nubia Red Magic 3s review

Stock Android with some gaming features on top

The handset comes with a pretty much what you'd call stock Android. There are just a couple of UI changes such as the folders on the home screen - they expand in a small window instead of opening on a full-screen, and, of course, there are a couple of gaming-related features, but we will talk about them in a bit. Aside from that, it's a vanilla Android 9.0 Pie.

We are also happy to report that the bugs we've encountered with the first Red Magic 3 weren't present here. Aside from the strange and misleading translations here and there, the software ran smoothly without major hiccups or bugs. Now off to the more interesting stuff.

The first cool feature about the phone is the RGB LED lighting on the back. The illuminated strip and logo are fully customizable in the Multi-color LED Strip menu. You can set the strip to turn on during gaming, calls, notifications, when music is playing when booting up the device, and while charging. Each action can be customized with various effects and colors.

RGB LED customization

There's even deeper customization that lets you combine effects with colors from the color wheel. We can definitely see how this LED lamp will come in handy aside from just being pretty, but for that, you'll have to keep your phone flat on its screen to see the strip.

We also discovered a new screen recording feature in the new software version and the so-called picture-in-picture mode. The latter lets you open an app in a floating window, and we can see it being pretty useful during gaming, for example. Unfortunately, though, the picture-in-picture functionality works only with Whatsapp for now. Perhaps more third-party apps will support it in the future, but it's pretty nice to use the floating window for a quick reply during gaming. And the best part is that you can summon the app by tapping on a quick toggle that comes up in the notification shade.

Picture-in-picture feature

Anything besides that is basic and standard for stock Android.

Home screen, lock screen, notification shade general settings menu

Gaming-related features

As before, nubia has included the so-called Game Space to help you manage your games more easily and also give you full control over some of the settings during gameplay. The Game Space can be summoned by flipping the hardware switch located near the upper-left corner of the phone.

Once Game Space launches, you will be greeted with all the apps and games you've added to Game Space launcher. On the bottom bar, you will find quick toggles for the most common features the cooling fan, the RGB strip on the back and block calls and messages.

There's an additional menu that you can slide out with a single swipe during gaming and while in the launcher. It gives you real-time information of the CPU and GPU frequency, temperatures, a quick toggle for the cooling fan, a toggle for a quick screenshot and screen recording.

Game Space

Additional features like performance boost and 4D shock (using the haptic engine) are also available but the latter, for example, supports only a couple of games with PUBG being one of them.

The so-called Personal Center located in the upper-right corner of the Game Space launcher gives you granular control over some of the features. You can set the fan control to auto, for example, or blast it at full speed for maximum efficiency. The video record settings menu has plenty of options to play with too. And if you are away from the charger, switching over to 60Hz gaming could help extend your batter life just enough until you get home. But as we've already said, the setting doesn't apply for the whole system.

Game Space

But our experience with Game Space didn't go without some hurdles. For example, the fan control is largely unreliable. In some cases, like the AnTuTu benchmark, for example, you just can't turn off the fan even when it's clearly toggled off. To be fair, though, there is just a handful situations in which you'd want to turn off the fan. After all, the fan itself isn't that loud, maybe a bit high-pitched, but you will hear it only in really quiet environments.

Another annoying thing about the launcher is the navigation. The only way to exit the launcher is to flip the hardware switch off as the navigation bar gets disabled while Game Space is running. There's just the one back button in the side menu.

And as far as the shoulder triggers go, we have nothing bad to say about them. They are super easy to customize, and we liked them a lot in shooters. Perhaps, they could be moved a bit closer together so you don't have to do yoga with your index fingers. On the other hand, this is not the type of thing that "one size fits all".

In-game Game Space menus and settings

Performance

The main difference between the Red Magic 3 and the current Red Magic 3s is the chipset. The latter incorporates the latest Snapdragon 855+ SoC as opposed to the Snapdragon 855 on the older model. We expect similar if not almost identical performance to the older model since the Snapdragon 855+ works with the same GPU and CPU, but the former is clocked a bit higher delivering a tad better performance.

We've got the octa-core CPU consisting of 1x.2.96GHz Kryo 485 core, 3x lower clocked 2.42GHz Kryo 485 cores and four more Kryo 485 cores ticking at 1.8GHz for the less demanding tasks. The Adreno 640 clocked at 700MHz takes care of the GPU-intensive tasks.

Another difference is that the Red Magic 3s doesn't offer the 6GB/64GB configuration, and the minimum is now 8GB/128GB going up to 12GB/256GB. The speedier UFS 3.0 storage is also something worth mentioning.

Now let's dig deep into the data we extracted from our thorough testing.

GeekBench 4.1 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Huawei Mate 30 Pro (Perf mode)
  11936
• ZTE nubia Red Magic 3 (new ROM)
  11345
• ZTE nubia Red Magic 3s
  11310
• OnePlus 7T Pro
  11246
• Black Shark 2
  11192
• Asus ROG Phone II (X Mode)
  10933
• Samsung Galaxy Note10+
  10403
• Huawei P30 Pro (perf. mode)
  10014

GeekBench 4.1 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy Note10+
  4541
• Huawei Mate 30 Pro (Perf mode)
  3864
• ZTE nubia Red Magic 3s
  3576
• ZTE nubia Red Magic 3 (new ROM)
  3547
• Asus ROG Phone II (X Mode)
  3527
• Black Shark 2
  3515
• OnePlus 7T Pro
  3502
• Huawei P30 Pro (perf. mode)
  3323

GeekBench 5 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Huawei Mate 30 Pro (Perf mode)
  2972
• OnePlus 7T Pro
  2807
• Asus ROG Phone II (X Mode)
  2743
• ZTE nubia Red Magic 3s
  2740
• Samsung Galaxy Note10+
  2300

GeekBench 5 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy Note10+
  822
• OnePlus 7T Pro
  780
• Huawei Mate 30 Pro (Perf mode)
  779
• ZTE nubia Red Magic 3s
  778
• Asus ROG Phone II (X Mode)
  739

AnTuTu 7

Higher is better

• OnePlus 7T Pro
  395868
• ZTE nubia Red Magic 3 (new ROM)
  387726
• Huawei Mate 30 Pro (Perf mode)
  378950
• ZTE nubia Red Magic 3s
  358748
• Black Shark 2
  343460
• Samsung Galaxy Note10+
  342208
• Huawei P30 Pro (perf. mode)
  316156

AnTuTu 8

Higher is better

• ZTE nubia Red Magic 3s
  495229
• Asus ROG Phone II (X Mode)
  485495
• Huawei Mate 30 Pro (Perf mode)
  468595

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 7T Pro
  80
• ZTE nubia Red Magic 3s
  79
• Asus ROG Phone II (X Mode)
  78
• Huawei Mate 30 Pro (Perf mode)
  76
• ZTE nubia Red Magic 3 (new ROM)
  71
• Black Shark 2
  71
• Samsung Galaxy Note10+
  68
• Huawei P30 Pro (perf. mode)
  56

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Asus ROG Phone II (X Mode)
  69
• ZTE nubia Red Magic 3s
  65
• ZTE nubia Red Magic 3 (new ROM)
  62
• Black Shark 2
  57
• Huawei Mate 30 Pro (Perf mode)
  56
• Huawei P30 Pro (perf. mode)
  50
• OnePlus 7T Pro
  40
• Samsung Galaxy Note10+
  38

GFX 3.1 Car scene (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 7T Pro
  48
• Asus ROG Phone II (X Mode)
  47
• ZTE nubia Red Magic 3s
  46
• Samsung Galaxy Note10+
  43
• ZTE nubia Red Magic 3 (new ROM)
  42
• Black Shark 2
  42
• Huawei Mate 30 Pro (Perf mode)
  42
• Huawei P30 Pro (perf. mode)
  33

GFX 3.1 Car scene (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Asus ROG Phone II (X Mode)
  40
• ZTE nubia Red Magic 3s
  37
• ZTE nubia Red Magic 3 (new ROM)
  37
• Black Shark 2
  36
• Huawei Mate 30 Pro (Perf mode)
  34
• Huawei P30 Pro (perf. mode)
  29
• OnePlus 7T Pro
  24
• Samsung Galaxy Note10+
  24

3DMark SSE 3.1 Unlimited

Higher is better

• OnePlus 7T Pro
  6921
• Asus ROG Phone II (X Mode)
  6860
• ZTE nubia Red Magic 3s
  6678
• Black Shark 2
  6330
• Huawei Mate 30 Pro (Perf mode)
  6322
• ZTE nubia Red Magic 3 (new ROM)
  6258
• Samsung Galaxy Note10+
  5287
• Huawei P30 Pro (perf. mode)
  4315

As expected, the Red Magic 3s is capable of squeezing every last bit of performance out of the Snapdragon 855+ chipset and performs as expected. But we suspect that short-burst performance in benchmark tests is not what you came for here. Sustained performance over long periods is what matters in gaming phones.

Screenshots from the CPU torture test

After an hour-long torture test, the phone's surface got to around 37°C near the camera and below 35°C around the lower half of the phone. That's not necessarily uncomfortable, though, so you can keep that in your hands without a problem.

The torture test also said that the phone's CPU throttled only down to 92% of its maximum performance over the long one hour of simulated gaming session, which is pretty admirable too. To be honest, we didn't expect radically different results from the previous model, but we felt compelled to try out the Snapdragon 855+ in this regard. We are happy to report that no one messed it up and the phone's sustained performance is excellent, partially due to the active cooling system.