REDMAGIC 7 Android Gaming Phone

[cadaveca]

Nubia's gamer-centric, Android-based gaming phone comes with top-level hardware, a 165 Hz screen, and built-in touch pads to expand your gaming. This gaming phone with 18 GB RAM and 256 GB storage blazes past the competition in benchmarks, but what happens when being a phone comes second? It's hard to keep silent!

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[X71200]

What a load of trash, but then again, it's a "gaming phone". Got to wonder how much of a genius it is to throw all the phone features away like good battery, for some android game functionality.

 

[MrDweezil]

Active cooling on a phone is just a giant flashing red flag reading "do not buy".

 

[GreiverBlade]

Active cooling on a phone is just a giant flashing red flag reading "do not buy".

it's a "REDMAGIC" flag then

well, not a bad price for a SD 8 Gen 1 device, DTS:X ultra compatible and nice screen specs

but not something that would replace my 299$ device, SD870 Dolby Atmos speaker, 120hz SuperAmoled E4 screen 360hz touch sampling (although i really dig the shoulder buttons) and ohhhh boy i do like my 20mAh more on the battery

i will wait the Redmi K50 Pro (Dimensity 9000) or Poco F4 GT (which is technically the Redmi K50 Gaming with the SD 8 Gen 1 rebranded) to replace it ... i prefer a phone that is a phone first nonetheless
they should be priced like the F4 at launch (around 400/450$), at least i hope so

@cadaveca nice review nonetheless (ah, i remember reading your mobo reviews back when i registered on the site, hehehe )

 

[Yukikaze]

18GB of LPDDR5? What a waste of silicon.

 

[X71200]

I personally stopped the Xiaomi bandwagon long ago, too much bloatware. Hardware good, but software... not really. BBK seems to take the cake on the high end.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

The only good "gamer" phones are the ones pushing over 6,000 mah batteries, sine they can hypothetically go 4+ days of heavy use without a charge

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Just a little copypasta from GSMARENA because I dont think the description of "too short" was very informative as far as a review goes....

But yeah. the battery does suck a little.

You can find GSMARENA's more in-depth review here


I cant speak for ZTE but with Xiaomi phones, you can normally lock the screen refresh rate to 60hz (and maybe even 30hz??? - Depending on the phone) to squeeze as much out of the battery as possible. Im sure other manufactures have this option on their devices too.

 

[bonehead123]

The fact that they managed to cram in 18GB of ram, 256GB of fast storage, and a high refresh screen for the modestly low price of $800 is really surprising, and makes me wonder about it's overall build quality... surely they had to cut some corners somewhere to hit that price point.. especially considering that IF Sammy or Apple were to produce a phone with those specs, it would definitely cost ~$3000....

But OTOH, that little rinky-dinky fan spinning at @20,000 rpm......

Umm, NO, just NO !!!!!

 

[Mistral]

Clever naming there. Make you think it's from the Red people, the ones with the cameras.

Instead, it's bloody ZTE.

The phone itself... I guess they missed the April 1st launch window.

 

[GreiverBlade]

I personally stopped the Xiaomi bandwagon long ago, too much bloatware. Hardware good, but software... not really. BBK seems to take the cake on the high end.

Poco F3 here, bloatware? 0 unwanted app (technically find Share Me and the Cleaner usefull sometime ) ... and even if there was one : fully de-installable (well among the one i did not want, all were), ads? yeah Xiao(more Redmi)/Poco phones are known for that, well you can fully toggle them off, i had 0 adds since the day i bought it (just need to know where to find the toggle, but only need to do it once ) Soft not good? alright that's a subjective one, imho it's totally fine MIUI13 is quite good and pleasant to use day to day.

BBK? Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus, Realme and iQOO? well one of those 5 became overpriced (OnePlus) and kinda did let down their origines (without spinning off a sub brand or two, to keep some good specs, lower price devices, like Redmi/Poco) the other 4 are fine (Realme has a tendency to be competitive with Xiao/Redmi/Poco in the manner of they have "same pricing but slightly lower hardware", Oppo and IQOO, have the same tendency, IQOO is promising but ... the hell? SD888+ for global 9 and SD 8 Gen 1 for China 9? ) software wise well it's the same bucket ... but at least it's not "Samsung bloated" style (well some peoples said that Sammy changed that with the S22 ... )

Clever naming there. Make you think it's from the Red people, the ones with the cameras.

Instead, it's bloody ZTE.

The phone itself... I guess they missed the April 1st launch window.

it might seems so, although the name of the brand is Nubia(ZTE) and REDMAGIC 7 is the model (even tho it's listed as Redmagic sub-brand, but it's like Poco, no one list them as Poco F3 buit rather as Xiaomi Poco F3 ) , unless being extremely dense, no risk of thinking this is from the carmera brand and Nubia "gaming" brand phones were all called REDMAGIC around the same time RED announced the Hydrogen One, which was a notorious failure ... so, technically making a phone being associated with RED is not something ZTE/Nubia/Redmagic would want willingly

and makes me wonder about it's overall build quality... surely they had to cut some corners somewhere to hit that price point.. especially considering that IF Sammy or Apple were to produce a phone with those specs, it would definitely cost ~$3000....

well ... Sammy is overpriced, Apple too, they take way bigger margin on the manufacturing cost of their devices than BBK/Xiaomi/Redmi/Poco/ZTE devices ... (the Poco F3 has nothing to envy in build quality to a S21 and it is half the price )

I cant speak for ZTE but with Xiaomi phones, you can normally lock the screen refresh rate to 60hz (and maybe even 30hz??? - Depending on the phone) to squeeze as much out of the battery as possible. Im sure other manufactures have this option on their devices too.

yeah my F3 is on 60hz for day to day use and last long enough, unless i put in in performance mode and 120hz when i want 60fps+ in Genshin Impact which is very very rare
60hz is enough for most other games and apps i use daily (that also make me think: that i hate COD/PUBG being references for testing personal preference in term of "heavy load games" on phone ahah ...)

 

[Mussels]

I'm not interested in phone gaming whatsoever, but i'm excited to see phone reviews begin at TPU

 

[R0H1T]

The only good "gamer" phones are the ones pushing over 6,000 mah batteries, sine they can hypothetically go 4+ days of heavy use without a charge

There's no such phone which can do 4+ days with heavy usage on any flagship device or even lesser models, unless you meant listening to low bitrate mp3 on all 4 days as heavy use.

 

[tabascosauz]

Poco F3 here, bloatware? 0 unwanted app (technically find Share Me and the Cleaner usefull sometime ) ... and even if there was one : fully de-installable (well among the one i did not want, all were), adds? yeah Xiao(more Redmi)/Poco phones are known for that, well you can fully toggle them off, i had 0 adds since the day i bought it (just need to know where to find the toggle, but only need to do it once ) Soft not good? alright that's a subjective one, imho it's totally fine MIUI13 is quite good and pleasant to use day to day.

BBK? Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus, Realme and iQOO? well one of those 5 became overpriced (OnePlus) and kinda did let down their origines (without spinning off a sub brand or two, to keep some good specs, lower price devices, like Redmi/Poco) the other 4 are fine (Realme has a tendency to be competitive with Xiao/Redmi/Poco in the manner of they have "same pricing but slightly lower hardware", Oppo and IQOO, have the same tendency, IQOO is promising but ... the hell? SD888+ for global 9 and SD 8 Gen 1 for China 9? ) software wise well it's the same bucket ... but at least it's not "Samsung bloated" style (well some peoples said that Sammy changed that with the S22 ... )

I personally stopped the Xiaomi bandwagon long ago, too much bloatware. Hardware good, but software... not really. BBK seems to take the cake on the high end.

iirc MIUI in some regions is less bloated than others - Europe rom probably.

As an overall package MIUI is pretty garbo if you've ever tried AOSP on F3 (alioth). It's just so......clunky and messy (ie. duplicate settings, incongruent UI functionality and flow even within one app). Then there's the MIUI battery life, the random telemetry everywhere, and apps that are tied to other functions and break those when uninstalling (I think it was Cleaner or security that removes the entire recent appswitcher if gone)..........

Xiaomi is usually a top choice if you know your way around software; I have yet to see another brand except maybe Google circa 2014 that embraces modding/dev like Xiaomi does (all the way down to warranty policy), or another brand that provides such trivially easy tools for dev and recovery (MIFlash).

But if limited to stock rom, then there are many better options.

 

[GreiverBlade]

But if limited to stock rom, then there are many better options.

i dropped custom ROM after my LG G2 Flex well lucky, then, that Eu stock is less bloated and sure i saw none of the issues or mess you mentions off
telemetry well i can see that being an issue (just don't get a phone, even Apple who is mentioned as being the less data collecting is not clean on that, a phone is by default a telemetry device once it is on)

knowing your ways around softwares also work on stock ROM, seeing that on my previous Redmi Note 9 Pro most ads toggle and other "random" were not clearly "in your face" nothing a little Google: "how to do such and such" can't help if i do not find it by tinkering around.

that being said i might give a try on the F3 AOSP roms later ... (if they integrate some soft i like from the stock rom )
edit: @tabascosauz you have my thanks ... that give me a reason to scour XDA forum again ... (if you don't have a better suggestion )

There's no such phone which can do 4+ days with heavy usage on any flagship device or even lesser models, unless you meant listening to low bitrate mp3 on all 4 days as heavy use.

7 days on a LG G2 Flex was my record but yeah no heavy use ahah just a little messaging, a call or two and mostly music (not low bitrate tho)

 

[Mussels]

There's no such phone which can do 4+ days with heavy usage on any flagship device or even lesser models, unless you meant listening to low bitrate mp3 on all 4 days as heavy use.

My spare/kids samsung A21S is overall a pretty poopy phone, but the battery life is 48 hours of non stop video playback

100% agreed on flagship models, but "mid-range" phones with long battery life do exist (with compromises)

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Reading the gsm comments is fun, all the PUBG dick kiddies. Why even play games like that on a phone ffs. Must be great been 15 and getting your parents to buy you a $800 phone.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

iirc MIUI in some regions is less bloated than others - Europe rom probably.

As an overall package MIUI is pretty garbo if you've ever tried AOSP on F3 (alioth). It's just so......clunky and messy (ie. duplicate settings, incongruent UI functionality and flow even within one app). Then there's the MIUI battery life, the random telemetry everywhere, and apps that are tied to other functions and break those when uninstalling (I think it was Cleaner or security that removes the entire recent appswitcher if gone)..........

Xiaomi is usually a top choice if you know your way around software; I have yet to see another brand except maybe Google circa 2014 that embraces modding/dev like Xiaomi does (all the way down to warranty policy), or another brand that provides such trivially easy tools for dev and recovery (MIFlash).

But if limited to stock rom, then there are many better options.

Yeah. Miui is absolute ass. Complete utter trash

 

[GreiverBlade]

Yeah. Miui is absolute ass. Complete utter trash

why do i not see the same point of view ... oh, just add "imho" after the Yeah. pretty please?

to me, MIUI is perfectly fine but i would not say "Yeah. Miui is absolute best in class UI. Complete masterpiece" (because i would be generalizing, and nothing is absolute in this world)

but i get it it's not for you and you strongly do not like it, no worries.

 

[Mussels]

Reading the gsm comments is fun, all the PUBG dick kiddies. Why even play games like that on a phone ffs. Must be great been 15 and getting your parents to buy you a $800 phone.

I believe this is a location based thing
Areas where you have to commute on a bus/train/subway/blimp for many hours a day - you'd take what you can get.
Same again for locations with very little space for possessions (I'm a worldy mollusc and travelled for a bit, and my god some places have incredibly tiny living areas for people. Share house with 7 students? sure, lets leave a TV/gaming PC around and see how long before its broken or stolen...)

 

[8tyone]

I personally stopped the Xiaomi bandwagon long ago, too much bloatware. Hardware good, but software... not really. BBK seems to take the cake on the high end.

I buy only the ones on the list of Lineage OS, crDroid and Resurrection Remix. I install my OS onto my new phone just like I install OS on my new PC. And I mostly buy second-hand phones.

 

[laszlo]

20000 RPM is good; settings don't have a drone mode?

 

[The Von Matrices]

Unlike the other posters here, I think that a fan on a gaming phone is a good idea considering how quickly other phones thermal throttle under load. I just wonder about the water resistance of a phone that has holes leading directly to its interior.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Unlike the other posters here, I think that a fan on a gaming phone is a good idea considering how quickly other phones thermal throttle under load. I just wonder about the water resistance of a phone that has holes leading directly to its interior.

Having a fan and external openings means zero water protection imo. Can't see how they could do it.

 

[Nordic]

I appreciate the review Dave. This is quality content. It amazes me that we can now play FPS games with 60 fps with such a small handheld device. We live in the future.
_ _ _ _ _
As an aside it is funny, to see TPU review of a "Gaming Phone" when W1zzard was so adamant in his feelings towards the Steam Deck. I guess W1zzard didn't do this review so there is no hipocracy. I don't think TPU needed to or should have done a Steam Deck review to be clear. The following are from the Steam Deck Hardware Reviews thread.

Can't get excited for it. Why try playing games on POS hardware, and then people will realize that they suck at Linux

Can't get excited for it. Why try playing games on POS hardware, and then people will realize that they suck at Linux

Don't mean to troll anyone, I'm just too far from the target audience of this and don't get it. Not trying to review Tiktok either