A Close Look

Remember that this REDMAGIC 7 is a phone for gaming, and its features as such focus on giving us gamers added gaming features that are useful and easy to use, such as the shoulder touch panels. The 720 Hz touch-polling for the main screen is fast, and combined with the dual shoulder panels, makes for gaming experiences that are fully customizable.


The REDMAGIC 7 allows you to drag and drop where each 500 Hz shoulder panel emulates part of the screen, creating some interesting options for most games. Add ADS and trigger buttons for FPS games or a gas and a brake button for driving games, leaving your thumbs free for greater in-game movement or other commands and you've got an ultra-responsive gaming device with built-in triggers, which really makes this REDMAGIC 7 stand out. The provided case has cutouts for the triggers and other important bits, and really adds a nice feel to the phone, too.


This isn't REDMAGIC's first phone, either, if that "7" didn't point out the obvious, and do not be confused: this is first and foremost a gaming device and was designed as such. The red button on the side that might make for a "silent mode" on other phones here on the REDMAGIC 7 enables a gaming mode that pushes everything else out of focus and puts gaming and the added abilities this phone has for it front and center.


There are also a decent number of "plug-ins" you can add to each app on your phone from within this gaming space, and you have the ability to tweak performance to favor battery life if you would like, or have it blazing fast and churning the juice away.


We find a 64 MP camera in the middle of the back, with three separate lenses and a flash down below. The secondary lenses are 8 MP and 2 MP, respectively, with varied aperture angles. For video capabilities, we get 8K at 30 FPS and 4K at both 30 FPS and 60 FPS.


Next to the camera array is the small fan that lights up in "RGB" when used. nubia calls the entire cooling solution "ICE8.0 Cooling," and it includes more than just the fan. There are layers of stuff all packaged nicely to work with the fan you can see some of through the glass back. I'm not completely sure the fan is needed, but given it does put out a fair amount of air, which is felt, it can't be doing any harm. Fortunately, there are easily accessible controls for this fan, so you can turn it on or off as you want. There are several vents associated with the fan and its airflow. One vent right next to the fan seems to act as an exhaust.


There is a vent at the middle of the REDMAGIC 7's back, and a third opposite the very first. These two last vents operate as intakes and lessen the overall tone of the fan spinning.


This phone supports dual SIM cards and has a headphone jack; the SIM tray has a gasket and sits on the bottom next to the USB 3.0 Type-C port. The headphone jack sits on the other end, at the top.