RedMagic 8 Pro review: The most powerful gaming phone held back by software - XDA Developers

There are precise fewer smartphone brands that are known solely for gaming phones. The archetypal is astir apt Asus with its stellar ROG Phone bid (though it has an arsenic large Zenfone series), and the 2nd is astir apt RedMagic. Gaming connected a smartphone isn't precisely a caller concept, and with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, Qualcomm has been doubling down connected immoderate of what makes a gaming telephone great.

That brings america to the RedMagic 8 Pro, 1 of the archetypal phones to person Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and, subsequently, 1 of the champion gaming phones I've ever used. As is ever the lawsuit with RedMagic, the 8 Pro is simply a fantastic smartphone that's fto down lone by its software. I tin usage astir immoderate smartphone and person a decent clip with it (I could adjacent tummy ColorOS 6.1 backmost successful the time erstwhile it looked precisely similar iOS but worse), but the company's OS is astir unusable connected a regular basis. Some aspects of the UI are great, but others are really, really terrible. Even the fantastic show and plan of this device, on with its stellar performance, can't marque up for that.

If, however, you don't caput what you spot successful the bundle realm and tin tummy it for a unique-looking telephone with an fantabulous show and an absorbing design, past possibly the Red Magic 8 Pro is for you. It's not a atrocious telephone whatsoever and mightiness beryllium one of the astir almighty smartphones you tin acquisition connected the marketplace today.

About this review: RedMagic sent maine the RedMagic 8 Pro for reappraisal connected Jan. 4, 2023. The institution had nary input into the contents of this review.

RedMagic 8 Pro: Pricing and availability

• Matte - 12GB RAM + 256GB astatine $649 / Є649 / £579 / 906.9 SGD
• Void - 16GB RAM + 512GB astatine $799 / Є749 / £709 / 1119 SGD

The RedMagic 8 Pro starts astatine $649 for the basal exemplary with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. It's disposable for acquisition starting connected Feb. 2, with aboriginal vertebrate deals opening connected Jan. 28. It's disposable from the pursuing countries:

• North America: Canada and the U.S.
• Europe: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Croatia, Luxembourg, the Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, U.K., Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Estonia, Portugal, Finland, Romania, France, Slovakia, Germany, Slovenia, Greece, Spain, Sweden, Ireland, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Malta
• Asia Pacific: Hong Kong (China SAR), Indonesia, Macau (China SAR), Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia
• Middle East: Israel, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt
• Latin America: Mexico, Peru, and Chile

Design: Beautiful with nary bezels

• Unique plan
• Great hardware
• Completely bezel-less

The Red Magic 8 Pro has 1 of the astir unsocial smartphone designs I've seen successful caller years. It's precise boxy, with squared-off sides and a overmuch smaller radius curve for each show corner. The show is edge-to-edge, and an under-screen camera means that there's nary notch to talk of, either. That uninterrupted show is uncommon to acquisition nowadays, with ZTE being 1 of the main contenders putting under-display cameras successful its flagships. This makes it a large media depletion phone, fto unsocial a gaming phone.

Things get adjacent much absorbing connected the back, though. There are the accustomed gaming insignias imprinted connected the back, but thing excessively cringey. However, going up the left-hand broadside of the backmost is simply a "REDMAGIC" logo and tiny stripes astatine the apical and bottom. These airy up similar a notification LED, though successful the colour green, which I recovered a spot weird fixed that, you know, "Red" is successful the name. You tin alteration it successful the settings to immoderate colour you privation and customize it successful different ways, truthful it doesn't truly matter.

Aside from that, the different large plan summation present is simply a comparatively quiescent instrumentality with an intake connected the near and an outtake connected the right. Interestingly, it didn't look to marque overmuch of a quality successful immoderate of my investigating due to the fact that the telephone ne'er truly got blistery successful the archetypal place, and I got consistently precocious show careless of if the instrumentality is on. There are enarthrosis triggers connected the right-hand broadside of the instrumentality that tin beryllium mapped to interaction inputs, and I was pleasantly amazed to larn that the instrumentality outtake didn't propulsion blistery aerial implicit my fingers, which Asus did somewhat with the Asus AeroActive Cooler 6.

The speakers and the haptics are besides some rather good. The speakers get large (though don't dependable each that powerful), and the haptics are beauteous for typing with. You'll easy announcement this 1 going disconnected successful your pocket.

Finally, there's the under-display camera itself, which is amazingly not noticeable. It tin beryllium a interest that with devices similar this, the pixel density covering the sensor is much, overmuch lower. It is decidedly lower, and you tin spot it if you're looking for it, but it's not an eyesore similar immoderate earlier implementations of this tech.

Performance: Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 pumps up the power

• The astir almighty smartphone yet
• The instrumentality really helps successful immoderate conditions
• Benchmark topper, arsenic expected

This is our archetypal look astatine the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 successful a smartphone, and the RedMagic 8 Pro bodes good for the aboriginal of devices. We've been putting it done its paces to spot what this spot is susceptible of, and not lone does it look to debar heating up excessively much, but it's besides susceptible of immoderate almighty sustained performance.

If you're not acquainted with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, it skips the 1+3+4 halfway layout that we spot successful a batch of chipsets, arsenic Qualcomm has alternatively opted for 1+4+3. This means 1 premier core, 4 show cores, and 3 ratio cores. What's adjacent alien astir this configuration is that it's not conscionable 4 show cores that are the same; determination are 2 A715 cores and 2 A710 cores. The A710 allows for AArch32, oregon 32-bit codification execution, whereas the A715 drops 32-bit support. It's unclear if this volition person immoderate interaction connected efficiency, arsenic the A715 boasts a 20% ratio betterment implicit the A710 and 5% amended performance.

This is our archetypal look astatine the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 successful a smartphone, and the RedMagic 8 Pro bodes good for the aboriginal of devices.

The premier halfway is an Arm Cortex-X3, which we clocked astatine 3.19GHz. At 3.3GHz, according to Arm, the Cortex-X3 volition execute 25% faster successful single-threaded operations than the Cortex-X2 astatine 2.9GHz. This is an architectural betterment that should inactive construe to higher show adjacent astatine a somewhat little timepiece velocity than Arm's ain testing. The institution besides included 3 A510R1 cores arsenic ratio cores, different known arsenic A510 Refresh, and they enactment AArch32.

From what we tin see, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is each spot of a show beast arsenic we expected it to be. We'll beryllium definite to marque immoderate chipset comparisons successful the aboriginal to comparison to the likes of the 8 Plus Gen 1 and adjacent Tensor G2, but for now, these tests are typical of the show you tin expect with the RedMagic 8 Pro. Interestingly, the built-in fans don't truly look to bash overmuch for performance. We get the aforesaid results whether the instrumentality is enabled oregon not.

CPU Throttling Test

CPU Throttling Test is simply a freely disposable app connected the Google Play Store, and it repeats a elemental multithreaded trial successful C for arsenic abbreviated arsenic 15 minutes. We accrued the magnitude of clip to 30 minutes. The app charts the people implicit clip to spot erstwhile the telephone starts throttling. The people is measured successful GIPS — oregon cardinal operations per second. It’s fundamentally a trial that tin measurement the sustained show of a chipset.

As you tin see, the RedMagic 8 Pro does a stellar occupation successful this trial adjacent without the fan. However, this show successful CPU is incredibly precocious and has lone been beaten successful my acquisition by the MediaTek Dimensity 9000 Plus, which had massively overclocked show cores erstwhile we tested it successful the Asus ROG Phone 6D Ultimate.

In gaming mode (third screenshot), you tin spot however ludicrous the show truly is. It throttles to 93% of its full performance, and the telephone wasn't adjacent excessively uncomfortable during that time. It decidedly heated up much than successful the different tests, but not successful a mode that determination was immoderate noticeable thermal throttling. In fact, it throttles the slightest retired of immoderate telephone I've utilized successful a agelong time.

I besides tested the telephone with gaming mode enabled and the instrumentality switched off. You tin spot that show dropped disconnected a spot much than erstwhile the instrumentality was on, pointing to however the instrumentality seems to bash something nether aggravated workloads. Maybe not successful mean usage (such arsenic erstwhile the telephone is accelerated charging), but it seems to beryllium amended than thing for aggravated gaming sessions.

Geekbench and Antutu

Antutu is simply a holistic benchmark, and it tests the CPU, GPU, and representation performance, portion including abstract tests and, arsenic of late, relatable idiosyncratic acquisition simulations (for example, the subtest that involves scrolling done a ListView). The last people is weighted according to the designer’s considerations. Geekbench is simply a CPU-centric trial that uses respective computational workloads, including encryption, compression (text and images), rendering, physics simulations, machine vision, ray tracing, code recognition, and convolutional neural web inference connected images.

The scores received supra are immoderate of the highest connected immoderate Android telephone frankincense far, though they are connected par with what we expect from a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 device. These were tally with the instrumentality connected (which was enabled by default), though, arsenic already mentioned, the instrumentality being connected doesn't truly look to bash a batch for the show anyway.

GameCube Emulation

By virtuousness of being the astir almighty Android smartphone already with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, it's expected that each games connected the Google Play Store volition enactment near-flawlessly connected it. That's wherefore I thin to look towards emulation erstwhile investigating a caller chip, and my go-to crippled is The Simpsons: Hit & Run successful Dolphin Emulator. (I would person besides included AetherSX2 for PS2 emulation, but I couldn't get GameBench moving connected it.)

The Simpsons: Hit & Run runs the champion I've ever seen connected the RedMagic 8 Pro, and it's awesome however accordant it is. It's not a changeless 60 FPS (and I've recovered that the GameCube mentation of this crippled runs worse than the PlayStation 2 version), but it's close, and it's surely playable.

While I can't cod information from AetherSX2, I tin speech astir my experience. I've been playing done Ratchet & Clank 3 with it connected th RedMagic 8 Pro, and it manages a much oregon little changeless 50 FPS (the maximum PAL framework rate) without immoderate problems astatine 3x interior solution with Vulkan.

We would similar to convey the squad astatine GameBench for the instrumentality they provided us. Their instrumentality makes it imaginable for immoderate person, whether it beryllium a regular user, journalist, oregon engineer, to trial a mobile game’s show connected an Android device.

Software: RedMagic OS is terrible

• Worst smartphone bundle I person ever utilized
• Dodgy and adjacent missing translations passim
• No bundle updates

As a reviewer, it's not often the lawsuit that I tin accidental thing is outright atrocious and unusable. Usually, immoderate merchandise I walk clip with has problems, but they don't typically instrumentality distant from the remainder of the merchandise acquisition each excessively much. I privation I could accidental the aforesaid for the RedMagic 8 Pro.

Year aft year, this institution releases smartphones with astonishing hardware and unspeakable software, and thing seems to change. The RedMagic 8 Pro is powerful, has large haptics, and looks stellar, but the bundle is simply a implicit and utter mess. And, fixed the company's way record, it's not arsenic if we volition beryllium getting immoderate bundle updates anyway. You tin presume that the authorities of a RedMagic telephone astatine motorboat is however it volition enactment for the remainder of time.

RedMagic OS is filled with missing and dodgy translations, bundle choices that don't marque sense, and an update concern truthful mediocre that I deliberation OnePlus successful 2015 would person genuinely done a amended job. It's wholly laughable, and I privation it weren't this way.

The RedMagic 8 Pro is powerful, has large haptics, and looks stellar, but the bundle is simply a implicit and utter mess.

For starters, notifications are hidden arsenic if they were ever connected your lockscreen, which has been the lawsuit connected different RedMagic devices. Anything with much than 1 notification volition alteration to "x notifications hidden" successful your notification shade, with nary denotation of what it tin be. There is nary mode to crook this off, and I initially thought it was a bug erstwhile I archetypal experienced it. I besides saw weirdness with floating windows, which sometimes can't beryllium removed. I recovered the champion mode to region them was to alteration gaming mode and crook it backmost disconnected again. Then the trash tin icon would look successful the presumption barroom for maine to resistance the model to.

The random mistranslations/forgotten-about translations passim the OS aren't a caller acquisition either. I've seen this connected erstwhile RedMagic devices I've reviewed, but it feels worse this time. Back then, I would lone spot it successful places astir radical wouldn't tally into usually without looking heavy into settings, but present it's everywhere. A RedMagic spokesperson told maine that I'm connected an aboriginal OS mentation (which makes sense, arsenic my instrumentality does not walk Play Integrity, either). Still, I warrant not everything volition beryllium translated successful the last release.

Given that it's been respective generations of this with RedMagic devices, it's hard to urge them astatine this point. The hardware is stellar, but determination are lone truthful galore complaints you tin marque earlier you tin conclusively accidental that the institution conscionable isn't listening.

Cameras: About what you expect

• Average show
• Passable selfie camera
• Typical gaming telephone cameras

Cameras aren't precisely a focused-on diagnostic for gaming phones, and for bully reason. With each the absorption connected gaming hardware (and gamers astir apt not arsenic funny successful having the champion smartphone camera connected the planet), it conscionable makes sense. That's wherefore an under-display camera is simply a large thought successful a smartphone similar this due to the fact that mediocre prime won't fuss a batch of the people demographic.

From my ain usage, the under-display camera is precisely what I expected. It's not good, but it's amazingly not bad, either. These cameras person improved a lot, adjacent if they inactive person a atrocious smoothing effect. I'm recognizable, which is the astir important thing.

If astir of your smartphone selfie camera usage is going to beryllium video calls and basal pictures with friends, past it's adequate. If you privation an really bully shooter for selfies, you'll privation to pass.

As for the different cameras, there's a 50MP superior shooter and an 8MP ultra-wide, alongside a 2MP for macro shots. You tin cheque retired the beneath Flickr medium for photos, but it's simply passable. It's a decent attempt, fixed immoderate of the atrocious photos you'll get retired of astir gaming phones, but it's inactive a camera from a gaming telephone nonetheless.

RedMagic 8 Pro: Should you buy?

You should bargain the RedMagic 8 Pro if:

• You privation a wholly bezel-less show
• You don't attraction astir bundle astatine each
• You privation the fastest smartphone disposable right now
• You privation a headphone jack

You shouldn't bargain the RedMagic 8 Pro if:

• You attraction astir bundle and bundle updates
• You attraction astir selfie prime

The RedMagic 8 Pro gets so adjacent to being a bully smartphone for gamers. It works well, the surface is fantastic, and there's adjacent a headphone jack. However, nary of that tin flooded the bundle concern successful my eyes. Putting connected a customized launcher helps (the default launcher doesn't person immoderate hunt functionality and conscionable adds leafage aft leafage of apps), but the remainder is unforgivable.

If you tin look past the software, past the RedMagic 8 Pro is 100% worthy buying. It's a large gaming smartphone with the champion chipset wealth tin bargain successful an Android smartphone close now, and for gamers, that's the astir important thing. If the bundle is adjacent a small spot important to you though, the Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro is inactive the champion gaming telephone for my money. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is an improved SoC, but the 8 Plus Gen 1 is inactive precise good.