Nubia’s Red Magic is a gaming smartphone with RGB lighting

Notches? Next. Edge to edge? Seen it all before. Facial scanning? Borrrring. No, what smartphones really need is RGB lighting. Nubia’s gaming-focused Red Magic phone sports a glowing LED strip on its back, the output of which you can customise to ‘mimic your gaming persona’. Built for serious on-the-go Fortnite, it has a sizeable 3,800mAh battery, 8GB of RAM and a triple-vented graphite heat sink to ensure your hands don’t get a singeing. With its black and red colour scheme and hexagonal camera, everything about this thing unashamedly screams GAMER. Under the hood is a slightly outdated Snapdragon 835, and it somewhat disappointingly it runs on Android 8.1 rather than actual magic. China pre-orders open on April 25, while there’s an Indiegogo campaign launching a day later, where it’s expected that the Red Magic will cost roughly $400.

Matt Tate Contributor

About

I'm fascinated by all things tech, but if you were going to leave me on a desert island, I'd probably ask for my Nintendo Switch, a drone, and a pair of noise-cancelling cans to block out the relentless seagull racket. When I'm not on Stuff duty you'll probably find me subscribing to too many podcasts, playing too many video games, or telling anyone who will listen that Spurs are going to win a trophy this season.

Areas of expertise

Video games, VR, smartwatches, headphones, smart speakers, bizarre Kickstarter campaigns