[Nubia Red Magic 3 Guides, News, & Discussion] SavageCat-TX:
I paid the extra $6 to have it shipped faster and arrived in 3 business days. I ordered LATE on Black Friday 2019 and had it in my hands on Wednesday.

First, let me provide a bit of history. I'm play PUBG a lot. I'm not on a squad mainly due to lack of the ability to setup a schedule to play with teammates to learn behaviors and work out strategies so I'm forced to play solo. I have been playing on an iPhone 6S plus. The phone did fine on I was hoping that a larger screen would help and WOW what an improvement the size makes (yes, size does apparently matter). The screen of the RM3s is larger than the entire screen and bezels of the iPhone 6S plus. I understand the brightness is only like 400nits or something like that. It's plenty bright enough for me. This was a concern previously but not now.

Buttons: The buttons have a solid clicky feel. I like them. The lock button and the volume rocker are close together so I keep hitting the volume down button. I suspect this might be an issue when my wife calls me and I've accidentally turned down the volume. My iPhone only had one button along the right side of the phone so the extra buttons will take some getting used to.

Face Unlock: This is new to me. With my wife's Note 9, she can lift the phone and it'll detect the movement and unlock. I THINK with the RM3s, you have to push the button on the side to activate the face scanner. Doesn't bother me but it might someone else.

PUGB Mobile: The bootup times for PUBG are effectively the same between the RM3s and the iPhone 6s Plus, we are talking millisecond differences. The iPhone is 4-5 years old and I bought it new. Not sure if this is a testament to Apple technology or not. As I understand UFS 3.0, you primarily see the benenfits when loading large files. My guess here is PUBG has a lot of little files so the performance benefits for loading times of PUGB are a marginally improvement over UFS 2.0. I mention this as I was considering the Samsung S10+ but the screen is smaller than what I wanted to buy.

First MINOR Gripe: Just to prove I'm being objectionable here, I would like to have had the charge port off center like the headphone jack is. I love that the ROG2 can be charged using the side port. When playing games in landscape mode, the cords would be balanced in your hands. That said, there is a freaking 5000mAh battery in this thing so I an easily play several classic matches and not have an anxiety that my battery will be dead before I get home.

Speakers: this was not a big factor for me as when I'm gaming I'll have on headphones but I like to play music or watch YouTube while cooking dinner. The speakers do not disappoint. Are they the best things on earth? Of course not. Are they an improvement over the iPhone 6s Plus? Oh hell yeah. While I am not an audiophile, this speakers are pretty damn good. They get loud. At the volume level of zero, clicking the volume up rocker once makes the speaker loud enough to listen to while working at your desk (w/o a headset). Any louder and my wife will immediately come tell my to turn it down. While the ear piece doubles as a speaker, the volume balance between the two is pretty good. The OnePlus 7t (the other phone I was considering) has a dedicated speaker so I'm sure it sounds perfectly balanced. If I want a higher quality speaker, I'm going to rely on a dedicated unit. Same goes for my TV, computer, or media center, etc. Use the right tool for the job.

Size and Weight: I don't think the phone is big but rather it is long (and I like it "tall" - using tall here for obvious reasons). It does NOT feel heavy and actually feels lighter than my iPhone 6s plus (plus case weight). I will be ordering a silicone case for the RM3s but I doubt it'll had any significant heft. The phone feels solid and not cheap but any means. Perhaps the lack of rear glass and the use of metal cuts down on the weight?

Air Triggers/Bumpers: In a word, "FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC!" They are better than what I had hoped for. Before I found out about the RM3s, I considered getting the OnePlus 7t and ordering button attachments from Amazon. The air triggers/bumper buttons respond immediately and without any lag. The finger unlock can also be programmed for a 3rd button. No clue yet what to use for that except maybe the revive button but since I primarily play solo, I'll probably program it for the scope or the exit button while in the vehicle. The beauty of the button is I can stack the icons in PUBG and the center button will activate the applicable button (in a vehicle, the unlock sensor becomes the exit button, outside of the vehicle, it activates the scope or perhaps the reload. So many choices. The placement isn't super easy to tap during extreme game play but after developing some muscle memory, it'll end up being a great addition.

It came with a pre-applied screen protector. I had heard mixed comments about whether or not it would come with one. As a result, I did order one with the phone so I guess I'll put it in a drawer. Of course when I need it, I wont be able to find it, I'll order another one, and then I'll find the one in the drawer. :/

The LED on back is pretty slick (albeit a gimmick but I like flashy lights). You can configure it for a multitude of things, There is an app with the phone to control the LED behavior. I also really like how the LED can flicker when playing music and for notifications. When playing music, I place the phone face-down so the sound from the speakers are bounced back from the counter which amplifies the sound (and you an see the LED). :)

Storage Space: Mine is the 128GB version. After signing in and before installing any apps, only 11% was used. No complaints there at all. I activated developer mode and then enabled OTG support, connected my OTG adapter and then attached a 512GB jump drive. The phone had no issues reading the contents. If I end up filling up the 128GB, it'll be easy to off load data so no concerns for me here.

Charge: When I unboxed the phone, the battery was around 80% (this is very normal). I placed on charge while I ate lunch, came back and it was 100%. 5000mAh battery. Awesome.

UI: My wife has a Samsung Note 9 so my experience with Android is limited to the time I've used her phone and the Samsung UI (can I say I hate curved screens? They look great but the usability is severely limited IMO.) and her phone feels heavy. I don't know what "bloatware" or "stock android" looks like but I've heard that the UI of the RM3s is very close to stock Android. I like what I am seeing. In all honesty, I like OnePlus's UI better visually speaking. I know you may be saying you can install Nova Launcher but the RM3s launcher cant permanently change to use a different launcher. Even if I can't install a 3rd party launcher, coming from iOS, I'm used to only effectively being able to change the wallpaper so I'm already have more customization options now. The stock live wallpaper is pretty cool.

ROOT: I do not have any plans to ROOT the phone or unlock the bootloader. I also thought I'd never leave iOS but I've seen the errors of my ways so we'll see what happens. I did see in Developer Options there is a slide switch to unlock the bootloader. Nice!

Phone: I stuck my Tmobile sim card in an Tmobile immediately detected the phone needed some carrier updates. After applying them, I made a single call. It connected quickly. I did not pay attention to if it was connecting using VoLTE. After the initial test call, I removed the SIM. My case hasn't arrived yet so I'm waiting to use the phone. Once I make the official switch, I'll add a reply on the phone call since no one on YouTube mentions how it works as a phone. ?