Battery Life, Charging, Heat

Throw in 65 W charging to charge the REDMAGIC 7 extremely quickly and battery life being short seems like a small problem. Yet the REDMAGIC 7 did so-so with the 4500 mAh battery it has, expending 26% of the charge through the 3DMARK Wild Life Stress test. The provided 65 W charger then managed to charge the phone to 100% in 40 minutes or less in testing even with the phone completely dead. The phone's fan comes to life when the REDMAGIC 7 is charging to keep the battery cool under the high 65 W charging load.


During the 3DMARK Wild Life Stress test, the REDMAGIC 7 went from 22°C (ambient) to 55°C by the end of the test. The best loop scored 9931 while the lowest was 8082, so some thermal throttling was present during the test, though not much. Other phones with no active cooling at all fare far worse than the REDMAGIC 7. The ICE8.0 Cooling on the REDMAGIC 7 seemed to make a decent difference, and the fan definitely exhausted a fair bit of hot air during the 20 or so minutes the test ran. 55°C is pretty toasty!

Camera Performance

Camera performance isn't the main feature of this phone, and as such, I was a bit reluctant to put it to the test; other reviewers seem to be utterly unimpressed by what the REDMAGIC 7 has on tap when it comes to the camera, which is understandable as some phones have much better specifications, but this is a gaming phone, right? That means gaming comes first and having a fancy camera doesn't really help play games, does it? Be that as it may, we want to know what this phone can do since this may be a factor in your buying decision, so I began taking pictures. Multiple pictures. Seeing the same scene on different phones was interesting—raw numbers don't always tell the true tale of what a phone is capable of.


Since the phone first launched, there have been several improvements to the camera controls, both for static shots and video. The REDMAGIC team seems committed to ensuring the latest Android features are incorporated into each of their own OS releases. The camera offers multiple automatic shooting modes as well as a fairly in-depth "Pro" section that allows you to set things like exposure time and white balance levels. There are many parameters to change, and the manual focus option is a nice touch for a little bokeh.


I shot several different scenes throughout the testing period with the REDMAGIC 7; from bright sunny days to overcast foggy messes. Macro shots do fairly well as do distance shots, with color reproduction fairly accurate under automatic white balance modes. Swapping through different camera modes is very easy and intuitive, with one tab showing a host of preset options. I'm far from a camera expert, however.