Nubia has officially launched the new Red Magic 3S gaming smartphone in China today, which will succeed the Red Magic 3 that was announced back in April. The phone carries forward all the good features of its previous generation model like a gamer-centric design, virtual shoulder buttons, and a large battery while improving upon the chipset speed and cooling setup to its boost performance.
Nubia Red Magic 3S Design
Design-wise, the Nubia Red Magic 3S retains almost all of the visual aspects of its predecessor. It is actually very hard to tell the new model apart from the old one, if not for the design of the air vent. The new design makes it look less like an air vent and more like a transformers logo.
There are some subtle changes in the antenna design as well, but they are not prominent. Overall, the new Red Magic 3S is nearly identical to the original Red Magic 3. Even the front remains the same with thin bezels on top as well as bottom and trapezoid-shaped speaker vents.
As for the colors, the Red Magic 3S comes in a new Silver Storm color, that I personally loved. There are two more colors available, Black, and Red & Blue, both of which were available on the previous model. RGB lighting at the back will also ensure that the phone looks cool during gameplay. Given its similarity with its predecessor, it isn’t surprising to see its dimensions (171.7 x 78.5 x 9.65mm) and weight (215g) remain unchanged.
Nubia Red Magic 3S Specs
The Red Magic 3S comes with a large 6.65-inch FHD AMOLED display with a 90Hz refresh rate and a 240Hz touch refresh rate. The screen brightness goes up to 430 nits and with support for DC dimming, you should be comfortable gaming even at night.
The new model gets its big upgrade in the processor department. Just like the Black Shark 2 Pro, the Nubia Red Magic 3S is also using the new Snapdragon 855+ processor with 8GB /12GB RAM and 128GB / 256GB UFS 3.0 ROM variants.
The phone still comes with a single Sony IMX586 48MP sensor at the back with f/1.7 aperture lens. There’s support for 1920 fps slo-mo recording and up to 8K video shooting. As for the front camera, there’s a 16MP sensor for selfies. So in the camera department, the new model remains practically unchanged.
For connectivity, the Red Magic 3S features a 3.5mm headphone jack, dual SIM dual standby, Wi-Fi ac, and Bluetooth. There’s a large 5000mAh battery on board with USB PD 27W fast charging support.
As for the OS, the phone runs on the new RedMagic OS 2.1 which is still based on Android 9, but features performance optimizations, new gaming-centric themes, intelligent CPU / GPU scheduling, RedMagic rendering system, and a special game mode.
Nubia Red Magic 3S Gaming Features
Nubia’s new gaming smartphone comes with a setup that performs extremely even while running heavy games. Nubia reveals that the phone scores 510,496 points on AnTutu and 507747 points on Master Lu, which are extremely high! Of course, the real scores could be a bit lower than this (like what happened with the Black Shark Pro 2) but know that the Red Magic 3S will handle all games with ease.
The new model also upgrades the cooling to ICE 2.1 featuring air cooling via a high-efficiency centrifugal fan and water cooling via copper tubes that dissipate heat. The setup looks similar to the old model but the company promises improved heat dissipation with a better air vent design.
There are virtual shoulder buttons on the sides that are extremely useful during gameplay and you can even convert the fingerprint sensor as an additional button. You can add gaming accessories like the RedMagic e-sports box that comes with a headphone jack, type-C charging port, as well as a wired ethernet port!
Nubia Red Magic 3S Pricing & Availability
The Nubia Red Magic 3S starts at 2999 Yuan ($420) for the 8GB + 128GB variant and goes up to 3799 Yuan ($532) for the 12GB + 256GB variant. Note that the 8GB RAM model is limited to the Silver Storm color while the 12GB RAM model comes only in Red & Blue color for now.
The phone is currently up for reservations and will go on sale on September 9 at 10 AM.
