The Nubia Red Magic 3 Review: A 90Hz Gaming Phone With Active Cooling

Display Measurement

The Red Magic 3 features a 2340 x 1080 6.65” OLED screen. At this screen size, the resolution is certainly quite stretched, however for a gaming phone I don’t think that’s too much of a priority, and the 90Hz refresh of the panel certainly makes up for it.

The phone’s software settings are very basic, there’s just a toggle between a Display P3 gamut target and an sRGB target.

We move on to the display calibration and fundamental display measurements of the Red Magic 3 screen. As always, we thank X-Rite and SpecraCal, as our measurements are performed with an X-Rite i1Pro 2 spectrophotometer, with the exception of black levels which are measured with an i1Display Pro colorimeter. Data is collected and examined using SpectraCal's CalMAN software.

In terms of maximum brightness, the phone gets an unusual maximum of 455 nits, which is slightly above the regular ~400 of “standard” OLED panels out there in the market. It doesn’t get as bright as newer panel generations and it also lacks a brightness boost function.

 
SpectraCal CalMAN

In terms of greyscale accuracy, the RM3 exhibits quite a colder colour temperature at 7156K. There’s no way to change this in the settings and is essentially what you’re stick with.

I also note that the gamma for the phone is very high and looks like it’s targeting a level of 2.5, coming in close at 2.43.

SpectraCal CalMAN

There’s a noticeable blue-shift as well as darker tones in the greyscale reproduction.

Because of these large divergences, the phone only ends up with a dE2000 of 5.04, among one of the worst results out there.

SpectraCal CalMAN 

In the sRGB saturations test, the RM3 actually seems to do quite well and it’s saturation levels aren’t too bad and it keeps largely to the gamut, albeit the maximum reds and blues are short of the full sRGB gamut. The main issue here is that everything is shifted by the off-target colour temperature.

Mainly due to the colour temperature shift, we see the phone only end up with a dE2000 of 3.65 in the sRGB natural setting.

SpectraCal CalMAN 

In the P3 higher gamut mode, the phone’s saturations actually seem to exceed the standard. The higher mid-level saturations are also due to the higher than 2.2 gamma target employed by the Nubia.

Due to the colour temperature shift again and the gamma not being on target, the RM3 only manages a dE2000 of 3.88.

SpectraCal CalMAN

The GMB test isn’t too terrible, but again, colour temperature and gamma are the biggest issues in the inaccuracies.

Overall, the RM3’s colour calibration isn’t too fantastic simply due to the fact that it’s knowingly targeting something different from the norm. The colour temperature shift unfortunately isn’t something you can fix as there’s no dedicated controls for it – and the higher gamma target of 2.5 is also that’s inherent to the vendor’s choice.

While the colour calibration is certainly not par with other flagships, it remains a good screen due to the OLED aspect and simply due to the fact that it’s a 90Hz display.