The Charger and Charging Experience

I was able to recharge my phone from zero percent to 98 in just over 30 minutes, which is probably due to using a dual 4 500 milliamp per hour double cell battery. A similar technique is also used in the OnePlus 10 Pro, which also charges at 65 watts in the US and as fast as 80 watts in the international model. The phone's charger also can bypass the battery to power the phone, which would be nice to see come to other phones, especially when your battery is otherwise dead and you don't want to wait for it to charge up to three to five percent.

In the case of the Red Magic, it allows the phone to also keep the battery cool and extend its battery's lifespan by letting it run off the charger instead when available. This feature is particularly useful in situations where you don't want to wait for your battery to charge up fully before using your phone.

Gaming Tests

While you can launch games like any other Android phone, the Red Magic includes a hardware switch in the top left that launches a gaming-specific launcher. Some games are automatically added to this launcher when you download them, but if it misses a few games, you can also add them directly. When the Red Magic recognizes that you're launching a game, it automatically starts its built-in cooling fan and launches several software enhancements. It also displays a little stats window that shows data like how many frames per second the game is actually running at.

You can also swipe in from the corners of the screen to select from different power modes and to change the refresh rate. There are also features for recording your gameplay and then sharing it to Discord or other messaging apps. The side of the Red Magic also has a touch-sensitive area that can act like a shoulder button, and you can configure those buttons to tap on specific sections of the screen.

For example, in Apex Legends Mobile, I set up the touch-sensitive area to shoot. The phone didn't appear to chug at all despite warnings provided by the game that the phone may need to be paired up with a cooling system. This gaming performance was consistent across other games I tried, although more casual games expectedly peaked at 60 frames per second like in Mario Kart.

Other Gaming Features

The Red Magic includes a case in the box so you don't have to hold the phone directly while playing. The fan also kicks on while you're charging the phone to help keep things cool during its fast charging. I also liked how the fan of my review unit has a rainbow lighting effect, which doesn't help with cooling things down but still a nice touch.

Other highlights of the Red Magic include dual stereo speakers that were helpful when my hand covered one of the speakers while playing. The inclusion of a headphone jack is always notable. The phone includes a 64-megapixel main rear camera, an 8-megapixel ultra-wide camera, and a 2-megapixel depth sensor camera. The front-facing camera is an 8-megapixel camera.

Camera and Display

The rear cameras are fine and include a night mode for photography and video recording at up to 8k resolution at 30 frames per second along with 4k at 60 frames per second. However, the phone being so gaming-focused this likely isn't going to be the device to get if you're hoping to take lots and lots of photos and video.

I am surprised that the front-facing camera isn't at 13 or 60 megapixels though to help with live streaming and perhaps this is one of the ways that the phone gets its price. The phone runs on Red Magic OS 5.0, which is based on Android 12. This take on Android 12 isn't my favorite; it initially places all of its apps on the home screen like iOS, but a few quick setting changes can bring back the app drawer if you'd rather have that in place.

The launcher also defaults to the next web browser, which again can be easily flipped to Chrome, Firefox, or any other browser you prefer.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis is the red magic 7 gaming phone and it's overkill in nearly every way except for its 629 price it's also a glimpse at future features you'll see on samsung phones and the iphone everything about the red magic 7 is designed to get as much graphics performance and frame rate out of android games as you can possibly get the 629 model starts with 128 gigs of storage paired with up to 12 gigs of ram the review unit i've been testing is 7.99 and comes with 256 gigs of space and 18 gigs of ram and this is our first hint of overkill on the red magic to give you some perspective the 800 galaxy s22 has 8 gigs of ram the phone includes the latest snapdragon 8 gen 1 chip which is the same as what we see in the galaxy s22 line and the oneplus 10 pro but the headline feature is the 6.8 inch amoled screen which has a refresh rate of up to 165 hertz that's actually the same as last year's red magic 6 but it's still blisteringly smooth and games i play that could take advantage of that like the mortal kombat mobile game look great phones like the galaxy s22 ultra and iphone 13 pro have displays that top out at 120 hertz for years we've seen phones at various prices moving away from standard 60hz screens you could find 90hz screens on phones price as low as 250 dollars like with the galaxy a13 5g but 120hz screens are still largely reserved for phones costing 500 or more the red magic's combination of 165hz display and a 629 price tag hinted at a future where even faster refresh rate screens can end up on even more phones no matter the price while this gaming phone showcases its 165 hertz refresh rate there are just a far fewer games that actually support anything beyond 120 or 160 frames it is a feature that is hard to see as a tangible benefit even a 90hz display provides benefits like smoother tech scrolling and animations when reading articles and moving between apps 165hz is frankly beyond at least my eyes ability to perceive smoothness but with phones like the thousand dollar moto edge plus already bringing 144 hertz into a non-gaming phone it seems pretty likely that 165hz could be what we see in future phones in years to come if more phones adopt these faster refresh rates then there will eventually be more games and software that support them too the red magic 7 also touts a speedy touch responsiveness on its screen specifying that has a 720 hertz multi-finger touch sampling rate those are their words what that 720 hertz means is the screen is very responsive to taps while playing games and that is a feature that could potentially have benefits beyond gaming during my testing i tried out both locally downloaded games and game streaming over the stadia cloud service cloud gaming in general is notorious for lag under wi-fi and especially cellular connections but the red magic's responsive screen created a noticeable improvement for logging all of my inputs i was able to almost create combos in mortal kombat 11 and while i'm still having issues with a fairly early level of marvel's avengers controlling the hulk using the touchscreen on a cloud streaming version of the game wasn't one of them as more responsive screens continued development perhaps they would also help with handwriting or drawing on a phone which outside of phones built for a specific stylus can still be rather challenging and other than speed i think how the red magic 7 handles power not graphics power like literal electricity could be something other phone makers should consider for flagship phones going forward the red magic 7 includes a 65 watt gan fast charger in the box of the phone it's not only a very fast charger it's roughly the same size as my 19 watt charging brick that i originally got with my pixel 3. using the charger i was able to recharge the phone from zero percent to 98 in just over 30 minutes which is probably pulled off using a dual 4 500 milliamp per hour double cell battery a similar technique is also used in the oneplus 10 pro which also charges at 65 watts in the us and as fast as 80 watts in the international model the phone's charger also can bypass the battery to power the phone which would also be nice to see come to other phones especially when your battery is otherwise dead and you don't want to wait it to charge up to three to five percent to use in the case of the red magic it allows the phone to also keep the battery cool and extend its battery's lifespan by letting it run off the charger instead when available so how do these benefits match up with the rest of the red magic 7 phone starting with my gaming tests while you can launch games like any other android phone the red magic includes a hardware switch in the top left that launches a gaming specific launcher some games are automatically added to here when you download them but if it misses a few games you can also add them directly when the red magic recognizes you are launching a game the phone automatically starts its built-in cooling fan and launches a number of software enhancements and a little stats window that shows you data like how many frames per second the game is actually running at you can also swipe in from the corners of the screen to select from different power modes and to change the refresh rate there are also features for recording your gameplay and then sharing to discord or other messaging apps the side of the red magic also has a touch sensitive area that can act like a shoulder button and you can configure those buttons to tap a specific section of the screen for you for example in apex legends mobile i set it up to shoot apex legends includes a variety of graphics and frame rate options so i went ahead and cranked them up and the phone didn't appear to chug at all despite warnings provided by the game that the phone may need to be paired up with a cooling system this gaming performance was consistent across other games i tried although more casual games expectedly peaked at 60 frames per second like in mario kart depending on what you're playing the phone really could start heating up in addition to using the cooling fan which other gaming phones also have the red magic includes a case in the box so you don't have to hold the phone directly the fan also kicks on while you're charging the phone to help keep things cool during its fast charging i also liked how the fan of my review unit has a rainbow lighting effect which doesn't help with cooling things down but still a nice touch other highlights are the dual stereo speakers which were helpful when my hand covered one of the speakers while playing also the inclusion of a headphone jack is always notable the phone includes a 64 megapixel main rear camera an 8 megapixel ultra wide camera and a 2 megapixel depth sensor camera on the front is an 8 megapixel camera the rear cameras are fine and include a night mode for photography and video recording at up to 8k resolution at 30 frames per second along with 4k at 60 frames per second but with the phone being so gaming focused this likely isn't going to be the device to get if you're hoping to take lots and lots of photos and video i am surprised that the front-facing camera though isn't at 13 or 60 megapixels though to help with live streaming and perhaps this is one of the ways that the phone gets to its price the phone runs on red magic os 5.0 which is based on android 12. this take on android 12 isn't my favorite it initially places all of its apps on the home screen like ios but a few quick setting changes can bring back the app drawer if you'd rather have that in place that said i wouldn't be surprised people who do get this phone just load up their favorite android launcher instead the launcher also defaults to the next word web browser which again can be easily flipped to chrome firefox or any other browser you prefer for most phone fans devices like the red magic 7 are a showcase of where the phone industry currently is the phone is absolutely overkill from the 165hz refresh rate to the extra responsive touchscreen and all the different power options available for gaming yet as long as some of these features didn't require a cooling fan many of them could show up in future devices from apple samsung google and others if you want to learn more about the red magic 7 check out my review on cnet linked in the description and would you want a gaming phone or are there features in this phone you would want in your next phone talk to me about that in the comments and for more guides like these like and subscribe to cnet on youtubethis is the red magic 7 gaming phone and it's overkill in nearly every way except for its 629 price it's also a glimpse at future features you'll see on samsung phones and the iphone everything about the red magic 7 is designed to get as much graphics performance and frame rate out of android games as you can possibly get the 629 model starts with 128 gigs of storage paired with up to 12 gigs of ram the review unit i've been testing is 7.99 and comes with 256 gigs of space and 18 gigs of ram and this is our first hint of overkill on the red magic to give you some perspective the 800 galaxy s22 has 8 gigs of ram the phone includes the latest snapdragon 8 gen 1 chip which is the same as what we see in the galaxy s22 line and the oneplus 10 pro but the headline feature is the 6.8 inch amoled screen which has a refresh rate of up to 165 hertz that's actually the same as last year's red magic 6 but it's still blisteringly smooth and games i play that could take advantage of that like the mortal kombat mobile game look great phones like the galaxy s22 ultra and iphone 13 pro have displays that top out at 120 hertz for years we've seen phones at various prices moving away from standard 60hz screens you could find 90hz screens on phones price as low as 250 dollars like with the galaxy a13 5g but 120hz screens are still largely reserved for phones costing 500 or more the red magic's combination of 165hz display and a 629 price tag hinted at a future where even faster refresh rate screens can end up on even more phones no matter the price while this gaming phone showcases its 165 hertz refresh rate there are just a far fewer games that actually support anything beyond 120 or 160 frames it is a feature that is hard to see as a tangible benefit even a 90hz display provides benefits like smoother tech scrolling and animations when reading articles and moving between apps 165hz is frankly beyond at least my eyes ability to perceive smoothness but with phones like the thousand dollar moto edge plus already bringing 144 hertz into a non-gaming phone it seems pretty likely that 165hz could be what we see in future phones in years to come if more phones adopt these faster refresh rates then there will eventually be more games and software that support them too the red magic 7 also touts a speedy touch responsiveness on its screen specifying that has a 720 hertz multi-finger touch sampling rate those are their words what that 720 hertz means is the screen is very responsive to taps while playing games and that is a feature that could potentially have benefits beyond gaming during my testing i tried out both locally downloaded games and game streaming over the stadia cloud service cloud gaming in general is notorious for lag under wi-fi and especially cellular connections but the red magic's responsive screen created a noticeable improvement for logging all of my inputs i was able to almost create combos in mortal kombat 11 and while i'm still having issues with a fairly early level of marvel's avengers controlling the hulk using the touchscreen on a cloud streaming version of the game wasn't one of them as more responsive screens continued development perhaps they would also help with handwriting or drawing on a phone which outside of phones built for a specific stylus can still be rather challenging and other than speed i think how the red magic 7 handles power not graphics power like literal electricity could be something other phone makers should consider for flagship phones going forward the red magic 7 includes a 65 watt gan fast charger in the box of the phone it's not only a very fast charger it's roughly the same size as my 19 watt charging brick that i originally got with my pixel 3. using the charger i was able to recharge the phone from zero percent to 98 in just over 30 minutes which is probably pulled off using a dual 4 500 milliamp per hour double cell battery a similar technique is also used in the oneplus 10 pro which also charges at 65 watts in the us and as fast as 80 watts in the international model the phone's charger also can bypass the battery to power the phone which would also be nice to see come to other phones especially when your battery is otherwise dead and you don't want to wait it to charge up to three to five percent to use in the case of the red magic it allows the phone to also keep the battery cool and extend its battery's lifespan by letting it run off the charger instead when available so how do these benefits match up with the rest of the red magic 7 phone starting with my gaming tests while you can launch games like any other android phone the red magic includes a hardware switch in the top left that launches a gaming specific launcher some games are automatically added to here when you download them but if it misses a few games you can also add them directly when the red magic recognizes you are launching a game the phone automatically starts its built-in cooling fan and launches a number of software enhancements and a little stats window that shows you data like how many frames per second the game is actually running at you can also swipe in from the corners of the screen to select from different power modes and to change the refresh rate there are also features for recording your gameplay and then sharing to discord or other messaging apps the side of the red magic also has a touch sensitive area that can act like a shoulder button and you can configure those buttons to tap a specific section of the screen for you for example in apex legends mobile i set it up to shoot apex legends includes a variety of graphics and frame rate options so i went ahead and cranked them up and the phone didn't appear to chug at all despite warnings provided by the game that the phone may need to be paired up with a cooling system this gaming performance was consistent across other games i tried although more casual games expectedly peaked at 60 frames per second like in mario kart depending on what you're playing the phone really could start heating up in addition to using the cooling fan which other gaming phones also have the red magic includes a case in the box so you don't have to hold the phone directly the fan also kicks on while you're charging the phone to help keep things cool during its fast charging i also liked how the fan of my review unit has a rainbow lighting effect which doesn't help with cooling things down but still a nice touch other highlights are the dual stereo speakers which were helpful when my hand covered one of the speakers while playing also the inclusion of a headphone jack is always notable the phone includes a 64 megapixel main rear camera an 8 megapixel ultra wide camera and a 2 megapixel depth sensor camera on the front is an 8 megapixel camera the rear cameras are fine and include a night mode for photography and video recording at up to 8k resolution at 30 frames per second along with 4k at 60 frames per second but with the phone being so gaming focused this likely isn't going to be the device to get if you're hoping to take lots and lots of photos and video i am surprised that the front-facing camera though isn't at 13 or 60 megapixels though to help with live streaming and perhaps this is one of the ways that the phone gets to its price the phone runs on red magic os 5.0 which is based on android 12. this take on android 12 isn't my favorite it initially places all of its apps on the home screen like ios but a few quick setting changes can bring back the app drawer if you'd rather have that in place that said i wouldn't be surprised people who do get this phone just load up their favorite android launcher instead the launcher also defaults to the next word web browser which again can be easily flipped to chrome firefox or any other browser you prefer for most phone fans devices like the red magic 7 are a showcase of where the phone industry currently is the phone is absolutely overkill from the 165hz refresh rate to the extra responsive touchscreen and all the different power options available for gaming yet as long as some of these features didn't require a cooling fan many of them could show up in future devices from apple samsung google and others if you want to learn more about the red magic 7 check out my review on cnet linked in the description and would you want a gaming phone or are there features in this phone you would want in your next phone talk to me about that in the comments and for more guides like these like and subscribe to cnet on youtube\n"