ZTE Nubia RedMagic 7S Pro Long-Term Review: Why I Keep Coming Back

Gaming phones hold a special niche in the smartphone industry. On the face of it, they're among the most powerful phones you can buy today, with extra features you won't find anywhere else. They're souped up more than most other flagships, but they continually get a bum rap for no really good reason. I've had the RedMagic 7S Pro in my pocket for almost six months now, and in that time, I have reviewed and or carried the Samsung Galaxy Flip 4, the Pixel 7, the iPhone 14 Pro, and a host of others. But my constant companion during that time has been the RedMagic 7S Pro.

The reasons for that are two-fold, and both a strike against the RedMagic phone and a bonus for it. I will cover all of those points, but the long-story-short version is that the RedMagic 7S Pro is both too much phone and not enough phone at the same time. I've been using this phone for almost six months as my secondary device, and this is my full review. ZTE nubia provided a review unit for the purpose of this review.

If there is one thing that I love about gaming phones, it's that they simply just don't care. They don't care what other phones look like. They don't care how other phones are supposed to be. They are just themselves, and they dare you to look down on them. The RedMagic 7S Pro is no exception. The back of this phone screams "look at me" with a black glass exterior that surrounds a reflective pattern that resembles scales, which itself surrounds a camouflage backplate with unsubtle RedMagic branding and a triple camera setup. 

That would be a lot by itself, but there's also an air vent for cooling (one of two on the phone) and two RGB light strips in the middle that activate when the phone is charging, a call comes in, or while you're gaming. It's bonkers.

On the right side of the phone, you have your typical volume rocker and power button, along with a second air vent and two capacitive shoulder triggers that you can set up for gaming. On the left of the phone is a single switch that essentially puts your phone into gaming mode –- more on that later.

The phone packs a 6.8-inch AMOLED 1080p display, along with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor, 12 GB of RAM (as reviewed), 256 GB of storage (as reviewed), and a 5000 mAh battery with 65-Watt fast charging (or 135-watt overseas). If all that sounds like any other flagship, then you're correct. This is a top-spec beast by any standard.

That display is unmarred because the selfie camera is an under-screen selfie shooter that does so good a job hiding, I often forget it's there. The under-screen fingerprint reader is also fast and accurate.

On the software side, you get RedMagic OS 5 built on top of Android 12. It is software built with gaming top of mind, make no mistake. The operating system itself is fine, though there are a few tweaks I could recommend. The icons in settings and the notification shade are a bit on the cartoony side, and the overall UI is just a bit ...off. Some buttons have their text cut off and there's the occasional misspelling. When there are multiple notifications, but you don't expand them, they tell you about X number of notifications "hidden" which implies that they can be unhidden except they can't be. That's just what the UI says.

The whole UI just feels like it wasn't written for English first, like an Amazon product listing. That's not necessarily a surprise; these phones are made by ZTE which is a Chinese company — but other China-based manufacturers don't have these problems. None of these are end-of-the-world problems, but they lack the polish that you would expect on a flagship phone. It's like driving a Ferrari with a missing gear shift knob. That is, I assume Ferraris have a gear shift knob; I've never been in one. 

To top it all off, none of this is true once you switch into gaming mode which makes it weirder — no misspellings, no cut-off text, and no poorly translated text, just a smooth, polished interface that makes gaming better. It's like RedMagic set out to make a gaming phone and then realized at the last second that people might do other things on this phone that aren't games.

Gaming mode is very sweet, very polished, and transforms your phone into the powerhouse it was meant to be. When you flip the switch, the RedMagic logo flashes across the screen and you're taken into your game lobby. Here, you can launch your games, set up your gaming options (such as disabling notifications), and load plugins. The plugins in particular can help you up your game by adding a permanent crosshair, zooming in on the screen, and more. There are a lot of options here that can give you a competitive edge.

When you go into a game, you can set up one of the most important features on the phone — the shoulder triggers. The triggers have a 540Hz response rate which is crazy fast. You use the phone's software to set up locations that are triggered. You can set these anywhere on the screen (on the "fire" button) and switch between setups for different games. When you press the trigger, the corresponding spot on the screen is pressed so you can fire a gun, jump, slice with a sword, or do whatever you set them to do. The advantage is twofold.

First, your fingers don't get in your way when you're trying to see what's happening on the screen. Second, those touches are static; they don't move the screen. Often when I'm mashing down on a button, my finger will inadvertently shift the screen just a bit which throws off my aim. When you're hitting a shoulder trigger, that doesn't move the screen at all, so your aim remains true. It works wonders for sniper rifles.

Additionally, when you fire up gaming mode, the fans kick in and you can get the LED light strip going as well (although both are optional). The cooling fan helps keep the processor's temperature down so you can game harder without overworking the processor or even damaging it. Thermals are a big deal when it comes to gaming, so the ability to keep even a little more heat off your phone's brain will help you long-term.

Additionally, when you're in gaming mode, you can start up a recording or game streaming from the interface. I don't stream games myself, but I like the idea of capturing some footage from a particularly challenging game of "Call of Duty: Mobile" or a tough opponent in "Genshin Impact." All this is the literal game-changer for me and the reason why I keep going back to this phone. The shoulder triggers and plug-ins elevate this phone to a new tier when it comes to gaming. It's really indispensable.

Overall, I have no complaints about the battery life of the RedMagic 7S Pro. The 5,000 mAh battery lasts at least a day, which is important because I do all of my gaming on this phone. Plus, this phone is equipped with 65W fast charging, which means you plug this phone in for as little as 15 minutes, and you're back up to 50% and you're full at just over 40 minutes. These aren't OnePlus speeds, but they're pretty good. Plus, as an added benefit, you can use the charger that comes in the box to charge your laptop if you want.

As for performance, it screams. My primary games are "Call of Duty: Mobile" and "Genshin Impact". At default settings, the phone is crazy good. Upping the graphics on Genshin Impact will get you sporadic dropped frames, but nothing that impacts gameplay. If you want numbers, Geekbench returns single/multi-core scores of 1342 and 4045, which places the phone far beyond the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor in the Samsung Galaxy Flip 4 (663/3317) but not quite up to the A15 in the iPhone 14 Pro (1894/5481).

The fan on the phone is a bit loud; there's no getting around that. But it also helps keep the processor cooler for longer so it's a worthy trade-off. The phone is equipped with a headphone jack, so if the fan bothers you that much, plug in some headphones and you'll be right as rain.

The camera is the reason why this phone is my secondary phone and not my primary phone. It is the corner that the RedMagic 7S Pro cuts, and it lopped off a very large corner. First, let's talk about the hardware. The phone is equipped with a 64-megapixel main sensor, 8-megapixel ultrawide sensor, and 2-megapixel macro sensor. So basically, this phone has two cameras and only one of the two is worth talking about.

When working with subjects that are standing still in good light, you can snap some good photos. But if any of those conditions are not met, things go downhill very quickly. Moving subjects range from softly focused to downright blurry.

Adam Doud/SlashGear

Photos in the dark can be what I call "social media good" in that they're really only good for getting compressed and shared to a small screen, but again only if you have subjects that are not moving at all. 

Even then, you'll get grainy blacks. It's not terrible, but for a phone that is a flagship in every other way, this is disappointing. The ultrawide camera is serviceable, but only in the best of light. There is a noticeable difference in color science between the two lenses which is not uncommon in budget phones, but very odd on a flagship phone.

Selfies and video absolutely bury the phone. The selfie camera is a 16-megapixel shooter which, as I mentioned before, is under the screen. Early iterations of under-screen selfies exhibited a washed-out look, and this camera is no different. It's like looking at a photo that has been rubbed down with a wax candle. It's just not very pleasant to look at.

Video is grainy, even in good light, and juddery when you walk. You can see the picture bounce with every step. That's not uncommon in cameras at night, but during the day that's unacceptable. Even the tiniest bit of digital video stabilization should be able to correct this. I have shot video with phones that you can buy for 1/4 the price that do not exhibit this symptom.

Adam Doud/SlashGear

So, what you're left with is an unreliable camera and to this suburban dad with kids and dogs, that's not an acceptable compromise. This camera setup exhibits all the traits I typically see in a $200 budget phone, not in a phone that costs almost $1,000.

Of course, the most ironic part of all of this is that RedMagic is one of a number of Chinese phone brands that love to brag that their cameras took photos by watermarking them. In the case of the RedMagic 7S Pro, that watermark is on by default. Phone makers, I mean this sincerely, do not do this. It's irritating and stupid, and especially in the case of this phone's camera, there is nothing to brag about here.

The thing is, this is an amazing phone in every way except for that one major deal breaker, and the added minor inconvenience of questionable software. Even the software is on the mend because in the six months I've been using this phone, I've gotten three or four fairly large updates. It's still not where I'd like to see it, but some early issues I had have been resolved.

I'd like to say that this phone is close to being a daily carrier for me, except the cameras are too important to me. But everything else is pretty great. The processor is baller, the design is amazing, and the fast charging is epic. I just wish that gaming phone makers wouldn't write off the camera setup so easily because otherwise this phone easily gives Samsung a run for its money.

Gaming phones are not for everyone, that's for sure, but the specifications that gaming phones carry are right up there with everyone else on the field. Plus, they have style and panache that can't be denied. I love whipping this phone out at parties just to see people's faces. "What phone is that?!"

So really, at this point, the ball is in ZTE's court. ZTE makes good phones with good to great camera setups. If that company could put the camera from the ZTE Axon 40 into this phone, I couldn't pay RedMagic fast enough for this phone and I would proudly carry it. As it stands now, it's a second phone, which is certainly a luxury for me, but that's not a realistic use case for the world at large.

The RedMagic 7S Pro retails for $879 and can be purchased from Amazon.