Tencent-branded RedMagic gaming phone launched with 165Hz screen

RedMagic, the gaming brand of ZTE subdivision Nubia, has launched a new smartphone in collaboration with Chinese tech and gaming giant Tencent. The RedMagic 6 and 6 Pro are high-end devices available to order now in China, with a global launch coming later this month.

The RedMagic 6 has an Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processor, active fan cooling, and a 6.8-inch 1080p OLED display with a refresh rate of 165Hz, making it the fastest phone screen on the market today. RedMagic is also claiming a single-finger touch sampling rate of up to 500Hz, or up to 360Hz with multitouch. The touch-sensitive capacitive “shoulder triggers” on the side, meanwhile, are sampled at up to 400Hz.

The RedMagic 6 Pro is mostly identical, but it comes with up to 18GB of RAM and has a faster 120W charging system that RedMagic says can fully charge the 4,500mAh battery in just 17 minutes. The non-Pro 6 has a bigger 5,050mAh battery but a slower 66W system that takes 38 minutes for a full charge.

The Tencent collaboration is quite unusual. RedMagic says that the phone’s software is optimized for Tencent apps like WeChat and QQ, with 50 percent faster read and write speeds. Tencent’s Solar Core gaming software is also preloaded, and the company promises it improves game response speed, frame rates, and network latency.

The RedMagic 6 starts at 3,799 yuan (~$585) for a model with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, but you can pay almost twice as much for a fully loaded 18GB/512GB RedMagic 6 Pro — that’ll cost 6,599 yuan (~$1,020). Global pricing will likely be different, however; RedMagic will announce international release plans on March 16th.