Hands on with my first gaming phone - a week with the Red Magic 5S

I actually bought the phone on release, so it's a China ROM versions. In terms of updates and stuff, global versions of gaming phones are extreme slow to roll out.

Regarding the phone itself, it's pretty awesome. It can take a fall and while a bit heavy, you get used to it. Also, It's not waterproof, but it survived an accidental soda spill and a few water ones.

Battery lasts quite a while, for example, if playing Genshin Impact with max settings and high brightness it can last me a full afternoon (while bluetooth was on and connected with a few devices). One of the most convenient things so far is the charging though, in half an hour it goes from 0 to 100 (never had it at 0, but from 16 to 100 it took around 20ish minutes). On a daily basis, I arrive home every evening with the phone sitting at 60%ish (this includes bluetooth on, a bit of gaming in breaks and lunch, usual email and fb usage and spotify connected for most of the day).

The best thing though, is that I have had 0 slow downs or freezes. Even with 60 tabs open in firefox. z.z

 

This is the first time I have heard about this brand. Unfortunately I've already ordered the OP8T that recently came out so getting this phone is out of the option..........

 

I've noticed some people here complaining about the redundancy of gaming phones.

Well, I also found them laughable at first, but do take this in consideration.

My BS3 for example, has:

- Full metal body (with glass cover in the back)
- RGB goodness
- Snapdragon 865 (5G)
- 12GB/256GB
- Can take a fall
- Big screen
- Stereo sound (dual speakers), it's loud.
- 3.5mm jack
- Haptic feedback
- Dedicated gaming mode (allows full control over the cpu, you can even set up voice commands in games)
- It's worth it's price (I bought mine for 630€ on release, and it has overal better specs than a 1000€ device)
- The camera is actually good, and has a nefty trick with it's AI that allows to create 256mpx pictures.
- It has never gotten hot (and I use it a lot).

Here are some photos of the actual phone (taken from the internet):

Spoiler

Not to mention the accessories these phones have, from coolers, to magnetic chargers and dedicated controllers.


A few years ago the idea was laughable sure, nowadays not so much. Especially when you're paying less for them than you would for any other high end device.

 

Totally agree!
I mean play has some flaws and mostly concerning storage space, power, and buttons. they are kinda to clicky and rigid but goot enough...but can be better though. They need real thumb sticks ofc.

As for power xperia is really powerfull compared to today phones especially if you install a custom android optimized for gaming like i did. it run most emulators and even PSX one prefectly (im not using its own, native psx emulator).

And obviously storage space is so small its funny.... at least 100GB is needed.

Id be glad to have a bit bigger phone but not more than 5 inch. and more modern, but slide design is flawless. i really love it!

 

Yes that is it! great emulation machine though!

 

and those are great with physical buttons

 

Did you read the part that said "outside of emulation"?

 

The lack of titles is the biggest thing for me. Most mobile games fall into an entirely different category, far beyond "casual," and are designed around the processing power, input methods, and userbase of typical smartphones. Sure, there are exceptions, but are there enough of them to make a gaming phone worthwhile?
For any game that would benefit from running on a gaming phone, I have to wonder: Why would videogame developers or videogame consumers pick a mobile platform over PC or console?

In theory, yes, but in practice, it would probably be garbage.

 

I don't see how it would be garbage since its called gaming phone.
It's primary function is gaming, secondary (less important) is phone-calls and SMS/Viber....

 

I'm sorry but i still stand by my opinion Phones are NOT gaming machines(consoles) plus the majority of the games have ads up the ass every few minutes. Where as REAL consoles are PS4 , Xbox,pc and switch THOSE ARE consoles not a Phone! Now while the put all these fancy graphics chips in the phone doesn't really make any sense as the real bit titles are console locked so why do these companies bother? Other than money and catering to the casual audiance who I might add are not real gamers!

 

Sure they are, if devs would make games worth buying... But still pc's consoles, phones are all bunch of processors and memory, transistors. Any device can be gaming if it just have dedicated external feture and software to support it..i mean the UI.

You dont have adds if you remove adds

As for phones not being gaming machines, you might want to look at Sony Xperis PLAY and rethink that.

Real gamer.... Real gamer is a person that play video games and enjoy them. Its really not a philosophy imo.

 

I still stand by what I said, Phones are NOT consoles plus mobile phones do not posess the battery power to run games for the amount of time needed fo a decent play session actual gamers like to do the battery life is a huge issue and keeping it on charge only wears the battery down so going back to my rubuttal phones are not and never will be a console end of disscusion!

 

Man there are a ton of people here that seem to think very poorly of mobile gaming.

My brother has gotten one of these at the beginning of the month, it's super cool, great specs especially for price (people still dump out $1000+ for latest flagship with the same specs+nice camera)

I wanna get one myself because I play a TON of different games on my mobile device and it's a really nice bang for buck option.

 

Making nice things is difficult. Especially something as complicated as an OS. Let alone a touch-based OS.
Who's going to make it? I can't imagine any entity with the means and motivation to do so.

I think that's a pretty fair statement. Though, there are probably plenty of people who play games only occasionally (particularly- though not necessarily- mobile games) who wouldn't consider themselves to be gamers.

 

Phones are NOT consoles, they are phones (but you can argue in this day and age that they are phones at all. they do so many things and the lest that they do is phone calls. True Phones where in 90s, where only game was snake. N-Gage and Xperia WHERE gaming phones),
but what I wanted to say is that they CAN be gaming consoles aka "Gaming Phones".

As for battery power, the SWITCH doesnt have any better battery than phones, where phones have many services that run in background and antenas hence draining it over period of a day.

To conclude. Phones WILL never be conoles, because they are phones and today smartphones are everything but phones. I consider them Pocket Computers. Phones are long dead. Nokia 3310 was a phone for example. Samsung Galaxy Note 20 is a personal pocket computer with phone funcionality. Computers can play games. If a smartphon is designed in such a way to have dedicated UI and controller built into it that it IS a gaming smartphone/pocket pc WITH phoning funcionality. Nvidia shield is a perfect example of this.
Now having actual games and inviting developers to make games for it is a different matter.

 

Exactly.
Theoretically, Google could add features to Android to make it better for gaming, but it would still be Android. I don't expect that to happen any time soon, but it could happen.

PCs are not consoles. Your point?