Nubia's 5G gaming phone has a screen with a super-smooth 144Hz refresh rate

The new Nubia Red Magic comes with a 144Hz display, higher than what Samsung, Razer and Asus offer

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The Nubia 5G Red Magic phone comes in three colors and is equipped with high-end specs. (Picture: Nubia)

Masha Borak

Published: 7:12pm, 13 Mar 2020

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

Smartphone brand Nubia has a new 5G gaming phone, and it hopes to attract you with its high-refresh display. The 5G Red Magic has a display with a 144Hz refresh rate. That’s higher than any other flagship on the market, a handful of which use displays with a 120Hz refresh rate, like the Samsung Galaxy S20.

A screen’s refresh rate is the number of times that the image on a display refreshes each second. So the 5G Red Magic refreshes 144 times per second. Although there have been debates about whether a higher number of hertz matters that much for ordinary users, some experts say gaming phones could benefit from this trend. But while a better screen can help offer a smoother gaming experience, other factors are also important, such as cooling for hardware with powerful processors.

Nubia, started by Shenzhen-based ZTE, seems eager to stand out among gaming smartphone rivals like Razer and Asus ROG. The new Red Magic comes with the latest Qualcomm chip, the Snapdragon 865, and includes up to 16GB of RAM and 256GB of UFS 3.0 storage. It’s also equipped with a 64-megapixel main camera and 8-megapixel selfie camera. A specially designed cooling system might give it some extra oomph, too. The smartphone started pre-orders on Thursday in China, selling for between 3,799 yuan and 5,199 yuan (US$540 to US$740).

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