Following my Astra Tablet review back in the summer, I was offered the chance to test the REDMAGIC 10S Pro, which Nubia (a subsidiary of ZTE) released globally a few months ago in May. After accepting, I then found out that the people who buy this usually do it because they game on their phones. Well, to save you a lot of bother, I do not game on smartphones, but I did do a bunch of benchmarks (including 3DMark), so it"s up to you if you want to stick around.
Before we get underway, here is a disclaimer: REDMAGIC provided a sample without any pre-approval. Oh, and also an apology: this review is rather image-heavy.
First up, let"s dive into the specs:
| Specification | Nubia REDMAGIC 10S Pro |
|---|---|
| Front Display: | AMOLED, 1B colors, 2592Hz PWM, 144Hz, 2000 nits (peak) 6.85 inches, 113.7 cm2 (~91.4% screen-to-body ratio) 1216 x 2688 pixels (~431 ppi density) 20:9 Aspect Ratio Corning Gorilla Glass (unspecified version), Mohs level 4 |
| Dimensions | 163.4 x 76.1 x 8.9 mm (6.43 x 3.00 x 0.35 in) |
| Weight: | 229 g (8.08 oz) |
| CPU: | Snapdragon 8 Elite (3 nm) Octa-core (2x4.47 GHz Oryon V2 Phoenix L + 6x3.53 GHz Oryon V2 Phoenix M) |
| GPU: | Adreno 830 (1200 MHz) |
| Storage: | RAM: 12GB / 16GB / 24GB LPDDR5T |
| Rear cameras: | 50 MP, f/1.9, 23mm (wide), 1/1.55", 1.0µm, PDAF, OIS LED flash, HDR, panorama |
| Video features: | 8K@30fps, 4K@30/60fps, 1080p@30/60/120/240fps |
| Front camera: | 16 MP, f/2.0, (wide), 1/2.77" HDR |
| Video features: | 4K@30/60fps, 1080p@30/60fps |
| Battery and charging | Si/C Li-Ion 7050 mAh 80W wired, Wireless: No |
| SIM | 2x Nano-SIM, eSIM: No |
| Connectivity: | Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax/6/7, tri-band, Wi-Fi Direct |
| NFC | Yes |
| Ports: | USB Type-C 3.2, accessory connector, DisplayPort 3.5mm Audio Jack |
| Bands | 5G NR, 4G TDD-LTE / FDD LTE, 3G WCDMA, 2G GSM |
| GPS: | Dual GPS (L1+L5) |
| Durability: | IP54 dust protected and water resistant (water splashes) Class C (90 falls) |
| Security: | Fingerprint (under display, optical), Face ID, accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass Emergency SOS via satellite (messages and calls) |
| Features: | 520Hz shoulder triggers, X-Gravity, and RGB lighting Advanced ICE-X cooling with Liquid Metal 2.0, vapor chamber, 23,000 RPM fan |
| Audio: | Dual 1115K Speakers, DTS: X Ultra Certification Qualcomm Snapdragon Sound co-tuning |
| Material: | Metal Middle Frame + Glass Rear Cover |
| OS: | REDMAGICOS 10.0 (Powered by Android 15) |
| Colors: | Matte Black Nightfall, Transparent Silver Moonlight, Transparent Black Dusk |
| Warranty: | 2 years (global) |
| Software support: | 5 years (EU & UK) 3 years (Rest of the world) |
| MSRP: | $699, $849, $999 |
One thing that you might notice immediately is that this is a 10S Pro, released seven months after the 10 Pro, in 2024. From looking at the specs, it appears that the only difference is the higher clock speed of the SoC, 4.32GHz vs 4.47GHz, and 1200MHz vs 1100 MHz GPU and LPDDR5T offering a 13% speed bump vs LPDDR5X memory in the older model.
For a quick and dirty comparison against another popular flagship, the top variant is still quite a bit cheaper than anything in the Samsung Galaxy S25 series, and it"s actually $660 cheaper than the Galaxy S25 Ultra, which also only has half the 24GB memory that"s included in the most expensive REDMAGIC 10S Pro.
Aside from the fancy names given to the colors offered on the product page, they are basically Matte Black, Gray, and Black. Ours is the Grey (Moonlight) variant. I"ve put the full bands it supports in a table below.
| Bands | |
|---|---|
| 2G: | GSM: 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz (B2 / B3 / B5 / B8) |
| 3G: | WCDMA / UMTS: B1 / B2 / B4 / B5 / B6 / B8 / B19 |
| 4G: | FDD-LTE: B1 / B2 / B3 / B4 / B5 / B7 / B8 / B12 / B17 / B18 / B19 / B20 / B26 / B28A / B28B / B66 TDD-LTE: B34 / B38 / B39 / B40 / B41 / B42 |
| 5G: | (NR): n1 / n2 / n3 / n5 / n7 / n8 / n20 / n26 / n28 / n38 / n40 / n41 / n66 / n71 / n77 / n78 |
As far as internals go, this can rival anything brought out on the market today and probably even exceed in some areas, like with the ample-sized battery.
In the box
- REDMAGIC 10S Pro Phone x 1
- Clear Phone Case x 1
- Power Adapter (80W) x 1
- Type-C Data Cable x 1
- SIM Tray Ejector x 1
- Warranty Card x 1
- Documentation
REDMAGIC laughs in the face of EU regulators, because it is one of the few that still supplies an 80W Fast Charger power adapter in the box, which might have to do with the fact that it doesn"t support wireless charging. Remember, kids, Samsung makes you pay around forty bucks for their 45W Fast Charger adapter, which adds to the total cost of your brand new Galaxy.
Day 1
The first thing I noticed when unboxing it was the weight. Even at just 229g, it is just four grams lighter than my S23 Ultra, but only 11 grams heavier than the S25 Ultra for that extra 2000mAh of battery.
The design reminds me a lot of rectangular candy bar phones from yesteryear while retaining an impressive 91.4% screen-to-body ratio. There"s no camera hump on the back, but for this camera, quality suffers a bit, which I"ll get into later.
Low call volume
I made a few calls on it, and I am sad to say that the volume of the earpiece was simply too low. I actually had to put a call on speaker just so I could hear the person on the other end, so that was a letdown. I reached out to my contact about the low call volume, and I was told that it could be a result of my 10S Pro being a demo unit (it still looks brand new) and that it could have been damaged somewhere along the way.
Mine"s a bum unit
It should be noted that I checked online for this issue and there are no reports of low call volume with the ear piece, so it really looks like i was just unlucky with the unit I received. I"m inclined to agree that mine might be damaged, because it"s quite bad. In any case, my contact has agreed to send a replacement so I can confirm this.
Design
It is a typical candy bar shape with a triple camera array on the top left rear that you will find on many smartphones. The front is protected with an unspecified version of Corning Gorilla Glass, and around the sides is made up of a metal housing. The rear is disclosed as "glass". The metal around the side and antenna lines is sort of iPhone-esque if you ask me, but maybe you should ignore me because the last iPhone I owned was the iPhone 4 (not counting the iPhone SE 2 backup). However, as I have always experienced with smartphones, it all ends up feeling like it will slip out of my hand without a case.
On the rear, the camera array consists of two 50 MP wide and ultrawide cameras, along with a 2MP macro camera. Alongside the camera array is an LED flash.
On the right side of the phone, on each corner you will find the Immersive 520Hz shoulder triggers which can also light up, then there"s the volume rocker and a power key that doubles as an action button and next to that there"s a Magic Key that is actually a switch, by default it sets the phone in "GameSpace" mode, but you can link it to a few other handy things too like Camera, Flashlight, Voice Recorder, Face to Face translation, and switch sound modes. The keys have a good height and are easily detected by feel. All of the buttons except the Magic Key (which is textured) are completely smooth.
On the left side, there are no controls except for a small ring of RGB lighting (which is also on the other side).
On the bottom, from left to right, there"s a speaker grill, a USB Type C charger port for the included 1 m USB Type C-to-USB Type C cable, a mic hole, and the SIM tray.
The top of the Magic7 Pro has another speaker grill, a 3.5mm Audio Jack, and what looks like the IR Blaster. On the front of the device and in the camera cutout, you"ll find the 16 MP front-facing camera. There is no notification LED, which is actually redundant thanks to full always-on-display (AOD) support.
For those who like RGB, the REDMAGIC 10S Pro also has a bunch of lighting effects on each side and the back. Thanks to the front reserving almost everything to the display, there are no lighting borders or notification LEDs of any kind, and although you can set the lighting to notify you on certain things like calls, when charging, and an Alarm clock, it"s definitely noticeable, even with the clear back case on (which is semi-transparent).
Display
The REDMAGIC 10S Pro has a 6.85-inch screen and is only 8.9 mm in thickness. That weight also feels like it is distributed evenly across the phone, and unlike many flagship phones on the market today, you can place this down completely flat on its rear due to the cameras being slightly indented rather than on some ugly hump.
The AMOLED display has a 1216 x 2688 screen resolution, with a 431 PPI pixel density, a 20:9 aspect ratio, and Gorilla Glass protection. Nubia claims the display has a 2000-nit peak brightness for HDR content, which is quite a bit less than the Honor Magic7 we reviewed, with its peak 5000 nits and Dolby Vision support. Nevertheless, I found the screen to be vibrant and bright enough all the time I was using it in Adaptive refresh rate mode, which automatically adjusts the refresh rate between 1-144Hz depending on the app being used.
Cameras
As I have said in previous smartphone reviews I"ve done, I am no camera buff. I"m a point-and-shoot kind of guy, but it is clear to me that smartphone makers seem to want to concentrate a hell of a lot on camera quality, sometimes at the expense of other features, and on paper, at least, here is also no exception.
On the rear, the REDMAGIC 10S Pro comprises a couple of 50 MP Omnivision cameras (OV50E40 and OV50D40), which are both 50MP with one being wide, the other ultrawide, along with a 2MP macro camera, making up the triple array.
Optical image stabilization (OIS) and PDAF (phase detection auto focus), which is a high-speed automatic focus technology, are also included.
As you can see in the above photos, it was mostly cloudy and overcast, with the sun sometimes coming through. I was quite impressed by the quality of daytime photos; the colors are not oversaturated, and the Omnivision camera array appears to be able to make great use of lighting, even when taking photos of scenes that would otherwise come out dark or with a lot of shadow (such as the last picture above) on other flagships. However, that all starts to break down when you use the zoom function. The REDMAGIC 10S Pro supports up to 10X zoom, and when utilized, even on a clear day, the result is a blurred mess of an image.
As long as you aren"t making use of full zoom, the photos come out clear as day, and I was really impressed with the quality of the last image in the above examples.
With nighttime image captures, I was impressed at how the sensors could capture dark scenes with enough lighting, but once again, forget full zooming because it just looks ridiculous. A quick search on Reddit tells me that REDMAGIC has never really invested too much time in camera quality in its phones, opting instead for gaming performance, so that"s where your decision should lie when choosing this over a more expensive flagship with a 200MP camera and 100X AI-assisted zoom.
In addition, I want to note that most of the nighttime photos required me to "hold still" while capturing up to and around 1-2 secs per shot, except where there was ample lighting, which was as quick as day shots (immediate). So you might have to factor that in as well if you plan to use this to take nighttime action shots.
Software
The 10S Pro ships with REDMAGICOS 10.5, which is based on Android 15, with the August 2025 Security Update, which is the newest at the time of writing. However, in terms of software updates and support, that is all up in the air. The phone itself is covered by a two-year warranty, but there is no information on the official website on how long REDMAGIC provides security and OS updates.
Alongside not having this information anywhere on the website for reference, customers have been receiving mixed responses from REDMAGIC support, with some saying the phone will get 5 years of software updates, while others have been replied to claiming they will receive just three years of software support, see for yourself.
In any case, I asked my contact for clarification, and was told the following:
Software support: REDMAGIC now provides five years of software support for customers in the European Union and the United Kingdom, including major Android OS updates and regular security patches. In other regions, REDMAGIC offers three years of support.
There"s a page for Global ROMs and updates, but for the REDMAGIC 10 Pro (which came out in Nov 2024) the last update on that page is from five months ago (April 2025) and the 10S Pro is not even listed, while that has been available since May 2025.
| Android switch | Copying backup |
|---|---|
I used Android Switch during setup, transferring data from my Galaxy S23 Ultra. The Android 15 setup was a standard stock affair.
Above, you can see some post setup screens. The experience is mostly stock Android aside from the attention to detail on gaming (something I really do not do on a phone). Right after the Android onboarding, you are presented with a few screens to set up Favorite apps, decide if you want gestures or not, and the phone immediately checks for REDMAGICOS updates.
Bloat?
Yes, there is a bit of bloat; it is mostly third-party apps, which can easily be removed. There are whole discussions about it on the reddit.com/r/REDMAGIC/ board, mostly people asking "does REDMAGIC ship bloat on their devices?" With people usually answering "Yes." I went into it in a bit more detail in my Astra Gaming Tablet review, so rather than parroting the same thing all over again, you can discover my first impressions about REDMAGIC 10.5 OS and the bloat right here.
tl;dr people: Yeah, there is bloat, but you can remove it all.
Home Screen
The Home screen is just called "System Launcher." It is pretty customizable. You can change just about everything; in fact, the only thing I found that was not possible to change is the ability to remove labels from icons, which was a bit disappointing, given that you can change just about everything else. I was also pleased to see a highly customizable AOD, which Samsung could take note of here.
Instead of Google Discover on right-swiping the Home screen, you get "Board" with REDMAGICOS, and I found it pretty useless. You can only disable or enable four categories, and that"s it. And that"s only after you accept the long Privacy Policy, which could mean it tracks whatever you decide to click on and updates itself that way, since there is no way to customize the feed. There are tutorials online on how to switch to Google Discover, though.
Benchmarks
To offset my failure at doing some gaming on the REDMAGIC 10S Pro, I have instead opted to include a bunch of benchmarks that really should show just how capable this phone is in the CPU and GPU departments. I used a mixture of AnTuTu, Geekbench 6 for Android and 3DMark with screenshots of all the results below.
Before we dive in, I should note that Nubia claims the following about heat dissipation:
ICE-X cooling with Liquid Metal 2.0, a giant vapor chamber, and a 23,000 RPM fan keeps heat in check.
Yes, it has a dedicated fan which can be manually controlled through a widget that is helpfully placed on the Home screen"s second page. You can let it decide for itself (default) set it to eco, or cool mode.
As was to be expected, the REDMAGIC 10S Pro outperforms most of what is on the market, thanks to a bit of overclocking (4.47GHz vs 4.23GHz CPU and 1200MHz vs 1100MHz Adreno 830 GPU), resulting in the below scores:
- Overall 2776809 CPU: 598563 GPU: 1257973 Memory: 511340 UX: 408933
For some additional context, AnTuTu"s Memory score also accounts for the UFS storage speeds on the phone, and the UX score weighs various real-world tasks like image and video editing/processing, document processing, and a bit of data analysis, among others.
My REDMAGIC 10S Pro device managed to beat all others in the AnTuTu v10 rankings, with a 12GB+256GB 10S Pro variant coming in second, and trailing by 106,744 points.
Geekbench v6 - images (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
- CPU Single-Core: 3,046 CPU Multi-Core: 9,632 GPU: 21,300
Geekbench 6, which returned a score of 3,046, is 139 points higher than the 2,907 recorded on the Honor Magic7 Pro in Single-Core mode. However, in Multi-Core mode, the REDMAGIC 10S Pro soars past the Magic7 Pro"s 6,243 score by 3,389 points, recording a score of 9,632. On the GPU front, the 10S Pro beats the S24+"s best score by 6,045 (15,255) with a score of 23,100. It"s a shame the Galaxy S25 isn"t listed in the Compare yet, but the Honor Magic7 Pro is a good enough equivalent. One thing"s for sure, it really showcases the overclocks and faster LPDDR5X memory being used in the REDMAGIC 10S Pro.
If you are wondering, Geekbench ran a series of short tests which measured things like web browsing, document rendering, text processing, code compilation, various photo editing and processing tasks, and more.
3DMark
- Solar Bay Extreme: 1,259 (avg fps 8.81)
- Solar Bay Extreme Stress Test: Loop 1 (1257) Loop 2 (1257) Loop 3 (1254)
- Steel Nomad Light: 2,687 (avg fps 19.91)
- Steel Nomad Light Stress Test: Loop 1 (2682) Loop 2 (2628) Loop 3 (2584)
- Wildlife: Maxed Out!
- Wildlife Extreme: 6,689 (avg fps 40.05)
- Wildlife Unlimited Stress Test: Loop 1 (27,658) Loop 2 (26,774) Loop 3 (26,400)
3DMark"s standard Wildlife test wouldn"t even give a score as it was "Maxed Out!", saying that the REDMAGIC 10S Pro was "too powerful" for it, which is when I resorted to the stress tests.
Also, in case you are wondering, Solar Bay measures the ray tracing capabilities of a graphics chip, while Steel Nomad tests rasterization. Meanwhile, the Wild Life benchmark also measures rasterization, though to a lesser scale.
PCMark
Lastly, I ran PCMark, even though you cannot download it from the Google Play anymore (just like AnTuTu, for some reason), it is still a valid test to find out details about the battery life and performance.
| Work 3.0 Battery Life | Work 3.0 Performance |
|---|---|
As can be seen above, the entire Battery Life test took almost eight hours, generating an average performance score of 26981 after 50 passes. However, when running the Work 3.0 Performance test after recharging the battery back to 100% and letting the phone cool down, that score went up to 28291. Please do note that I do not have a Luminance meter, so I was not able to calibrate the screen brightness first. So in this test, the performance score makes more sense.
Yes, this includes the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite, launched last October. The benchmark results, although important, should be taken into consideration with other findings, which show that the SoC appears to have mixed results across devices.
Conclusion
I personally used the phone for about a week, switching fully to it from my Samsung S23 Ultra. I had to switch back because I could not hear callers unless they spoke VERY LOUDLY. I am going to reserve my opinion on call quality until i receive the replacement 10S Pro, but from looking online this should not be something you have to worry about.
In addition, this phone does not support eSIM, which is kind of weird in 2025. In fact, I had to get my provider to ship me a physical SIM just so I could use it (handy anyway, I guess!) So you"ll have to factor this in with traveling and so forth. OS updates do not auto-reboot the phone (which could actually be seen as a positive to some), but if you have agreed to start that process, why not go all the way, Nubia? Continuing on the negative, I found the face and fingerprint unlock to be quite slow —but again, this could be down to my demo unit. The Astra GAMING Tablet"s face unlock is awesome, so I expected more. All this results in a loss of two points.
Otherwise, it is a great-looking phone with a really nice display, and thanks to the new overclocked Snapdragon 8 Elite, it is really quick too, more than double so compared to my S23 Ultra, which is only a couple of years old.
I apologize if you came here hoping to see some gaming-related usage. I just don"t game on smartphones. However, this phone is made for it, so if you prioritize gaming over the other functions of a smartphone, you cannot go wrong here.
Something else we cannot dismiss is the pricing, too. Remember that the top offering 10S Pro with 24GB/1TB is over $650 cheaper than the nearest S25 Ultra equivalent, and to top it off, the REDMAGIC 10S Pro has double the memory too. So you could treat yourself to a real 2025 flagship quality phone even if you aren"t a gamer and be set for a couple of years, at least.
The REDMAGIC 10S Pro is available now, starting at $699, with the aforementioned variant costing $999. You can also buy via Amazon for $949 with a trade-in option.
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