My next phone: Nubia RedMagic 6R

This weekend, I placed an order for a RedMagic 6R from Nubia, the high-end branch of ZTE who’ve been making some interesting phones specifically for gaming. For US$500, you get the same processors as those in Samsung’s flagship phone, the Galaxy S21…

Chipset	Qualcomm SM8350 Snapdragon 888 5G (5 nm)
CPU	8 Kryo 680 cores: 📱 1 running at 2.84 GHz 📱 3 running at 2.42 GHz 📱 4 running at 1.80 GHz
GPU	Adreno 660

…paired with an AMOLED screen that has a crazy 144 Hz refresh rates. With specs like these, it’s no wonder that it made GSMArena’s Best gaming phones 2021 buyer’s guide.

Want to know more about the RedMagic 6R? Here’s GSMArena’s video review:

My father-in-law needed an upgrade from his flip phone from the pleistocene epoch, so I decided to give him my current phone, a Moto One Hyper, and get a new one. The original plan was to go with my go-to Android phone vendor, Motorola (who typically give great bang for the buck), and get the G100.

But after seeing that the RedMagic 6R goes for the same price and with flagship specs (here’s a side-by-side spec chart for the 6R and the G100), I decided to make the leap.

Because I’m not in a complete hurry to get the phone and because I have some serious writing and editing to do this week and don’t want to be distracted by sweet new gear, I decided to be true to my Asian-ness and save about $80 by ordering the phone and a protective case directly from Nubia/ZTE rather than going through Amazon Prime and getting it the next day.

(Besides, I didn’t feel like buying Jeff Bezos more midlife crisis spaceship parts today.)

The phone left the warehouse in Yuen Long (a town in Hong Kong’s western New Territories), and is currently making its way to me in Tampa via FedEx.

What will I do with a gaming phone? Build apps for it with my newly-purchased gaming laptop by getting more familiar with this development tool:

I’ll post an unboxing video and other notes when it arrives. Watch this space!