A Tale of Two Smartphones
Samsung vs Redmagic
AWAY FROM THE WORLD of performance PCs, this month I played with two brand new powerhouse phones—the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra and the Redmagic 7 Pro. In the blue corner, Samsung brings a raft of premium features, including top-of-theline cameras, the brightest phone screen ever, and the much-loved S Pen stylus. In the red corner, Redmagic offers gamingoptimized shoulder triggers, fast 960Hz touch sampling, and 18GB of RAM (that’s more than in my gaming laptop, and that runs GodofWar at max settings).
While these two phones serve different audiences in the real world, I found that using them side-by-side played to my two conflicting interests in an almost Jekyll & Hyde manner. During the day, I love having the Samsung and its pen for making notes, a brilliant camera for taking product shots at events, and the DeX mode which allows it to become a PC wherever there’s a monitor or TV. But when I was off the clock, I preferred the Redmagic and its ability to dominate in CallofDutyMobile and play classic games via emulation.
I get there are compromises to be made on smartphones. The Redmagic’s cameras are nowhere near as good as the Samsung’s, while the S22 Ultra can’t run GenshinImpact at a solid 60fps without the Redmagic’s innovative fan-based cooling solution. However niche gaming smartphones are, I love that they exist. They’re the reason I extricated myself from the Apple ecosystem last year, as I was sent Asus, Lenovo, and Black Shark gaming phones to review and was impressed with their 120Hz+ displays and raw performance.
In the meantime, I’m going to have to make a decision on what to use as my daily driver and, because the Samsung allows me to be more productive, it will have to be the S22 Ultra. Boring old Dr. Jekyll wins again. Without the shoulder triggers of the Redmagic, though, the real victim is going to be my CallofDutyMobile K/D ratio.