RedMagic 10 Pro Hands-On: Powered Up for Gaming, but a Frustrating Phone | Global News Avenue

The RedMagic 10 Pro is a $649 gaming phone with high-end hardware, and it offers great value — at least on paper. When I played Dead Cells, I used the phone’s Game Mode to remove the frame cap and switch to higher-resolution graphics, but it still ran at 90 frames per second. Mortal Kombat Mobile immediately ran at 144fps, which is the maximum speed the screen supports. While GTA: San Andreas is an older game, the Android version is easy to control, thanks in part to the responsive 960Hz touch sampling rate – but I still recommend it controller. Games like the aforementioned Dead Cells look vibrant and smooth; however, after a few days of testing the RedMagic 10 Pro, it’s otherwise a mostly good phone.

RedMagic’s powerful specs include a Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, which I first tested for speed ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro. The RedMagic 10 Pro supports 100W wired charging speeds to power its massive 7,050 mAh battery, both of which are rarely seen in phones sold in the United States. I’m looking forward to testing the phone’s battery and charging speed.

10 Pro is built on Red Magic 8 Series’ The design includes an under-display front-facing camera, providing an uninterrupted 6.85-inch canvas for gaming and video. This year’s RedMagic phone comes with a display that supports a 144Hz refresh rate, and even though that’s not the highest refresh rate I’ve ever seen on a gaming phone, it should be more than enough for smooth animations and scrolling. The 2,688×1,216-pixel screen has a peak brightness of 2,000 nits. RedMagic also features internal cooling fans and a liquid metal cooling system commonly found in gaming PCs.

In the graphics- and gaming-focused benchmark 3DMark Wild Life Extreme, the RedMagic 10 Pro scored on par with the Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro, which costs $551 more. RedMagic also ranks slightly ahead of Asus in the Geekbench 6.0 CPU benchmark. It’s clear that RedMagic fits the bill when it comes to the phone’s gaming capabilities. It’s just the 10 Pro’s ability to be a decent phone that frustrates and disappoints me.

In my early testing of the RedMagic 10 Pro, I encountered some issues using the software that tested my patience. Many of these problems are the same as the ones I encountered Previous RedMagic phones. Frustratingly, not much improvement.

The most obvious annoyance is that the camera software applies a watermark to all images by default, and makes disabling it very unintuitive. To turn it off, you need to open the camera, tap the arrow in the upper right corner, then tap “More Settings” in the upper left corner, and find the watermark switch. There is also a watermark option that can be turned off from RedMagic’s game space menu by turning on the red physical switch, clicking on your profile icon, and scrolling down to the option to turn off “Red Magic Watermark.” The grammatical style of these menus is also inconsistent, which I find jarring in mobile software.

RedMagic also made some changes to the Android experience that I found hindered our experience. For example, the Google News Feed was initially replaced by the “Z-Board,” which I quickly turned off because it looked like built-in ads to me, even though it billed itself as “recommended news and service information.” It also defaults to its own browser app, but it’s easier to change to other options like Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.

While it’s cool to have a phone with an always-on screen, the photos taken by the under-screen camera are poor quality. For example, in this selfie from the 16-megapixel shooter, the background was very washed out, even though I used a microfiber cloth to clean the “lens” part of the screen multiple times. The rear cameras of the RedMagic 10 Pro include a 50MP main camera, a 50MP ultra-wide-angle camera, and a 2MP macro camera.

RedMagic doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to software and security updates, and the same goes for the 10 Pro. RedMagic 10 Pro will receive a major software update, three years of security updates, and two “generations” of RedMagic UI upgrades. By 2024 standards, this number is very low. By comparison, Asus offers two years of major software updates and five years of security updates for its ROG Gaming Phone. That’s a far cry from the seven years of software and security updates we’re now seeing on all Google Pixel phones and the Samsung Galaxy S24 series released in 2024.

Who is RedMagic 10 Pro suitable for?

The RedMagic 10 Pro isn’t designed to lure people away from more traditional flagship phones like Samsung’s Galaxy range. But its lower price does make it one of the most affordable phones with a Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, which beats every 2024 phone CNET has tested in terms of pure gaming performance. Its “full screen” display makes it a capable media machine, especially if you connect it to a game controller when playing more console-level games. The large battery and fast charging speeds further enhance its appeal as a pocket-sized gaming device. For those more experienced with ROMs, you may want to refresh this device to better suit your needs than RedMagic’s existing software experience.

The handheld gaming market is also becoming increasingly competitive, which raises more questions about who is the best audience for a gaming phone like the RedMagic 10 Pro, especially when the device’s functionality as a phone is its weak point. one steam deck While too big to fit in your pocket, even though the Steam Deck isn’t a phone itself, it provides direct access to many PC games at a lower price than the RedMagic. The Asus ROG Phone 9 series is easier to recommend as a feature phone and gaming device, but its starting price is much higher at $1,000.

But with an early bird release date of December 12 and a general release date of December 18, the RedMagic 10 Pro is particularly noteworthy as it will be one of the first phones to hit the North American market with the latest Snapdragon processor. in. Maybe that’s enough for early adopters who are also gaming enthusiasts. But most people are probably better off waiting for the first wave of flagship Android phones that also include this processor, or perhaps should consider more expensive Asus phones if gaming is prioritized along with a more organized software experience.

First published on December 3 at 4am PT.
Updated at 9:01 a.m. PT with more details about the camera, camera watermark settings, and software support.