Christian de Looper/BGR

RedMagic wants to take its gaming phone series to the next level. The company recently took the wraps off of the new RedMagic 12 Pro, which happens to be one of the first phones to offer Qualcomm's new-gen chip, along with a huge 185Hz display, fast charging, and more. Of course, gaming phones have always occupied a weird niche.

They pack serious specs and gamer-centric hardware like shoulder triggers and active cooling fans, but they've also compromised heavily on things like camera quality, software polish, and general refinement. Some of those compromises are reasonable ones to make, but when other phones exist that have performance that's almost as good, but also offer high-end camera systems and better software, the compromises can still be hard to stomach.

So, does RedMagic continue that trend? At $949, how much better does the phone perform than the competition? Is it better enough to justify what is, spoiler alert, a camera that's pretty sub-par?…