REVIEW – I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing several REDMAGIC devices here at the Gadgeteer now, including the recent excellent REDMAGIC 10 Pro gaming smartphone. The latest REDMAGIC 10S Pro gaming smartphone from REDMAGIC is nearly the same as the 10 Pro, but with some nifty new features that increase performance in several areas. I was eager as always to spend time “working” while playing games, but I had to take a break to write this review.
︎ Jump to summary (pros/cons)
Price: $699+
Where to buy: REDMAGIC and Amazon
What is it?
The REDMAGIC 10S Pro gaming smartphone is a smartphone designed for gaming first, while still being able to do all the “phone things” you’d want to do like media consumption, communication, photography, and work. It’s packing the latest top-of-the-line mobile hardware, an active cooling system (tiny turbofan) that’s a hallmark of the REDMAGIC gaming devices, and a battery that lasts for (literal) days if you’re not heavily gaming.
What’s included?
- REDMAGIC 10S Pro gaming smartphone
- Clear phone case
- AC 120v Power adapter
- Type-C data and charging cable
- Sim tray ejector
- Warranty card
- Documentation
Tech specs
Dimensions: 163.42 mm height, 76.14 mm width, 8.9 mm thickness
Weight: 229 g
Materials: Metal middle frame and glass rear cover
RAM/ROM options: Nightfall: 12 + 256GB, Moonlight: 16 + 512GB / 24 +1TB, Dusk: 16 + 512GB / 24 +1TB
RAM type: LPDDR5T
File system: UFS 4.1 Pro
Display: 6.853 Inch AMOLED
Refresh rate: Up to 144 Hz
Touch sampling rate: Highest 2500 Hz, Multi-Finger 960Hz
Resolution: 2688×1216 Pixels
Aspect ratio: 20:9
Max brightness: 2000 Nits
Display cover material: Corning® Gorilla® Glass
Color gamut and accuracy: 100% DCI-P3, △E＜1
Cooling system: Enhanced ICE-X Cooling System with multi-layer composites, Liquid Metal 2.0, High-Thermal-Conductivity Gel, Turbocharged fan, and a 12,000 mm² Vapor Chamber
CPU: Snapdragon 8 Elite Leading version, Oryon Cores, increased clock speeds to 4.47 Ghz
GPU: Adreno
System management: RedCore R3 Pro
SIM: Dual nano-SIM
5G Network bands (SA & NSA): n1 / n2 / n3 / n5 / n7 / n8 / n20 / n26 / n28 / n38 / n40 / n41 / n66 / n71 / n77 / n78
4G LTE Network bands FDD-LTE: B1 / B2 / B3 / B4 / B5 / B7 / B8 / B12 / B17 / B18 / B19 / B20 / B26 / B28A / B28B / B66
4G LTE Network bands TDD-LTE: B34 / B38 / B39 / B40 / B41 / B42
3G WCDMA / UMTS: B1 / B2 / B4 / B5 / B6 / B8 / B19
2G GSM: 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz (B2 / B3 / B5 / B8)
CDMA: BC0 / BC1
Wi-Fi: 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax Tri-Band (2.4GHz / 5GHz / 6GHz) with HBS (High Band Simultaneous) Support
Bluetooth: 5.4
GPS: Dual GPS (L1+L5)
NFC: Yes
Video over USB-C: Displayport up to 4K, HDMI converter needed
Rear Cameras resolutions: 50MP+50MP+2MP
Rear camera sensors: OV50E40, 1/1.55″, 7P F1.88 | OV50D40, 1/2.88″, 6P F2.0, both Optical Image Stabilized
Front camera: in-display 16 MP, AI Algorithm Enhancement,
Front camera sensor: OV16EQ, 1/2.77″, 5P, F2.0
Sensors: Fingerprint, G-sensor, Electronic Compass, Gyroscope, Proximity, Ambient Light Sensor, Infrared Sensor
Operating System: REDMAGIC OS 10.5 Based on Android 15.0
Battery: 7050 mAh Dual Cell battery
Quick Charging: Up to 80W PD
Ports: USB 3.2 Gen 2, Type-C, DP, Dual Nano-SIM Slot, 3.5mm Audio Jack
Speakers: Dual 1115K Speakers
Shoulder Trigger Buttons: 520Hz Touch Sampling Rate Touchpads
Design and features
The REDMAGIC 10S Pro gaming smartphone is available in three colorways: Nightfall (mostly black), Moonlight (white/grey), and Dusk (brushed metal, grey, and black). I was sent the Dusk 16GB/512GB version to review.
The front of the phone is nearly all screen, with a 95.3% screen to body ratio (which is even more than the latest flagships from Apple and Samsung). The display is covered in Gorilla Glass (version unspecified) and a factory installed film screen protector.
The back of the phone has some great accents on the Dusk and Moonlight colorways, and the glass back is nearly completely flat except for a very slight bump on the LED flash. Just like with the 10 Pro, I love that they’ve been able to keep the cameras internal without a camera bump, and the phone doesn’t feel too large for my big hands (it’s almost the same size and just 2 grams heavier than the iPhone 16 Pro Max).
The right side (or top if you’re holding the phone in landscape mode) sports the power button, volume rocker, and dedicated “Magic Button”, which is actually a slider that turns on the gaming mode.
On the two corners of the right side are the touch-sensitive shoulder trigger buttons. These nifty little buttons can be mapped to spots on the screen per-game, giving you fast and easy access to harder to reach on-screen buttons while playing.
On the top are holes for the speaker and microphone, as well as the 3.5 mm audio jack.
On the left side of the phone is one end of the airflow channel. The tiny turbofan pulls air in from one side of the phone and pushes it out the other, resulting in lower phone temperatures during demanding gaming sessions.
The cameras are similar (or identical) to the ones on the 10 Pro, but I’ve noticed better looking photos in all sorts of conditions including low light. REDMAGIC says they’ve added new AI algorithms, so maybe that’s what’s improving things this time around. Here’s a sample low light photo (click on it to see the full detail if you want):
They’re still no match for my Google Pixel Pro Fold (but only the non-folding Pixel 9’s have better photos out of all the phones I’ve tried so far). I do hate that they turn on a watermark (visible on the photo above), though you can turn this off in camera settings. The front camera might be slightly improved from the 10 Pro, but that’s not saying much. It’s very cool that the front facing camera is hidden under the display, but you get a lower quality and slightly blurry resulting image. The flash is bright, though I wish they’d been able to get it flush like the cameras, it’s a bit disappointing that one tiny spot sticks out just a hair from the otherwise completely smooth glass back.
On the bottom of the phone we find the USB-C charging and data port (which is a fast USB-C 3.2 gen 2 port). The dual nano-SIM tray is also on the bottom and is accessed just like any other phone (with the small SIM ejector tool included).
Flicking the red slider “Magic Switch” brings up the Game Lobby (after a short animation). You can manually add/remove games or other apps from the list, and explore plugins and settings here. I like having this dedicated gaming hub, but you can ignore it and remap the red switch to open/close the camera, turn on/off the flashlight, enter/exit face-to-face translation mode, or even switch sound modes.
Assembly, Installation, Setup
Installation and setup on the REDMAGIC 10S Pro gaming smartphone is pretty much vanilla Android until you finish the OS setup, then you get a screen that prompts you to add suggested apps (none of which seemed interesting or useful to me). There was some bloatware installed even after I skipped the “Select your favorite apps” screen including Booking.com and Facebook, among others. Luckily you can uninstall these.
I also plugged in the phone to get a full charge before testing, and the muscle car engine starting sound that accompanies the charging animation always makes me laugh:
Finally, I turned on the side “Board” just to see if it was similar to Google’s Now side screen feature on Pixel phones.
It is not. The “articles” look more like the clickbait sponsored garbage content you see after most news articles these days, rather than the actual news items themselves. I quickly turned this back off.
Performance
Gaming on the REDMAGIC 10S Pro gaming smartphone is about as good as it gets for me, at least for phone-sized-screen gaming. Popular games like Call of Duty and Genshin Impact ran at 90+ FPS (and you can turn on frame-generation features to boost that even higher for supported games!). Everything I threw at it felt buttery smooth, and features like the mappable trigger shoulder buttons are really nice for easy access to functions while gaming (like icons that are hard to reach or frequently used so you prefer to just use the trigger instead of pressing that spot on the screen). There are quite a few tricks hidden away in this phone as well that you can access on the fly while playing, just by swiping in from either side. One such trick is a magnifying feature that can take one spot on your screen and enlarge it (either over the top of the original spot or by duplicating it to another area of the screen), so you can see extra detail while sniping or looking for other players, or simply to magnify a hard-to-read information section. I’ll get into the benchmark details later, but one example (3DMark Wildlife Extreme) has the 10S Pro clocking in at over 50% faster than the iPhone 16 Pro Max. The interfaces and menus are super smooth thanks to the beefy hardware; I had zero hiccups or slowdowns throughout the entire review period.
The display is absolutely stunning. When set to high brightness, highlights or bright scenes can be eye searing, and it’s easily visible in any sunlight with the peak 2000 nits brightness. Games were vivid and colorful, and the 144 Hz refresh rate contributes to the overall fast feeling. The speakers are loud enough and sound good, and I love that they include an old-school 3.5 mm audio port for lag-free audio on wired earbuds or headphones.
When paired with a mobile gaming controller, the 10S Pro becomes even better. I spent hours streaming Xbox GamePass or local PC games from my gaming machine while laying back on the couch and enjoyed every second of it.
Battery life is incredible, the 10 Pro would get me through 2 days of daily driver average use, and this 10S Pro can do up to 8 hours of gaming before a quick trip to a fast charger can have it back to 100% in less than an hour.
Now for some benchmarks:
These benchmarks were faster across the board compared to the REDMAGIC 10 Pro, as expected with the higher clock rate on this chipset. In fact, it even clocks some scores higher than the incredibly powerful Apple iPad Pro M4 in the Antutu benchmark.
Final thoughts
The REDMAGIC 10S Pro gaming smartphone is an absolutely phenomenal phone, with slight improvements over the previous 10 Pro in areas like performance and cameras as well as others. Having used the previous 10 Pro as my daily driver for a few weeks, I think that most people would be more than pleased with this 10S Pro phone even if they weren’t gaming. The OS and interface are pretty close to stock Android 15, and the battery life and display make for a great smartphone experience. The improvements to the cameras would mean I would recommend this to more people than previous iterations. Just bring a waterproof bag along with you if there’s any chance of rain or falling in a pool, as there’s no weather resistance rating thanks to the open fan system!
What I like about the REDMAGIC 10S Pro gaming smartphone
- Crazy amounts of power
- Excellent screen and good speakers
- Amazing battery life
- Uses Google’s Gemini AI assistant instead of some half-baked in-house AI like some other companies
What needs to be improved?
- No water resistance
- Bloatware and small translation/grammar errors have persisted for several generations of their OS now
Price: $699+
Where to buy: REDMAGIC and Amazon
Source: The sample of this product was provided for free by REDMAGIC. REDMAGIC did not have a final say on the review and did not preview the review before it was published.
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$12.99 (as of July 4, 2025 06:37 GMT -04:00 – More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)
