This gaming flagship just went global, and your Galaxy or iPhone should be sweating

Gaming phones were supposed to be a dying breed, quietly fading out as mainstream flagships got fast enough to handle anything. RedMagic clearly never got the memo.

RedMagic 11S Pro goes global, and the spec sheet is ridiculous

We already covered the RedMagic 11S Pro landing in China last week, and the global model is officially live as of today (May 27). Per the company's announcement, it ships with confirmed US pricing and the same overclocked silicon you'll find in the most expensive Android flagships on the shelf.

The headliner is the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Leading Version, which RedMagic says delivers a 19% CPU and 24% GPU jump over last year's model. That's the same processor running the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, only RedMagic wraps it in active fan cooling and visible liquid cooling instead of a sealed slab of glass.

RedMagic 11S Pro key specs

• 6.85-inch full-screen 144Hz OLED, no notch or cutout, up to 1,800 nits
• 7,500mAh battery with 80W wired and 80W wireless charging
• Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Leading Version with a 24,000 RPM cooling fan
• 50 MP main and 50 MP ultra-wide cameras, plus a 16 MP under-display selfie camera
• REDMAGIC OS 11.5 on Android 16 with Google Gemini built in

The 7,500mAh battery is the part worth pausing on. Neither the Galaxy S26 Ultra nor the iPhone 17 Pro Max come close, and RedMagic somehow pulls it off without turning the phone into a brick.

Why a gaming phone launch actually matters right now

The timing is what makes this interesting. Asus is reportedly hitting pause on its ROG Phone line for 2026, so the category genuinely is shrinking, which makes RedMagic's full-send approach feel almost rebellious.

Pricing is where things get uncomfortable for the big names. The 11S Pro starts at $849 for 12GB and 256GB, and tops out at $949 for 16GB and 512GB, undercutting a maxed-out Galaxy or iPhone while running the same chip.

The catch is the camera, and it's a real one. Our six months of living with the RedMagic 11 Pro made it clear that the under-display selfie camera is rough and the photo trade-offs are not for everyone.

So who is this for? Anyone who games hard and watches a regular flagship thermal throttle into a slideshow will find a lot to love here, while photo-first buyers should walk away.

The honest outsider verdict

I'll be upfront: I'm not a gamer, so a fan-cooled phone with RGB lighting is not built for someone like me. That's exactly why I think it deserves credit.

RedMagic is refusing to chase mainstream taste, and in our RedMagic 11 Pro review we scored it 8.3 and called it one of the coolest phones we've tested, both literally and figuratively. When everyone else is sanding their phones down into identical glass rectangles, a transparent, liquid-cooled beast doing its own thing earns my respect, even if I'd never buy one.

If you've been watching your flagship melt mid-match, the global 11S Pro is going to be very hard to ignore.

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