I used the most powerful phone in existance, and it’s neither a Galaxy, nor an iPhone

RedMagic is a gaming phone sub-brand of Chinese smartphone maker Nubia, itself a property of ZTE.

It’s sub-sub-brand, if you will!

But that’s not important. The important part is these guys aren’t just taking off-the-shelf components, putting them together and doing some marketing around the resulting concoction.

They are doing real engineering, real hardware innovation – the type of which we rarely see in the mobile tech world nowadays.

For the last several weeks, I’ve been using their latest flagship, the RedMagic 11S Pro, and frankly, I’m blown away by how powerful and well-rounded it is. And the thing is, I’m not that easy to impress when it comes to phones.I decided to share my impressions of the RedMagic 11S Pro today, because the company has just revealed the 11S Pro is coming to global markets on June 10, starting at $850. And yes, that includes North America.

The last gaming phone series standing outpaces the Galaxy S26 Ultra

To get the obvious things out of the way first: yes, this is an unapologetically gaming phone. It’s got a unique, transparent rear cover design, revealing an actual, working liquid-cooling system.

Crazy stuff? It also has touch-sensitive trigger keys along its right-hand side, and a bunch of RGB zones for setting the proper mood.The most insane aspect of the RedMagic 11S Pro is its jaw-dropping performance. The phone comes with a pumped-up variation of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, called Leading Version.

The difference compared to the regular Elite Gen 5 is that the two Prime cores are overclocked to 4.74 GHz in the Leading Version, versus 4.61 GHz in the standard Gen 5. If this sounds familiar, it’s because this is also the specification of the special “Gen 5 for Galaxy” version that Samsung uses.

Which actually creates the perfect setting to illustrate RedMagic’s impressive achievement in the performance category. The 11S Pro has a ton of gaming-focused features, but the super-advanced passive+active cooling system is where it makes its biggest splash.

Almost as fast as an iPad Pro M5!

Take a quick look at the GeekBench and 3D Mark benchmark results of the RedMagic 11S Pro and the Galaxy S26 Ultra here:

RedMagic 11S Pro vs Galaxy S26 Ultra Performance Benchmarks

In terms of overall system performance, it’s pretty much neck and neck, although there’s a slight edge for the RedMagic 11S Pro in multi-core performance. But the fun part happens over in 3D Mark.

The 3D Mark results here are from the very demanding Wild Life Extreme Stress Test. This test runs for 20 minutes straight and really causes devices to heat up a lot. It basically loops the regular Wild Life Extreme test 20 times.

Both the RedMagic 11S Pro and the Galaxy S26 Ultra come in strong in the initial test loops. The S26 Ultra also has the superclocked version of the Elite Gen 5, so it manages to climb to the impressive 7801 points in its best loop (the first one), but then eventually drops to the much lower 3741 sustained score.

This happens because the phone heats up a lot, and in order to preserve the chipset’s health, it has to throttle its speed. Samsung is investing in the heat dissipation system of the Galaxy line, even so – the test is demanding and there’s usually a lot of throttling going on with most phones.

Now take a look at the RedMagic 11S Pro’s result: a score of 8236 in its best loop, and 6564 in its worst. RedMagic should have probably been called BlackMagic, because I have no idea how it managed to surpass the “for Galaxy” chip in the S26 Ultra and climb beyond the 8000 mark.

Then, after enough heat has been generated, the phone still has to throttle, but the performance drop we’re seeing is in no way so substantial as on the S26 Ultra, or most other smartphones.

Thanks to its advanced cooling system, the 11S Pro’s sustained graphics performance is almost double that of the S26 Ultra.

Now, you want to see something cool? Here are the best results for all devices we’ve run performance benchmarks on, from best to worst:

Sorted by 3D Mark high results

Sorted by GeekBench single-core results

Isn’t that nuts? The RedMagic 11S Pro is almost in iPad Pro M5 territory here, when it comes to graphics performance. And overall system performance, as measured by GeekBench, is not far behind.

In fact, if you take a look at the best performing devices right now in any of these benchmarks, it’s the iPad Pro with M-series processors, and then it’s the RedMagic 11S Pro, or the Galaxy S26 Ultra or the iPhone 17 Pro Max.

The rest of the competition in this high-octane race is simply blown out of the water.

No matter if you game or not, this is a win for innovation

And you know what? I’m happy for RedMagic. After using the 11S Pro for several weeks, I’m convinced this is a product that’s truly made by gamers, for gamers. There’s definitely someone there who understands the needs of the target audience very, very well.
And by that, I mean this isn’t just the result of some giant corporation throwing money at a problem until it’s fixed. It’s a small sub-brand doing some real-life engineering magic, real innovation, and putting some of the biggest names in tech to shame in the process.

We all grumble how companies seem to be re-releasing almost the same phones with almost the same designs each year. Well, this should be an inspiring win for everyone craving something innovative and different.

Here it is. It’s called the RedMagic 11S Pro.

If you want to learn more about it, stay tuned for my in-depth review, which is coming tomorrow. I’ve made sure to pay special attention to all the gaming-related features, like the design, the display, the trigger keys, the software and the humongous, 7500 mAh battery.

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