Smart phone with a breeze: a review of ZTE Red Magic 3

In May, the guys from ZTE Nubia introduced the new Red Magic 3 gaming smartphone: for just 500 Euros, this year’s flagship features and unique gaming features are offered. Inside, the best Snapdragon 855 processor today, with 8 + 128 gigabytes of memory, or 12 + 256 and three colors to choose from: absolutely dull black, bright red and camouflage for the 12/256 version.

The 48 megapixel camera from Sony with the popular IMX586 sensor (it will require a separate video), the speakers are double and very loud, two additional buttons on the side for aiming and shooting, a 5000 mAh battery, and inside the main hit is active cooling using tiny, but a very brave fan designed to remove heat from copper and graphite elements inside the case. Let's understand what kind of beast ZTE has turned into as a third gaming smartphone.
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The smartphone is huge: the first thing that catches your eye is an elongated 6.65 ”display, made according to the AMOLED standard (with support for wide dynamic range or HDR). The biggest gaming smartphone, apparently. The resolution is 2340 by 1080 pixels, the density is 387.5 pixels per inch, the corners are rounded. Very similar to modern Samsung - rich colors, high brightness, so that movies, games or viewing photos go with a bang, but reading books is not always convenient.

The system is a naked Android 9 with a small hub for games. Naked Android is dull, nerdy and makes you miss MIUI. Would be a apple maid, probably would hang himself from such beauty.

The game hub is nice - you can customize the control, backlight, performance, notifications, and the fan mode. The hub is turned on by a separate key. If a game from the collection is already running, then side buttons, power and cooler are added to it, and unnecessary notifications are blocked. But aiming, shooting and any other functions (depending on the game) can be assigned to the index fingers. Buttons on the end work best in games that previously seemed inconvenient. A great example is PUBG, where without additional buttons you can only hang out at the bottom of the rating. And people for all smartphones buy buttons on Ali, and here they have become part of the design, because of which they work many times faster.

Gaming performance is just a buzz, but either temperature and frequency sensors do not work correctly, or there is a catch in the operating modes. With automatic performance, the case barely heats up even after a couple of hours, but Performance makes the back wall hot, to say the least. From the point of view of the hub, this is the difference between 40 and 43 degrees, which looks slightly doubtful.

Because other programs show 60-65 degrees on the hottest core at maximum load, which is closer to reality. But the frequencies are kept vigorously from medium to maximum, which allows you to swing any game except ARK (there is trouble with optimization).

Turning on the cooler helps cool the stuffing to 37-38 degrees (according to the hub) or 50-55 according to the throttling test, but is it worth it, because the cooler makes a lot of noise. Because of its dimensions, it does not fizz or buzz, but whistles at a speed of up to 10 thousand revolutions per minute. I thought I would get used to it, but the hand itself stretches to turn off the twister, even in the most important batches.

Much more important than the cooler would be a built-in program for recording video from games. Google notably stalled and a couple of years ago banned sound recording from the system, so now all applications write sound only from a microphone. At Xiaomi last remained such a recording of system sounds through a proprietary application. And I had to take AZ Recorder and you know that - on the microphone you can hear that very cooler. Yes, and the microphone is blocked by hand with a normal grip of the game. It's a fiasco, bro!

And what then works out of gaming opportunities? The battery, display, speakers and buttons on the edge of the smartphone. Yes, it is worth starting with a battery, which is 5000 mAh here, which allows you to play hard games for 5-8 hours in a row. On a huge HDR-display is very convenient to play, its refresh rate has been increased from 60 to 90 Hz, and the touch screen response to 240 Hz. So the picture is very smooth and responsive. I do not know if there is any chip for sounding the sound, but the audio system works soundly both in wired headphones (yes, there is 3.5 jack) and via Bluetooth and, rarely, in the built-in speakers.

Finally, I will say a few words about the main camera. Of course, there will be a separate video reviewing all the pros and cons, so write any questions and try to answer. There will be something to talk about. The smartphone has only one module, but which one! This is a Sony IMX 586 with a real 48 megapixel sensor. A huge matrix 1/2 "in a pair with successful optics make the picture artistic.

During the day or twilight, the frames are slightly sharp, but still very worthy. Before the DSLR does not reach, but quite the flagship smartphone. But in the evening and at night there are restrictions - for a single module, everything is very good, but you can only shoot bright streets. The second or third cameras could help, but ZTE decided to save. Although. The same Sony 586 sensor in paired and triple circuits shows much better results, especially at night (it stands in many new Xiaomi, OnePlus and even completely nameless Chinese).

Conflicting feelings caused the video recording. 4K quality during the day and at dusk is so good that it is sometimes hard to believe what is happening. Stabilization is far from the level of the Galaxy S10 (or not at all), but how many details does the IMX 586 allow to record! There are H.264, H.265 codecs and even HDR 10 support for video. The bitrate is about 80 thousand, which is very good. It is visible each hair on ** ne at an ant, you do not dig. The photo is much inferior to the SLR, but the video is quite at the level, if not higher.

Another thing is that we were promised a slush on Full HD (and it is not there at all, although the chipset and camera support, and its presence is indicated on the site), but at the same time they promised 8K video at 30 frames per second, but in reality 5-10 frames are shot per second. 5 frames, KARL! The company replied that these functions are still only in the Chinese firmware, and a full-fledged port to Europe will require several more months of hard work.

It turns out that for games it is one of the best Android smartphones, and maybe the best. The processor, display, battery, speakers, cooling, and even the side buttons make the game as comfortable as possible if your zaruby last for hours. But the price tag of 475 Euros made the company save on the camera, it’s impossible to record your Naguibs in the spirit of Xiaomi (there are no applications in the kit), and some useful chips remained in the Chinese firmware (Slow-Motion, HDMI, etc.). And, which is quite a shame, the two most bloated opportunities in advertising simply do not work: the fan only barely reduces the temperature (but whistles very loudly), and 8K-video turned out to be a complete failure. And yet, for games to take such a smartphone is quite possible, and 4K-video recording is simply amazing. The main alternative can be considered Black Shark 2 from Xiaomi, but there is very much a toy design, it's scary for people to go out. While the red Red Magic looks more than stylish for its class.