Gaming phones should have changed.
Since the release of the Snapdragon 8 mobile platform, Black Shark, Red Devil, Savior, etc. have begun to warm up their new generation of game phones. Just now, the Red Devils took the lead in bringing their own new game phones - the Red Devils 7 series, with the Red Devils 7 Pro and the Red Devils 7.
Left: Red Devils 7 Right: Red Devils 7 Pro
The Red Devil 7 Pro uses an off-screen lens scheme to achieve a full-screen effect. However, game phones are different from conventional phones that use special-shaped screens, and the former mostly choose symmetrical designs, so the user experience has always been a complete screen.
I'm curious if gaming phone users can really feel the value of off-screen cameras. But when I hold the real machine, I have another thought in my mind, "Wouldn't the off-screen lens be more suitable for a gaming phone?" Because the appearance of the Red Devil 7 Pro began to have some differences from other gaming phones.
What is the significance of the game phone with the off-screen lens
For the Red Devil 7 Pro, the biggest significance of the off-screen lens is not the full screen, but the more compact appearance, which is also where it differs from the conventional mobile phones that use the same solution.
It may be difficult to understand this, but in fact, it is clear compared to the Red Devils 7.
The front of this phone represents the mainstream design of gaming phones in recent years, and the front camera is still placed in the top bezel. The advantage is that it retains the complete screen, rejects the bangs, and digs all the special-shaped screens, and the disadvantage is that it brings a relatively thick border. Although it is innocuous, it somewhat reduces its sophistication by a few points.
At this time, looking at the Red Devil 7 Pro, you will find that everything is different, and under the premise of the same screen size, it has achieved a more compact body.
After the Red Devil 7 Pro adopts the off-screen lens, the width of the top border is greatly reduced, the R angle transition is more smooth, the left and right sides and the bottom border are slightly narrower than the Red Devil 7, at first glance, its front is much more compact than other game phones, and even does not lose some conventional phones.
From my aesthetic point of view, such a front is obviously more acceptable than the previous "Berserker" series of game phones, and it is more in line with the current mainstream aesthetic.
The Red Devil 7 Pro's off-screen lens scheme has a good hiding effect, unless the eyes are close to see or the screen is facing the glare, it is difficult for the naked eye to detect the presence of the off-screen lens. It is worth noting that the brightness of the lens area under the screen can be adjusted individually, and it is recommended to set it to the highest brightness, which can further reduce the presence of the lens under the screen.
The Red Devil 7 Pro's screen look and feel is good, and its selfie shows envy. Under the right lighting conditions, the selfie effect of the machine is acceptable, but the clarity still has room to improve, but as a mobile phone for gamers, it is not an obvious disadvantage.
In terms of screen parameters, the Red Devil 7 Pro is equipped with a 6.8-inch full screen, a resolution of 2400 * 1080, support 120Hz refresh rate, up to 960Hz touch sample rate, 100% DCI-P3 wide color gamut and 10 features deeper, enhancing the mobile phone's game display effect. In addition, the machine supports DC dimming, which can effectively control the strobe screen is more suitable for long-term games.
Perhaps the Driver IC of the Red Devil 7 does not support the pressure of the under-screen lens, this phone has a higher 165Hz refresh rate, a resolution of 2400 * 1800, the highest touch sampling rate of 720Hz, support 100% DCI-P3 wide color gamut, and also support DC dimming.
The Red Devil 7 Pro has a right-angled border in the middle of the frame, which I don't like very much because it makes the phone look thick, but it's a different story for the Red Devil 7 Pro. When playing games, the right-angle border provides more grip space for both hands, so that the fingers and palm areas will not be sore due to prolonged grips.
In addition, the Red Devil 7 Pro concentrates most of the keys on the right border, including the touch shoulder key, air outlet, power key and volume key. In particular, the position of the power button and the volume key, really blowing, just corresponds to the finger when holding it with one hand, in this regard, it is more humane than many conventional mobile phones, and the left border only retains a game space shortcut key.
The Red Devils 7 has a different key position, with the volume keys placed on the left and one more air outlet than the Red Devils 7 Pro. Due to the long body of the machine, the button position will also be slightly higher.
Compared to the mid-frame, the back of the Red Devils 7 Pro is quite hardcore. A large area of aviation aluminum sheet is embedded in the middle of the back, which is part of the entire mobile phone cooling system, which improves the thermal conductivity efficiency and cooperates with the fan to greatly improve the thermal performance of the mobile phone, which is the configuration that the Red Devil 7 does not have.
The Red Devil 7 series in my hand is the iconic deuterium blade transparent version, retaining the deuterium logo and RGB fan lights, while the back of the phone is equipped with an air inlet to improve the ventilation efficiency inside the phone and improve heat dissipation.
In terms of detailed configuration, the Red Magic 7 series has a 3.5mm headphone jack and dual speakers, but the Red Magic 7 is a handset type double beam, and the Pro has a separate double swing opening and has passed the DTS Ultra surround sound effects technology certification.
The off-screen lens at this stage is like "your honey, my arsenic". For conventional mobile phones that want to meet the user's rich image needs, the selfie effect of this scheme is not easy to accept, and the user is far less disgusted with punching than imagined.
However, for gaming phones that are mainly aimed at players, the off-screen lens is very suitable, not only simplifying the design of the mobile phone, but also compared to selfies, the full screen is more practical for the player.
In this regard, the Red Devil 7 Pro's exploration of off-screen solutions is of great significance. I believe that although it will be the first gaming phone to use an off-screen lens, it will never be the last.
Running score test performance is fully open
Because this year's Snapdragon 8 is still not very calm, the conventional flagship phone rarely dares to let it run openly, but the Red Devil 7 series is a game phone, and there are enough heat dissipation conditions to let this chip run wild.
Left: Red Devils 7 Pro Right: Red Devils 7
The Red Devil 7 Pro Antu Rabbit running score is as high as 1033443 points, the Red Devil 7 running score is 1048171 points, and the two mobile phones are running at the same level, which is the top level of android phone performance today.
In the Geekbench 5.1, which tests CPU performance, the Red Devils 7 Pro single-core 1257 points, multi-core 3742 points, red devil 7 single-core running score of 1245 points, multi-core running score of 3755 points, both are still slightly higher than the regular Snapdragon 8 flagship.
Red Devils 7 Pro
Red Devils 7
In the 3D Mark wild Life test, the Red Devil 7 Pro was 10029 and the Red Devil 7 scored 10054 points, and both phones had a Sling Shot Extreme – OpenGL ES 3.1 score of "reaching the limit". However, the Red Devil 7 Pro opened a certain gap with the Red Devil 7 in the stress test.
The stress test mainly tests the stability of the mobile phone under high load, and the single test time is 20 minutes. The Red Devils 7 has a stability of 96.4% and small fluctuations in performance output and frame rate. The Red Devils 7 Pro is 98.3% high, with smoother performance output and frame count.
In addition, the Red Devil 7 series is equipped with a standard LPDDR5 + UFS 3.1 flash memory combination, and the flash running score of the two flash memory is shown in the figure above, which has reached a very fast level.
Judging from the test results, the performance of the Red Devils 7 series is strong, so how does the series perform in the actual game?
"Specially tuned" over Snapdragon 8
The "special tone" here is not an exaggerated adjective, but the performance strategy of the Red Devils 7 series is indeed very special.
Take the heavy-duty game "Original God" as an example, set the picture quality to the highest, open the 60 frame mode, in order to fit the player's habits as much as possible, the test includes running maps, battles, dungeons, screen loading, etc., using the default equalization mode, because the balanced mode is enough to cope with the current mainstream game, taking into account power consumption and performance.
Red Devil 7 Pro takes this as the premise, continuously runs "Original God" for 47 minutes, the frame number of running maps, mission dialogues, and standing characters can reach 60 frames, and the frame number will fluctuate in a small range during the battle, and the frame number will quickly return to 60 frames after leaving the battle, the performance scheduling is positive, and the final average frame number is 56.6 frames, and the game performance is excellent.
Although a bit unpretentious, the Red Devil 7 Pro's Original God gaming experience is much better than other regular Snapdragon 8 phones. Is it possible that this is the normal level of the Snapdragon 8?
In-game screenshots of the Red Devils 7 Pro
It is worth noting that at the beginning of the test and at the end of the test, I took an in-game screenshot, the rendering resolution was 1800*810, and the picture quality was not reduced.
The Red Devils 7 Pro is able to achieve this game effect thanks to its special performance scheduling strategy. When running "Original God", the utilization rate of the mobile phone's super core is very high, and when it is above 80%, the super core frequency will be locked at 1.7GHz, so that the most powerful core on the Snapdragon 8 can participate in the operation as much as possible, and the other cores also maintain a utilization rate of about 50%-80%.
It's like a person boxing, sacrificing a certain speed of punching in exchange for a greater punching force. That is to say, when the Red Devil 7 series runs the "Original God", although it has a lock frequency, all the core performance is fully fired, and the performance release is radical.
But there is a difference, the Red Devil 7 Pro's super core under the premise of 100% utilization, the frequency will be instantaneously increased to 2.995GHz in some cases, but this state near full frequency can not be maintained for a long time, and then will drop to 1.7GHz, which may be accompanied by slight stuttering in the process.
The Red Devils 7 did not have this problem because it locked at 1.7GHz throughout the whole process, and its 40-minute "Original God" averaged 58.6 frames. It is recommended that Red Devils optimize the performance strategy of Pro to improve the stability of the frame rate.
The Red Devil 7 series has a very good game experience under its special performance strategy, playing 47 minutes of extremely high-quality "Original God" continuously, interspersed with various scenes and stabilizing at 60 frames, which is enough to explain a lot of problems. The higher-positioned Performance Release of the Red Devil 7 Pro is more aggressive than the Red Devil 7, and theoretically has a higher performance cap after optimization.
As for the temperature, after 47 minutes of continuous operation of "Protos", the body temperature of the Red Devils 7 Pro is at the highest point at the camera, with a temperature of 39.5 ° C. For a game phone that makes the Snapdragon 8 full of firepower, it is already very good.
At this time, the thermally conductive aluminum sheet on the back of the Red Devil 7 Pro is slightly awkward, and when playing the game, the fingers will inevitably touch here, and the relatively high temperature will affect the grip. In the summer, whether the aluminum sheet exposed outside the fuselage will affect the heat dissipation of the mobile phone due to the rise in ambient temperature still needs to be verified. At least for now, the heat dissipation effect of this aluminum sheet is still very positive.
Among other games, the Red Devils 7 series performed equally well.
Red Devil 7 Pro supports the Glory of Kings 120Hz mode, in the highest picture quality, the frame number surface is extremely smooth, almost a straight line, the average frame number is 120.1 frames, and the frame number variance is only 0.1 frames, which is very smooth.
Under the premise of turning on "HD" picture quality and the highest frame rate, the Red Devil 7 Pro game performance is similar to that of "Glory of Kings", stable and smooth.
Under the premise of opening the extreme picture quality and opening the 60 frame mode of "Crash 3", some of the battle and big move scenes of the Red Devil 7 Pro can still maintain a high frame rate of 60 frames, which is replaced by a regular flagship, which generally has a small range of frame drops.
Even in the relatively more performance-eating "Post-Crash Book" (the plot activity of "Crash 3"), the Red Devil 7 Pro can stabilize at 40 frames, almost in a straight line, whether it is running pictures or fighting. Although the frame rate is not high, compared to other conventional mobile phones, this performance is already good.
To further enhance the gaming experience, the Red Devils 7 Series features dual IC touch shoulder buttons, an X-axis linear motor (the Pro has two motors), and dual speakers. It is worth noting that this time the Red Devil 7 Pro is equipped with a domestic game chip - Red Core No. 1 for the first time, which aims to strengthen the performance of shoulder button touch, vibration, game sound effects and RGB lights, and enhance the sense of atmosphere during the game.
In addition, the series of touch shoulder key touch sample rate is 500Hz, the response is faster, and for some games, such as "Peace Elite", built-in several shoulder key mapping scheme, do not need to be manually adjusted every time as before, shooting, cutting the mirror, steering is more convenient.
Even for games such as "Original God", which requires character combos, there are mapping scheme suggestions that reduce the threshold for the use of shoulder keys. However, the vibration feedback of the touch shoulder key is relatively loose, and there is still a certain gap compared to the pop-up shoulder key.
In terms of battery life, the Red Devil 7 Pro has a built-in 5000mAh battery, supports 135W fast charging, and is equipped with a 165W gallium nitride charging head in the package, which is compatible with PD, QC and other universal charging protocols, even other brands of mobile phones, tablets, or Switch can also use this charging head.
The machine from 0% to fully full, the time is about 15 minutes, daily use can meet 8 hours of commuting endurance, if there is a heavy load game similar to "Original God" interspersed in the middle, then a day of charging, or even half a day of a charge is still necessary, after all, the performance scheduling is active, but also means that the game power consumption rises. If it is a game such as "Glory of Kings", the battery life pressure will be much less.
Overall, the performance scheduling strategy of the Red Devil 7 series is eye-catching, although there is a lock frequency, but by improving the utilization rate, the performance output is strengthened, at least on the series of mobile phones, the actual performance of the Snapdragon 8 finally has a flagship feeling.
However, it should be noted that the Red Devil 7 series can use such a strategy, in large part because it has a complete set of active + passive heat dissipation measures, especially the Red Devil 7 Pro, which has a solid enough foundation to play the performance of the Snapdragon 8. If it is a conventional flagship, it is inevitable to fall into the dilemma of "frame number" or "temperature protection".
Red Magi Mora, the biggest highlight of the new system
The Red Devil 7 series comes pre-set with a REDMAGIC OS 5.0 system, and I think the biggest highlight of this system is the Red Magic Mora.
This is an interactive AI avatar, and Mora will give feedback accordingly. As likability increases, you can unlock more voices and actions.
In addition, the image of the Red Magic Mora has now covered many scenes such as boot wizard, charging animation, low battery reminder, desktop interaction, and game encouragement.
The Red Devil is very careful in the production of the Red Devil Ji Mora, the dubbing has feelings, the action has temperature, the character is very gentle, the standing painting is more delicate, and the vertical painting image in each scene remains highly unified, which is very important for the establishment of the virtual character image.
Red Magic Space also supports game shorthand function, which can display upgrade materials, game guides, level information and other screens in the game, and query at any time. This is very friendly for some RPGs and MMO mobile games, such as "Original God" and "Tianya Mingyue Knife". In addition, there are functions suitable for game scenarios such as Red Magic screen projection, game reminders, health machines, performance monitoring, and bullet screen message reminders.
Of course, the other regular features of the Red Devils 7 series are also readily available, but it is a pity that there is no NFC, and the desktop sliding screen animation is slightly raw. In some video applications, such as bilibili, 60 frames are still locked, and there is still room for improvement in high brush coverage.
By the way, the Red Devil 7 series are equipped with 64 million pixels triple camera, from the sample performance, the performance is decent, there is room for clarity, hair color is slightly lighter, but it is enough to take photos in daily life.
One series, two directions
The Red Devils 7 series actually represents two directions.
The Red Devil 7 represents the present of the gaming phone, and its significance lies in laying a solid foundation.
The Red Devil 7 Pro represents the future, the attempt at the off-screen lens has brought a violent chemical reaction, just look at the front, will not think that it and the Red Devil 7 is a series of mobile phones, which means that the current game phone does not need to compromise to the punch hole, can also make an easy to accept appearance, so that the game phone to break the circle more possible.
I think the Red Devil 7 Pro is right to go the way of off-screen lenses, even more suitable than regular flagships.
From the product itself, in the past, I will not consider the game phone, although there is better heat dissipation, but the performance and the conventional flagship of the same configuration can not open the gap.
However, today's flagship chip adjustment is more difficult, the conventional flagship faces the dilemma of "temperature protection" and "frame rate protection", at this time, the bold performance strategy of the Red Devil 7 series and the heat dissipation of a higher dimension can better play the performance and experience that the flagship chip should have. Perhaps starting this year, the Red Devils 7 series and other game phones will have more room for development.