I’m a diehard Pixel user, but this ‘anti-flagship’ blew my 9 Pro out of the water

ZDNET's key takeaways

• The Redmagic 10S Pro will be available June 12, starting at $699.
• The 10S Pro harnesses impressive power, making it an absolute delight for gamers and power users.
• Average users might find they have to do a bit of tweaking to get the 10S Pro to their liking.

I've been using Pixel phones for a long, long time, and every so often I think, "Is it time to try something different?" But each time I stray, I inevitably come back to the Pixel way of thinking.

Every once in a while, though, a phone comes across my desk to make me think, "This could be the one!" One such phone is the Redmagic 10S Pro. I recently reviewed the Redmagic 10 Pro and found that to be a phone worthy of replacing my Pixel 9 Pro.

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Little did I know that Redmagic had something even more powerful up its sleeve, in the 10S Pro. Even though the 10 Pro was a stellar device, with more than enough power to run all the apps and games I wanted, the 10S gives the performance a bump.  

My experience

Physically, the front of the 10S Pro is fairly typical-looking. But the back of the phone is transparent, revealing the battery, the cameras and lights, and an engraved Snapdragon logo on the CPU. It looks sweet. 

Speaking about the phone's performance, let's go beyond sheer power, because blistering speed (which the 10S Pro has) isn't the only important aspect when selecting a new phone. I've been saying, for a very long time, that Google needs to up the ante with the Android UI because it's grown so boring and stale.

Sure, with each iteration, the Android UI gets a bit better with smoother animations and a bit more polish, but it's still way behind the likes of iOS. Besides the mess of app launchers on the home screen, iOS is beautiful, and Redmagic clearly gets this with RedMagicOS (version 10.5.5). 

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The first thing you notice -- as with any recent Redmagic phone -- is the gorgeous UI. It's fluid, elegant, and fast (take note, Google). To date, I've not seen a take on Android that is this polished. And given this phone starts at $699, it's an incredible steal.

The display on the 10S Pro is essentially the same as the 10 Pro and runs at a pleasing 144Hz refresh rate, 2688 x 1216 resolution, 2000-nit brightness, and a 100% DCI-P3 wide color gamut. Those numbers equate to a beautiful display on a phone that very much deserves it.

Redmagic AI

Like every phone on the market, the 10S Pro includes AI. To launch it, tap the "REDMATIC AI+" in Settings, and you'll see SmartSidebar, RedMagic Translation, and "Redmagic smart communication." 

The SmarSide bar can be activated to display shortcuts to app popups. For example, if you tap the Gmail shortcut, a small Gmail widget appears, where you can read and compose email.

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The Redmagic Smart Communication feature manages connections. For example, it includes "Smart antenna boosting," which uses algorithms to improve antenna efficiency for better performance. There's also Smart dual-SIM, which intelligently recognizes a SIM's signal strength quality and automatically switches to the best SIM (if you have two inserted).

Yeah yeah, enough about AI. What about the phone?

It's a delight. From the gently rounded edges (and boxy design, which I really appreciate) to the size, weight, and feel of the phone, the 10S Pro screams "premium" without the premium price. 

If I had one criticism of the Redmagic 10S Pro, it would be the bit of bloatware installed on the device. There are apps that really aren't necessary, like Booking.com, Gopher, MoboReels, Prank Video, Headspace, Hinge, and quite a few others. 

Also, the phone's camera (which is one thing that lags behind other powerful Android flagships) comes enabled with a Redmagic watermark on photos. You'll want to disable that in the settings unless you want all of your personal snapshots to act as Redmagic advertising. 

The numbers speak for themselves 

One of the first things I did during my testing was run the Geekbench app on both my Pixel 9 Pro and the Redmagic 10S Pro. I wanted to see how the two phones compared, and my suspicions were proven correct. 

The Redmagic 10S Pro with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor blew away the Pixel 9 Pro in the CPU benchmark, and got significantly higher scores in both single-core and multi-core processing. 

ZDNET's buying advice

Look, the Redmagic 10S Pro is a great phone for mobile gamers with all the necessary speed and optimizations to help you get the most of the experience. The problem is that there are a few things average users will have to deal with to really get the most out of the phone. There's the camera watermark, the Redmagic news feed, the bloatware, and the not-exactly-brilliant cameras. 

If you need a phone with a powerful camera, stick to the Google Pixel or Samsung Galaxy. If cameras are secondary to speed, the Redmagic 10S is as much a flagship killer as any device I've tested.

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As far as price, you can get the low-end model for $699; the midrange model is $849 and includes 16GB of memory and 512GB of storage; and the highest-end model is $999 for 24GB of memory and 1TB of storage.

The phone will be available on June 12th, and as of now you can sign up to be informed of the 10S Pro release but pre-orders have not yet opened up. 

Redmagic 10S Pro tech specs:

• Transparent metal body
• RGB lighting
• Customizable Magic Key for instant access to Game Space
• CPU - Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset (4.47 GHz), combined with the AI RedCore R3 Pro, LPDDR5T RAM, and UFS 4.1 Pro storage.
• RAM - 12/16/24 GB of LPDDR5T
• Storage - UFS 4.1 up to 1 TB.
• Average frame rate - 120.2 FPS
• Cooling - 12,000 mm^2 vapor chamber and a 23,000 RPM high-speed fan
• Battery - 7,050 mAh battery with 80W fast charging
• Display - 6.85" with 2688 x 1216 resolution at a 144 Hz refresh rate, 2000 Nits, 2,500 Hz instant touch sampling rate, and a 95.30% screen-to-body ratio

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