RedMagic 7 Review: It's a Phone All About Speed
Superfast refresh rate, touch-sensitivity and a 30-minute charging speed highlight this gaming phone.
Gaming phones like the $629 (£529, roughly AU$930) Nubia RedMagic 7 aren't trying to compete with Samsung Galaxy devices or Google Pixel phones. They instead crank up the Android gaming experience with specs that sound like they belong in a PC. The RedMagic 7 allows you to max out games for excellent responsiveness and performance.
Features like the 6.8-inch 165Hz refresh rate AMOLED screen, 12GB of RAM and 65W charging speeds also have a benefit beyond just being big numbers. They give us a glimpse at features that will likely make their way over to more mainstream phones in coming years.
For the price, all of these features might sound like a steal, but there are plenty of reasons why this phone isn't for most people, stemming primarily from tweaks to Android 12 that prioritize gaming performance over user experience. The RedMagic also has a shorter software update cycle than other phones at this price. And while a cooling fan is a common feature on many gaming phones, the RedMagic 7 includes an internal one, which is vital to keep the phone from overheating during intensive gameplay.
The RedMagic 7's $629 starting price includes 128GB of storage and 12GB of memory -- the latter already being a ridiculous amount for a phone. The review unit I tested is $799 and has 256GB of storage and an absurd 18GB of RAM. For perspective, the $800 Galaxy S22 has 8GB of RAM.
A little bit Android, a little bit Switch
At first glance, the RedMagic 7 seems like any other Android 12 phone. You unlock it with an in-screen fingerprint sensor and are greeted with a skinned version of Android 12 that includes themed widgets like a switch for the internal cooling fan and a toggle for quickly cranking the display's refresh rate from 60Hz up to 165Hz.
However, this RedMagic OS customization makes a number of annoying default choices that aren't great for casual users. Luckily, they can be switched off pretty easily. Apps are organized into multiple home screens like on iOS. To find the app drawer, you have to turn it on in settings. Once you set it up, you can keep most apps there and organize the ones you want onto the home screens.
The default internet browser is NextWord, which is easy to switch to Chrome or Firefox. And I hope you figure this out faster than I did, but the phone puts a RedMagic watermark on all your photos. After another frustrating trip to Settings I was able to turn that off as well.
2022-06-21 20:10:34
