The gaming phone market is hotting up with models from Razr, Asus and others catching the eye, and now Chinese brand Nubia (part of ZTE) has launched the Red Magic 3 – the first gaming phone we've seen to include a cooling fan actually inside the phone itself.
As is the case for gaming PCs, heat is the enemy of a gaming phone. As the processor and memory get pushed harder, temperatures can quickly rise, which leads to crashes and instability for games and the system as a whole.
With that in mind, Nubia has fitted liquid cooling inside the Red Magic 3, as well as the internal fan that we've already mentioned. Effective heat transfer is improved by some 500 percent, the manufacturer says – presumably over the previous model, the more mid-range Red Magic Mars.
That sort of internal cooling is inevitably going to add a little bit of bulk, and so is the 5,000 mAh battery that's packed into this handset, ready to power you through extended gaming sessions (quick charging USB Power Delivery tech is supported too).
We don't know exactly how chunky the phone beyond what you can see in the supplied press images, but it sports a 6.65-inch FHD+ 1,080 x 2,160 pixel AMOLED screen with an above-average 90 Hz refresh rate and HDR support.
That's backed up with some top-level specs that you'll struggle to beat in 2019 – a Snapdragon 855 processor, up to 12 GB of RAM, and up to 256 GB of internal storage. The Nubia Red Magic 3 should be able to take every mobile game that you can throw at it and then some, and there's even a 3.5 mm headphone jack.
The phone comes with on-board software for tweaking performance settings, adjusting the fan speed and blocking notifications during gaming sessions, and there are also two touch-sensitive shoulder buttons that can be mapped to custom controls. Some integrated RGB LED lights on the back, also customizable, complete the gaming effect.
The latest Android 9 Pie software is on board, and rounding off the package is a 48 MP rear camera and a 16 MP front camera. That rear camera is notable for two reasons – it's capable of recording at an 8K resolution, and at a slow motion rate of 1,920 fps (though we don't know yet at what resolution). If you eventually grow tired of gaming, you can have a play around shooting some hi-res, slow-mo video.
The price of the phone in China starts at 2,899 yuan. We don't have international pricing yet but that works out at around US$430, and the phone is heading to the US and Europe in late May.
Product page: Nubia