The Nubia Red Magic 3 Review: A 90Hz Gaming Phone With Active Cooling
by Andrei Frumusanu on September 27, 2019 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Smartphones
- ZTE
- Nubia
- Snapdragon 855
- Nubia RedMagic 3
Camera - Low Light Evaluation
We’ve had the Reno 10x in camera comparisons in previous articles, but as mentioned in the introduction of the device, Oppo was able to update its software over the last few months. The one area where there has been significant advancements in is in terms of low-light photograph and an apparent new night mode.
Previously, the original Night mode on the Reno was a dedicated mode one had to select to use. In newer firmware updates, the Reno now will automatically select a new kind of night mode in lower light conditions, and this is characterised by the camera app doing three quick shutter animations and sounds. We’ll see how this has changed, and how the new mode compares against the competition.
[ Red Magic 3 ] - [ S10+ (E) ] - [ S10+ (S) ]
[ Xperia 1 ] - [ P30 Pro ] - [ Mi9 ]
[ G8 ] - [ Reno 10x ] - [ BlackShark 2 ] - [ Pixel 3 ]
In the first shot, we see the RM3 perform significantly better than the Mi9 or BS2. The phone is able to capture a lot more light than aforementioned competitors and is able to do this without major issues in terms of detail loss. It’s certainly not competitive against other phones with OIS and better camera sensors, but it’s able to hold on its own and produces an at least useable shot.
[ Red Magic 3 ] - [ S10+ (E) ] - [ S10+ (S) ]
[ Xperia 1 ] - [ P30 Pro ] - [ Mi9 ]
[ G8 ] - [ Reno 10x ] - [ BlackShark 2 ] - [ Pixel 3 ]
We generally see the same results in the next scene. The RM3 doesn’t do well with the very fine details such as the road texture, but larger details still remain discernible, unlike the fuzzy mess on the Xiaomi phones.
[ Red Magic 3 ] - [ S10+ (E) ] - [ S10+ (S) ]
[ Xperia 1 ] - [ P30 Pro ] - [ Mi9 ]
[ G8 ] - [ Reno 10x ] [ BlackShark 2 ] - [ Pixel 3 ]
The RM3 here does again a quite surprisingly passable job of capturing the scene, it doesn’t do too well in terms of textures but man does it absolutely destroy the Mi9 and BS2 in an apples-to-apples comparison between the same hardware configurations.
[ Red Magic 3 ] - [ S10+ (E) ] - [ S10+ (S) ]
[ Xperia 1 ] - [ P30 Pro ] - [ Mi9 ]
[ G8 ] - [ Reno 10x ] - [ BlackShark 2 ] - [ Pixel 3 ]
Going lower in light, we’re starting to hit the limits of the sensor and without any dedicated computational photography night mode, the phone isn’t able to produce useable pictures anymore.
[ Red Magic 3 ] - [ S10+ (E) ] - [ S10+ (S) ]
[ Xperia 1 ] - [ P30 Pro ] - [ Mi9 ]
[ G8 ] - [ Reno 10x ] [ BlackShark 2 ] - [ Pixel 3 ]
In this dimly lit indoor shot, the phone’s barely able to pick up much of the scene.
Low-light Conclusion - Passably Bad
The bar were low for the RM3’s low-light performance as I didn’t have any expectations after having reviewed other phones with the same sensor and a lack of OIS. Surprisingly enough, it was able to massively outperform the Xiaomi phones in low-light even though they all share almost identical hardware, pointing out just how important software algorithms are.
While the RM3 does produce passable pictures in all but the most extreme low-light pictures, it’s still overall quite behind other flagship devices which employ OIS, better sensors, or have computational photography magic backing them up.
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stephenbrooks - Friday, September 27, 2019 - link
The irony I've noticed is the higher-end the phone (or laptop) is, the faster the battery seems to drain. Presumably because of high-spec components.oRAirwolf - Saturday, September 28, 2019 - link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_AraEj24 - Friday, September 27, 2019 - link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Aradidn't pan out
webdoctors - Friday, September 27, 2019 - link
The future is streaming, even consoles in the living room are headed towards cloud streaming. With 5G and wifi everywhere on the horizon, its nuts to try to lug a highend SoC into the mobile arena.If an Nvidia Shield TV with 3 GB RAM can do streaming no reason you need such a high end SoC for a streaming gaming phone. They could build a proper streaming gaming phone and have it with much better battery life and lower cost.
peevee - Friday, September 27, 2019 - link
Streaming sucks, streaming over wireless sucks more (hint: large and unpredictable latency).peevee - Friday, September 27, 2019 - link
Plus of course ongoing subscription costs.abufrejoval - Friday, September 27, 2019 - link
Streaming doesn't have to be from the cloud: Your gaming desktop in the next room might do just as well.I use that for kid's LAN parties, where I put notebooks on the dinnertable to avoid lugging the gaming towers to the "hot spot".
And yes, cables, even 100Mbit/s, beat WiFi any time of the day even for local streaming (e.g. Steam remote play).
Of course, a certain degree of masochism is required to game on a phone when you can have a proper screen (or simply younger eyes).
PeachNCream - Friday, September 27, 2019 - link
I used to do quite a bit of streaming via Steam from a desktop PC that I had running headless and crammed into a corner near my cheap ISP router. It was wired at 100mbit. The other end was an Atom n450 netbook running Linux on WiFi and its NIC topped out at 54mbit. It was pretty good for stuff like Fallout 3 and Skyrim. Latency was decent even when there was other usage of the local network for things like Youtube streaming or web surfing (the gaming desktop was the only thing not on wireless so phones and other laptops were being used by family members). I wouldn't want to play a twitchy shooter type thing over it, but for pretty much anything else it worked really well. I think in the intervening three or so years, things have probably gotten better but I can't test that since I no longer have a gaming PC, just some casual stuff that runs natively under Linux on my laptops. I haven't even had Steam installed in the last couple of years since entertainment is slowly shifting over to my phone these days. There just isn't much need for PC gaming or streaming between PCs.FunBunny2 - Sunday, September 29, 2019 - link
"With 5G and wifi everywhere on the horizon"Real 5G???? outside of sports stadiums, not going to happen. hell, it can't even get into a stick built house. you'll need a rooftop antenna to capture the signal. just watch.
"Verizon uses a window or roof-mounted 28GHz antenna to grab the 5G signal, which is distributed via WiFi from a home router indoors."
here: https://www.lightreading.com/mobile/5g/verizons-fi...
IOW, Real 5G ends up being little different from phone pole fiber.
peevee - Friday, September 27, 2019 - link
You have missed the most important spec of a mobile phone - wireless protocols/frequencies supported.It is not an iPod after all.