Phones have come a long way since the days of my youth. From a device to speak with another person, to sending words, images; I remember being blown away by a friend of mine playing Pokémon Yellow on an old Nokia. Taking leaps and strides, smartphones have developed into something essential to many of our day to day lives, and now, they take a step further to encroach on a sacred sacred land. Can a phone truly stand among the greats and make an impact in the world of gaming? What makes a phone a gaming phone? And is a gaming phone still a reliable phone when it counts? After my time with the RedMagic 5S, I feel comfortable delivering these answers.

Starting from the top, the RedMagic unboxing experience is something completely unique to the brand. Each of their phones coming packed in a uniquely over the top and interesting box, from the moment you set eyes on it you know you have something different. The garishness of the phone design seeps outwards, and I love it. While I enjoyed the space comic panels of the 5S, I do think it somewhat a step backwards from its predecessor’s design, individual taste is something you really can’t account for. Lurking within, you can expect to find the phone itself, along with the usual SIM tray poking tool, a USB-A to USB-C charging cable, a USB-A power adapter, and a transparent case. Everything is fairly standard, and packaged well to keep the contents of the box safe. Aside from these, I decided grab the two available accessories, these being the Pro Handle and Ice Dock, but more on these later.

Specs Overview ⁠—
 

During setup, you'll find a relatively clean Android 10 experience, and little out of the ordinary with the OS. Under the hood, you’re looking at a Snapdragon 865, notably not the 865+, with 5G support, staying largely in-line with its predecessor, the RedMagic 5G. In fact, the majority of its specifications find itself matching the 5G. The 144hz display, while still delightful, debuted with the 5G. Really, the improvements from the 5G are minimal. The storage is faster, utilising UFS 3.1, the triggers have a marginally higher polling rate, and the touted Trinity Cooling has apparently been upgraded. RedMagic phones are largely known for their internal fans. Somewhat to my surprise, the latest one actually spins slower than the 5G, the advertised RPM being up to 15,000, in oppose to the 16,000 of its predecessor. This is splitting hairs, and it does still do a good job in keeping things cool, but it’s an odd detail all the same. The phone also features “active liquid cooling”, and a silver plate to complete the trinity. Though my knowledge of metals is limited, silver does seem to be a better conductor of heat than the usual copper, though much like the rest of the phone’s upgrades, the difference is marginal.

RedMagic... Ag?

It’s easy to take these minor changes as a negative of the phone as a whole, but it’s not necessarily the case. The RedMagic 5G was a great phone in itself, and while it’s a little disappointing to not, at the very least, see the CPU upgraded to the newer 865+, the device as a whole still finds itself at the higher echelons of power and capability. Where it does, for the most part, feature flagship performance, there are some compromises to be made for the more affordable price point. The biggest hit comes from the phone’s cameras; they’re hardly standout. In a device marketed towards gaming, I completely understand the decision, and it’s probably the best place to cut costs, but I can see it putting some off making the 5S their daily driver. You have a 64MP main camera, an 8MP ultra wide camera, and a 2MP macro camera. Each are fine in capturing moments in a pinch, but wouldn’t be my ideal choice. Compared to my previous phone, a Motorola One Zoom, admittedly a device more camera-oriented, it’s difficult to adjust. Where I would usually retire a phone completely on getting another, I still have my Motorola One Zoom handy to fill the gap the 5S simply can’t. You can check out a few shots below.

    

On the left side of the phone sits a bright red switch. Unlike the switches of yonder, this one doesn't mute the device, nor does it lock the screen orientation. It would have been interesting to have had this switch be mappable to actually accommodate things like this, but as it stands, it exists for one reason only: gaming. Which shouldn't be much of a surprise really, pretty much every big player in the gaming phone scene has a switch much like this one, putting the phone in a launcher much like this one. There's a few interesting things to find here. Obviously you can add games to the launcher to have easy access to them, but swiping from the right reveals a nice array of options. You can toggle the fan, screen refresh rate, block calls and messages, and record your screen. On top of this, you have a few more interesting options. The two capacitive triggers can be mapped to any area of the screen, you can create macros and play them back, and you can even open a WhatsApp window that displays over the game. Unfortunately, you're limited to WhatsApp for this, and not apps like Telegram that I more frequently use, but it's a nice addition. There is one thing that even after owning the phone for a month, I still don't have a clue about: small-window hangup. All I've managed to figure out is that whenever I flip the red gaming switch while I have a game still open, it'll tell me that it doesn't support small window hanging. No app does apparently. This is just one of many translation quirks you'll find on the phone. 

  

You can assign artwork to each game to make them look more appealing in the large panel layout.

Within the Game Boost mode, you'll also find a nifty breakdown of how long you've been playing games, along with stats of which games you've been playing most. I adore this kind of tracking. I loved it on the 3DS, and it's great to see something similar implemented here, albeit with some odd decisions. You see, it doesn't actually keep a record of the total time you've spent playing each game. All it tracks is what you've played today, and what you've played over the last week. It's a shame to be falling short in such a trivial way, but there is more to it than that. This "Personal Center" is riddled with odd translations, and an even more odd keyword, along with what I think is a short motivational message? Apparently my keyword for today is "Health", and I should be aware that moderate play is good for physical and mental health. Thanks phone, I'm glad I asked. 

Of all the oddly translated screens, I do genuinely like this one.

On to the main event of the RedMagic 5S. I’m excited to share how it performs in its element. With Android devices, you can generally split this into two core areas: native games, and emulation. I’ll be the first to admit the native games that actually utilise the phone’s full potential are slim pickings. You have your titans in Fortnite, Call of Duty Mobile, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, and a few pretty looking racers. Beyond that, much of what’s on offer you’ll find runs fine on almost any modern Android device. The games I’m particularly fond of, like Disgaea 1 Complete, Danganronpa, Professor Layton, and even Monster Hunter Stories, have been ported from other platforms, but they’re not demanding in any way. If you’re not into your battle royale games on the go, it’s easy to question why you would bother with what could be considered an overspecced device in some regards. This is where emulation begins to shine.

Android is an Eden of quality emulators. From the NES to the Wii, the PS1 to the PSP, there are games to be played and replayed from years gone by. It should go without saying that any modern Android device is capable of everything up to the N64, so for this I’m putting a particular focus on the performance of two emulators in particular: Dolphin for GameCube and Wii, and Citra for 3DS, with a brief look at DamonPS2 for your PS2 fix as a bonus.

Dolphin was at the forefront of my mind when deciding to buy the 5S. It’s long-since been a dream of mine to play New Super Mario Bros. Wii from my phone. I don’t really know why, but it’s something I’ve wanted for years, and naturally it was the first thing I tested. Flawless. Though it is admittedly not the most demanding of Wii games to be testing, it was running at x2 native resolution with no issues at all. Following that, almost every Wii game I tested worked perfectly. To save on flowery text, I’ve put a list of Wii games below, along with a brief note on how it performs. It’s worth noting that the “Skip EFB Access from CPU” option is enabled unless stated otherwise for these tests, as it provides a significant performance improvement with little to no noticeable drawback in the majority of cases.

As a general overview, almost everything I tried worked perfectly. The odd standout is Fortune Street, and why it wouldn’t run well is beyond me. It seems like a fairly low demand board game, but maybe there’s a lot going on behind the scenes. With the 5S facing few issues with Wii games, GameCube performance is just as good as you’d think. The vast majority of games I tried faced no issues at x2 native resolution, with taxing games like The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker needing to be run at x1. Again, you can check out the list below of the games I’ve tried.

All in all, Dolphin performs above and beyond what I could have possibly expected. Even now it feels impossible to be playing Mario Kart Wii on the train to work, yet here I am doing just that. I have a library of games at my hand, and it of course doesn't stop at Dolphin. Next on my list is 3DS, and more specifically, Citra-MMJ.

When it comes to Citra on Android, you have your standard release, which gets the job done, but you also have Citra-MMJ, a fork by weihuoya with several great features to enhance the experience. These include the ability to create custom screen layouts, use cheats, and a myriad of minor tweaks; it is in my opinion the best way to play 3DS games on Android. Though the games I tried were a little more hit and miss than with Dolphin, I'm ultimately impressed all the same. You can find the games I tried below, along with information on how they performed. I decided to leave out the internal resolution setting here, since it didn't seem to have all that much effect on performance when compared to Dolphin. You might see minor slowdowns at x4 resolution on some games, but for the most part, if it ran well at x1, it ran well on everything else too.

While it does impress me to be able to play Pokémon Omega Ruby on the go with very few issues, I wouldn't say any of the 3DS titles I tried were flawless. As things are, I wouldn't be going out of my way to get a phone with the intent of playing 3DS games, but the ones that do perform well are a delightful bonus. 

DamonPS2 is a different beast entirely to that of Dolphin and Citra. It's cluttered, it's messy, there's no option to alter touch control transparency... but it works? Sometimes. Of the notable games tried, I apparently managed to get a fairly consistent 60fps on Shadow of the Colossus, albeit with some hefty graphical glitches. I say apparently because that's what the app is telling me, but it didn't feel smooth at all, to the point of developing a headache from playing. The original Monster Hunter suffers from a bizarre screen shaking in the village area, but surprisingly is playable once you're out on a quest. Ape Escape 2 looks like your character is in a constant state of simultaneously exploding and imploding with polygons flying in every which direction. My greatest surprise is that, Shadow of the Colossus aside, the games do seem to run well. They're just riddled with issues that make the majority unplayable. Maybe this will improve in the future as the app continues to be developed, but for now, I wouldn't bother.

You can see some of the games in action above.

Having looked at the games, you might be left wondering what makes this a gaming phone. Sure, it's impressive it can run what it can, but you'll find flagships and other modern phones rocking something similar when it comes to internal specs. Really, there were two things that drew me to RedMagic in particular: the garish design, and the accessories. I'll throw my hands up and say outright, the garish design isn't going to appeal to everybody. I'd go as far as saying that for the vast majority of people reading this, it probably doesn't appeal to you. But to me, it's something so outlandish and fun, something you just don't see in the phone market nowadays. In a sea of monochrome slabs, I love seeing something pack a punch. For those not quite enticed by the red and blue of the Pulse design, it is worth noting more muted "Sonic Silver" and "Eclipse Black" models are available, though they do come with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage, in oppose to the Pulse's 12GB and 256GB respectively. This wouldn't matter so much if there was any kind of expandable storage, but unfortunately there isn't. In their next phone, I'd love to see you able to pick your design without having to be tied down to a lesser model, but given this is something RedMagic have done since their first phone, I doubt they'll change any time soon. 

The accessories are a little more tricky to discuss. There are really two of note: the Pro Handle, and the Ice Dock, as I touched on earlier. To shed some light on these ambiguous names, I'll start with the Pro Handle, a special case with a rail on the top and bottom of the phone to mount two Joy Con-style controllers. I am in love with this, and it's definitely up there with the phone's biggest selling points. These controllers slightly smaller than Nintendo's detachable design, and they can function in one of two ways. The first is as standard Bluetooth controllers; this is how I use them with Dolphin. The benefit here is that you're able to make use of every button on the controller, there being four face buttons, two shoulder buttons on the top, two shoulder buttons on the bottom, and what I affectionately dub the RedMagic button. The reason these work well in Dolphin as standard Bluetooth controllers is that Dolphin is able to detect them as two separate controllers, and lets you map them as such. If every emulator worked like this, they would be a dream. Alas, Dolphin is the only one I found with such a feature. Other emulators fall into the trap of recognising them both as the same controller, which, as you might imagine, causes a number of issues; this is where the second functionality comes into play.

The RedMagic 5S with Pro Handle attached.

Via the phone's Game Boost mode, you're able to map not only the built-in shoulder buttons, but the Pro Handle also, to any region of the screen. For native Android apps, I've got in the habit of only using the left handle for a much nicer feeling analogue movement, with my right hand free to adjust the camera and hit the array of option and attack buttons that tend to cluster the right side of the screen. It works genuinely well, and it enhanced my experience with Genshin Impact in particular. For emulation, I've found myself getting a little craftier. With the vast majority of emulators I tried, you're able to not only use touch controls, but alter their opacity. What this means is that you can map the Pro Handle to each button on-screen, and then hide the controls entirely, making the gamepad effectively function as a gamepad should. It's weird, but it does work well once you have it setup. The downside here is that you're a little more limited with the buttons you can map. When in Game Boost mode, the RedMagic button on each controller isn't available for mapping, instead it acts as a button to open the mapping menu itself. The two shoulder buttons on the bottom of the controller are out of action too, with them only coming into play if they're positioned at the top. Unlike the Joy-Con, either controller of the Pro Handle can be used on either side of the phone; you just need to rotate them. It's actually a great design, and I've found them really comfortable even in prolonged Mario Kart Wii sessions, but again you find small things holding them back. In losing the RedMagic button for mapping, you lose your ideal candidates for start and select, instead having to throw these on one of the shoulder buttons. You need both shoulder buttons for the emulator you're using? Then you'll be missing out on some buttons, or mapping them to the device's own shoulder buttons and awkwardly reaching over. Neither option is particularly great. Small criticisms though for an otherwise great addition. The Pro Handle is an essential accessory for anybody looking at this phone.

The Ice Dock though? Not so much. I can't comment on whether the dock itself helps with the phone's performance, so we'll put that to one side. Frankly, I think the phone performs well enough with its internal fan alone. The Ice Dock is just poorly designed, that's all there is to it. Clamping to the back of the phone, it's supposed to sit dead-centre. The symmetry is nice, but the glaring oversight is that both the volume and power buttons also sit in the middle of the phone's body, much lower than any other phone I've used because of the internal fan's placement. On attaching the Ice Dock, you'll find it pressing down on the volume rocker and the power buttons. But that's not all! The only way you're able to use the dock is by removing the phone from any case it's in. It needs to be flush to the device; another glaring oversight. You want to use the Pro Handle? Too bad. You can't even use the transparent case the phone comes with. It's another shame, and another mark against a device I really do like.

  

The accessories as a whole just lack a sense of larger synergy. The transparent case that comes with the phone lets you see the striking design clearly, but in using it, you're locking yourself out of both the Pro Handle and the Ice Dock. In using the Pro Handle, you need to use a specific case, this being a black case covering much of the phone's coveted design. You're stuck with a more mundane device with only glimmers of colour poking through, not to mention you are again unable to use the Ice Dock. And as you may have guessed, you can't use the Ice Dock with anything else. It's so frustrating to me just how close each of these come to being great. For the Pro Handle, make a transparent case. For the Ice Dock, make a case that can mount it; heck, go to town and give it rails so you can use the Pro Handle too. Small adjustments are all it takes to elevate these accessories, to elevate the phone as a whole, to a higher level. 

Having used the RedMagic 5S as my daily driver for little over a month now, I can say I'm more than happy with my purchase. It's a mighty box of high end specs with a price tag to jump at. Coming home from work each day, the battery sits somewhere between 60% and 30% depending on use. The lowest I've seen the battery go is 10%, being a person who charges their phone each night, and this was really only because I left the phone playing Disgaea 1 Complete on auto all day to grind characters. I've had no issue in taking or receiving calls, nor in the more standard internet browsing and day to day messaging. Saying that, however, it's not a phone I'd recommend to your average user who wants an all-rounder. It's a phone for the over the top, for the people wanting something a bit different, or those wanting the best gaming experience for the lowest price. If you're one of those people, look no further for a great device, or even wait and see what's to come next. With the Snapdragon 888 just around the corner, I can say it's only going to get better.