I spent 6 months using a gaming phone as a daily driver

as a daily driver? Well, I did just that, so you don’t have to. And there are some interesting takeaways from this experiment.

For the past six months, I’ve been using the RedMagic 11 Pro for absolutely everything. I even set up my Google Wallet and banking app, which is a hard procedure requiring a lot of patience and dedication.

This fancy-looking, futuristic device was my camera, my TV set, my music player, and everything a modern smartphone is supposed to be nowadays. How did it go? We’ll get to it, but first, a few lines about the phone itself, as this model might be foreign to many of you.

The RedMagic 11 Pro — what is it?

The first mass-produced phone with liquid cooling | Image by PhoneArena

The RedMagic 11 Pro is a proper gaming phone, and as such, it comes with certain advantages and drawbacks. It boasts a very impressive specs sheet, and it’s the first device to feature a liquid cooling system.

The phone comes equipped with a big 6.85-inch OLED screen and an under-display selfie camera. There’s a Snapdragon 8 Elite inside, a dual-camera system, a huge 7,500 mAh battery, and a unique design.

Which segues into the first major change I noticed when I started using the RedMagic 11 Pro.

The attention grabber

No need for a case, the phone looks stunning | Image by PhoneArena

All of my friends and acquaintances, with no exception whatsoever, asked me about the phone. “Hey, what kind of phone is this? Whoa, this phone looks sick, man!” Those were the initial reactions from people around me.

Even after the hype settled, I caught many of my friends secretly eyeballing the phone and throwing glances in its direction. It’s an absolute attention grabber. If that’s your thing, a gaming phone might be the right device for you.

No iPhone or Galaxy would ever get the same level of attention, as they’re so common and widespread that no one bats an eye. Speaking of eyes…

Forget about your dream of becoming a photographer

The two “eyes” on the back of this gaming phone are pretty basic. Dramatic headings aside, you won’t be able to impress your friends with images or videos taken with the RedMagic 11 Pro. Most (if not all) dedicated gaming phones are like this — just a mediocre camera system for the sake of having one onboard.

Frankly, I don’t understand it. What’s the thinking here — gamers don’t go out of their “caves” and don’t need good cameras? I’m not convinced. It’s most likely a sacrifice to keep the price down and boost other areas more important for competitive gaming, such as the flagship processor, high-refresh-rate screen, etc.

But using the RedMagic 11 Pro as a daily driver changed my habits and made me take much fewer photos, for better or for worse. The fact that the under-display selfie camera is just horrible didn’t help one iota.

I’ve moved to the polar opposite now, taking the Xiaomi 15 Ultra for a spin and giving a proper “camera” phone the attention it deserves. The takeaway here is if you like to take a lot of photos and camera performance is important to you, gaming phones might not cut it.

But speaking of cutting it, this phone cuts performance-heavy tasks like a hot knife through butter.

Absolutely stellar performance

Gaming phones are often optimized for performance, and it shows. The RedMagic runs extremely fast and smooth, with no single hiccup for the past six months. It’s a true joy to use. Is it faster than an iPhone 17 Pro Max or a Galaxy S26 Ultra? I can’t really tell the difference in real-life, day-to-day tasks.

What I can tell is that this gaming phone feels at least AS fast as the aforementioned flagships, and the 144 Hz refresh rate is buttery smooth to my eyes. I tried some mobile games, even though my gaming days are far behind me now.

Needless to say, a gaming phone feels at home in these scenarios. I’m not going to focus much on gaming, as this test is meant to show whether or not a gaming phone can serve a wider audience. And while we’re on the “serving” point, let’s talk about the battery.

Battery for days

Another huge pro in most gaming phones is the battery capacity. In the case of the RedMagic 11 Pro, we’re talking about a 7,500 mAh cell, 50% more than the Galaxy S26 Ultra.
Having a big battery on these phones is kind of a must, as performance-heavy games tend to suck the juice of the battery pretty quickly.

Which means that if you don’t game often and use the phone in a more restrained fashion, you’re going to get even longer times on a single charge. I was constantly getting two full days and around 20% near the end of the second day at that!

So, if longevity is important, one of the clever things you can do is get a gaming phone, but rather than playing games, use it like a normal phone. There are, however, things that aren’t quite “normal” on gaming phones.

The UI is bizarre… to say the least

Anime mascots and angular icons – the RedMagic 11 Pro UI | Image by PhoneArena

If you’re coming from a popular mobile UI skin such as One UI, for example, using a gaming phone might come as a shock. The same applies to all iOS users out there as well.

Gaming UIs are less polished when it comes to everyday tasks and heavily tailored toward gaming. They have gaming modes; additional tools such as crosshairs in shooting games; high-contrast modes to help you see enemies in games; dense statistics about the CPU and GPU usage; frame-rate optimizers; and many more.

If you don’t play games and you’re not used to any of these, you might feel a bit overwhelmed. Add to all this an interactive AI gaming mascot that pops up on your screen, speaks like a 14-year-old Asian gamer girl, and is dressed as if begging to catch a cold, and you’ll have the full confusing picture.

Can you (and should you) use a gaming phone as a daily driver after all?

You absolutely can use a gaming phone as a daily driver, but should you? | Image by PhoneArena

Where does all this leave us? What’s my verdict after six months with the RedMagic 11 Pro? Well, of course, you can use this phone as your main one, but you should be prepared for some sacrifices.

The camera system is the biggest and most obvious one, and many people won’t be willing to accept such a trade-off. I admit, I’ve been missing a proper camera system each and every single day of my six-month journey.

If the camera performance is not that important and you’re willing to put up with a pretty unique UI, both in a good and not-so-good way, then you can get a lot of mileage out of a gaming phone. All while saving some money too.

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