For the past few years, Qualcomm and Mediatek have had a mid-cycle refresh of their flagship chipsets. This has typically been underwhelming with fractional improvements in performance, and it feels more like a marketing gimmick to justify new phones in the second half of the year.
However, this year is quite different; Qualcomm has made a drastic move with the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 by shifting from the Samsung fabrication process to TSMC. Qualcomm claims that the refreshed chipset has a 10% performance improvement but a 30% increased efficiency. In theory, this could solve most of the thermal throttling issues we have seen on Qualcomm devices over the past couple of years.
The Red Magic 7S Pro is the first device I have been able to test with this new chipset. One issue we have here is that Red Magic specialise in gaming phones, which tend to favour performance over battery efficiency.
So much so that they are the only company to implement an active fan inside the phones. This generally means that Red Magic phones don’t behave quite the same as more mainstream options.
Therefore for this performance comparison, you shouldn’t expect these results to be replicated across brands.
Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 vs Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Specification
| Qualcomm | Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 | Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 |
|---|---|---|
| Process Technology | TSMC’s 4nm | Samsung’s 4nm |
| CPU | Kryo CPU, Octa-core CPU 1x 3.2GHz (Cortex-X2) 3x 2.5GHz (Cortex A710) 4x 1.8GHz (Cortex A510) |
Kryo CPU, Octa-core CPU 1x 3.0GHz (Cortex-X2) 3x 2.5GHz (Cortex A710) 4x 1.8GHz (Cortex A510) |
| GPU | Adreno 730; Snapdragon Elite Gaming | Adreno 730; Snapdragon Elite Gaming |
| Machine Learning and AI | 7th-gen AI Engine; 3rd Gen Sensing Hub; 27TOPS | 7th-gen AI Engine; 3rd Gen Sensing Hub; 27TOPS |
| ISP | Triple 18-Bit ISP; Snapdragon Sight | Triple 18-Bit ISP; Snapdragon Sight |
| Camera Capability | 3.2 Gigapixels per second, 240 12MP photos in one second | 3.2 Gigapixels per second, 240 12MP photos in one second |
| Video Capability | 8K HDR, 18-bit RAW, Dedicated Bokeh Engine | 8K HDR, 18-bit RAW, Dedicated Bokeh Engine |
| Modem | X65 5G Modem-RF, Up to 10 Gbps Peak Download | X65 5G Modem-RF, Up to 10 Gbps Peak Download |
| WiFi Support | Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E | Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E |
Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 vs Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Benchmarks
Antutu
| Total | CPU | GPU | MEM | UX | Temp Increase | Battery Decrease | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Redmagic 7S Pro Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 |
1089418 | 259276 | 461234 | 191368 | 177540 | 1.3 | 4 |
| Redmagic 7 Pro Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 |
1000121 | 222950 | 444093 | 162923 | 170155 | 11.3 | 10 |
| Honor Magic4 Pro Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 |
938464 | 197169 | 440631 | 148260 | 152404 | 10.7 | 5 |
The Red Magic 7S Pro has a good start with the Antutu benchmark. The overall result is 8.9% higher than the Red Magic 7 Pro and 16% higher than the Honor Magic4 Pro.
However, the phone only increases 1.3°C in temperature. It started off quite warm due to the current heatwave, but this is still impressive and a smaller increase than I have seen from any flagship phone in recent years. Doing multiple retests saw the temperature increase vary from 1.3°C up to 7.1°C. All of these are lower than the temperature rises from other Redmagic phones and the Honor Magic4.
The battery drop was equally impressive, just 4% vs 10% on the Red Magic 7 Pro.
3DMark Wildfire Stress Testing & Thermal Throttling
| Best | Lowest | Stability | Temp Change °C |
Max Temp °C |
Battery % |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 REDMAGIC 7S Pro |
10709 | 10275 | 95.9% | 22°C | 49°C | 98% to 80% |
| Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 REDMAGIC 7 Pro |
10071 | 9796 | 97.3% | 18°C | 48°C | 87% to 56% |
| Qualcomm Snapdragon 888+ | 5856 | 5806 | 99.1% | 21°C | 51°C | 77% to 61% |
| Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 | 5872 | 5557 | 94.6% | 36°C | 59°C | 100% to 82% |
| Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 (Realme GT) |
5850 | 3234 | 55.3% | 20°C | 47°C | 75% to 62% |
It is 3DMark where things get interesting. 3DMark may not represent true gaming performance, but it gives us a good reference for gaming performance under sustained load, and this is likely what you want if you bought a Red Magic phone.
On a normal none gaming phone, we typically see poor stability on most phones that get stressed tested. On one of those phones, you’d expect the stability score to improve, with the chipset being more efficient and generating less heat which in turn reduces any thermal throttling that occurs.
With Red Magic, they allow the phones to run at peak performance for longer, getting warming and using up the battery quickly.
So, with this phone, we have a good stability score, but it is actually a bit lower than the Red Magic 7 Pro. However, the lowest loop score of the 7S Pro is higher than the highest loop score of the 7 Pro.
This difference represents a 6.34% increase with the highest score and a 4.89% increase in the lowest score.
Moving onto the battery and temperatures. The 7S Pro tops out at 49°C, which is 1°C higher than the older phone. The phone becomes quite hot to touch.
For the battery, I didn’t start the tests at the same percentage, so I have done some rough maths on the actual capacity. It is not accurate, as I have just used the quoted 5000mAh capacity, but it gives you an idea of efficiency.
For the Red Magic 7S Pro, the battery drops from 98% (4900mAh) to 80% (4000mAh) using roughly 900mAh.
For the Red Magic 7 Pro, the battery dropped from 87% (4350mAh) to 56% (2800mAh) using roughly 1550mAh.
A 650mAh difference is significant; the Red Magic 7S Pro used 42% less battery while achieving over 5% improvement in the gaming stress test.
Geekbench
| Single Core | Multicore | |
|---|---|---|
| Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 | 1324 | 4193 |
| Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 | 1238 | 3724 |
| Qualcomm Snapdragon 888+ | 1190 | 3698 |
| Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 | 1119 | 3333 |
| Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 (Realme GT) |
1136 | 3434 |
In GeekBench, we see quite a big improvement overall, a 7% improvement on the single core result and an impressive 12.6% improvement with the multi-core score.
PCMark 2.0 & PCMark 2.0 Battery
I have struggled to get the PCMark 2.0 Battery test to complete successfully in the past with Red Magic phones. By disabling various battery optimisation features, I managed to get it to work.
The test successfully completed its run in 10 hours and 9 minutes with an average score of 14334. Looking at the monitoring data, there are no weird drops in performance like you see with other phones, so the phone doesn’t appear to be doing anything funny to extend the battery life.
In comparison, the Red Magic 7 Pro errored out at 20% battery at about 7 hours 30 minutes.
Overall
The new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 equipped Red Magic 7S Pro offers a significant improvement in efficiency with marginal improvements in performance.
It looks like you could potentially get twice the battery life when gaming with the Red Magic 7S Pro vs the 7 Pro.
The big question is how much of a markup will Red Magic charge for this. Currently, the 16GB+512GB Supernova 7 Pro is £739. I would expect the 7S Pro will cost more, but if it is only a marginal increase, then it will be well worth getting.
