display, speakers and buttons on the edge of the smartphone. Yes, you should start with the battery, which is 5000 mAh, which allows you to play the heaviest games for 5-8 hours at a time. The huge HDR display is great for gaming, with a refresh rate increased from 60Hz to 90Hz and touchscreen response up to 240Hz. So the picture is very smooth and responsive. I don’t know if there is some kind of chip for pumping sound, but the audio system works well both in wired headphones (yes, there is a 3.5 jack) and via Bluetooth and, which is rare, in the built-in speakers.
Finally, I’ll say a few words about the main camera. Of course, there will be a separate video with an analysis of all the pros and cons, so write any questions and I will try to answer. There will be a lot to talk about. The smartphone has only one module, but what a module! This is a Sony IMX 586 with a real 48 megapixel sensor. A huge 1/2″ matrix paired with good optics makes the picture artistic.
During the day or at dusk, the shots are slightly sharp, but still very decent. It’s not quite up to par with a DSLR, but it’s quite a flagship smartphone. But in the evening and at night there are restrictions - for a single module everything is quite good, but you can only shoot bright streets. A second or third camera could have helped, but ZTE decided to save money. Although. the same Sony 586 sensor in paired and triple schemes shows much better results, especially at night (it is found in many new Xiaomi, OnePlus and even completely anonymous Chinese).
The video recording caused conflicting feelings. The 4K quality during the day and at dusk is so good that it's sometimes hard to believe what's happening. Stabilization is far from being at the level of the Galaxy S10 (or is completely absent), but how much detail the IMX 586 allows you to record! There are H.264, H.265 codecs and even HDR 10 support for video. The bitrate is about 80 thousand, which is very good. You can see every hair on the ant's ass, you can't dig it. The photo is much inferior to DSLRs, but the video is quite at the same level, if not higher.
Another thing is that we were promised slow motion in Full HD (and it doesn’t exist at all, although the chipset and camera support it, and its availability is indicated on the website), and at the same time they promised 8K video at 30 frames per second, but in reality 5-10 frames are filmed per second. 5 frames, CARL! The company responded that these functions are only available in Chinese firmware for now, and a full-fledged port to Europe will require several more months of painstaking work.
It turns out that this is one of the best Android smartphones for games, and maybe even the best. The processor, display, battery, speakers, cooling and even the side buttons make the game as comfortable as possible if your hacks last for hours. But the price tag of 475 Euros forced the company to save on the camera; you can’t record your bends in the spirit of Xiaomi here (there is no application included), and some useful features are left in the Chinese firmware (Slow-Motion, HDMI, etc.). And, what's really disappointing, the two most hyped features simply don't work: the fan barely lowers the temperature (but whistles very loudly), and 8K video was a complete failure. Still, it’s quite possible to take such a smartphone for gaming, and 4K video recording is simply amazing. The main alternative can be considered Black Shark 2 from Xiaomi, but it has a very toy design, it’s scary to go out in front of people. While the red Red Magic looks more than stylish for its class.
Battery life Nubia Red Magic
Nubia Red Magic has a powerful 3800 mAh battery, which, in combination with a 10-NM processor, should perform very well. During our review, we turned on online videos at 50% brightness and 40% volume. After 30 minutes from 88%, the smartphone was discharged to 84%. In games, the situation is no worse - under the same conditions, the Nubia Red Magic battery went from 93% to 82% in 30 minutes. Therefore, you should count on 9-10 hours of gaming battles - the result is much above average.
The kit with the hero of our review includes a power supply with parameters 5V/3.5A. The battery was charged from zero to 100% in 110 minutes.
Nubia Red Magic 3 or Black Shark 2: Price
The last category to compare is price. I was very surprised by the price of Nubia Red Magic 3. The cost of this smartphone starts at $430, and the top version with 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of internal memory will cost $640.
The base model Black Shark 2 costs a little more - $462. The top version is cheaper than Nubia Red Magic 3 - $610.
We are talking about official prices. Most likely, Nubia Red Magic 3 will be a little more expensive at the beginning of sales. Black Shark 2 has been available for about a month now.
ZTE Nubia Red Magic - camera review
Photographic capabilities are not the ZTE Nubia Red Magic's strong point. In terms of image quality, the model is inferior to the best flagships of 2018, but you can count on decent results under any conditions. It uses a main 24 MP camera and an 8 MP front camera with NeoVision 7.0 technology, designed to improve photo quality. Recently, phones with one main camera have practically not been released, but the hero of our review is one of them, trying to take advantage of quality rather than quantity. The main camera is a Samsung 5K2X7SX sensor with f/1.7 aperture, which is very good. More light enters the sensor, which improves the quality of detail in photos taken in low light conditions.
In good daylight, we get high-quality photos that maintain a decent level of detail even after enlargement.
NeoVision 7.0 technology improves the detail of night photos taken in low-light conditions. While reviewing the ZTE Nubia Red Magic, I would like to note that there is noise, but its amount is kept to a minimum.
Selfies can be taken with an 8 megapixel camera with a “beauty” mode, which increases brightness and removes skin imperfections. The result is very beautiful and natural, but if desired, the function can be disabled in the settings. The quality is excellent during the day, but the f/2.0 aperture does introduce noise in low light.
Video is recorded in 4K format at 30 fps.
Conclusion
Nubia Red Magic is a gaming smartphone that, although it does not have the latest Snapdragon 835 processor, thanks to its advanced cooling system, allows you to comfortably play PUBG and other demanding games at maximum graphics. There is a 30% difference in performance between the processors, but if you don’t look at the results of synthetic tests, you won’t feel this in real use. Moreover, they did not skimp on the RAM - 8 GB is enough for any needs, no matter what you plan to do on the Nubia Red Magic smartphone. The review also showed another interesting point - the LED strip on the back, which glows in different colors and literally charges you with a good mood. This solution looks very unusual and turns out especially beautiful when you listen to music.
Cameras, display, autonomy, even the NFC chip have not been forgotten. Everything about the phone is good, except for the ability to install a MicroSD card.
Pros of Nubia Red Magic:
- Efficient cooling system;
- Bright and original body design;
- Decent battery life and photo quality;
- Stunning screen with minimal bezels;
- LED strip on the back;
- Incredible amounts of memory - 8 + 128 GB.
Minuses:
- No microSD slot;
- Not the top-end processor is used.
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