RedMagic 12 Pro Pairs Qualcomm’s New Chip With the Phone Series’ Biggest Battery Yet

The $949 RedMagic 12 Pro, announced Tuesday, includes one of the biggest phone batteries we’ve seen on a phone that will be on sale in the US.

The new gaming phone includes an 8,400-mAh battery, easily outdoing the 7,500-mAh battery on the RedMagic 11 Pro and the 5,000-mAh units we often see on mainstream flagship phones like the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra.

That large-capacity battery will power a 6.85-inch display that’s capable of running at a 1.5K resolution with a 185Hz refresh rate. This should mean that games running at that refresh rate will look incredibly smooth, although prior gaming phones running at 165Hz are no slouch at all when it comes to frenetic action games. RedMagic puts its 16-megapixel front-facing camera under the display, which, like prior RedMagic phones, will make the phone look like a small television with no display cutouts.

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Select titles like PUBG Mobile will be capable of running at that refresh rate, while others like Genshin Impact and Asphalt Legends will be optimized to run at higher graphics settings with the phone. Like prior RedMagic phones, there are two shoulder button-like sensors that can be mapped to functions like shooting in games like Call of Duty Mobile or Fortnite.

The 12 Pro is among the first phones to go on sale in the US with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 processor. To keep the phone cool while running at higher graphics settings, the phone includes both a 25,500-rpm cooling fan and a liquid cooling system. Also around the back are the phone’s 50-megapixel main and 50-megapixel ultrawide cameras.

The bumped-up battery, processor and display do come with a sizable hike in the phone’s starting price — the $949 cost is for the 256GB model with 12GB of RAM. By comparison, last spring’s RedMagic 11S Pro went on sale for $849 for the same configuration. That goes up to $1,049 if you want 16GB of RAM with 512GB of storage, or $1,199 if you want 1TB of space. These price increases are likely a result of the ongoing RAM shortage that’s making most electronics more expensive.

While the 12 Pro will ship with Android 17, it’s worth noting that RedMagic’s two-year software and three-year security update commitment is quite short for this price range. Most phones that cost $700 and more, including those from Samsung and Google, typically come with seven years of software and security updates.

Following Tuesday’s launch, the RedMagic 12 Pro will have an early bird voucher period starting Nov. 12 for those who want to officially buy the phone on Nov. 17, followed by its open sale date on Nov. 18.