Can AI revitalize the gaming phone market?

With Apple releasing its first artificial intelligence system, Apple Intelligent, at WWDC24, mainstream smartphone brands in the market now have their own dedicated AI directions. In reality, AI often plays the role of an "assistant" in phones, and we usually expect it to bring functions such as automatically generating article summaries, AIGC image elimination/generation, and image optimization. However, when implemented in niche markets, AI can bring about a different kind of change.

(Image source: Apple)

On June 24, the gaming phone brand Red Magic announced that it will hold a new product launch event on July 4. According to previous previews, there will be two major new products at this event: the Red Magic 9S Pro and Red Magic 9S Pro+ gaming phones, as well as Red Magic's first gaming laptop. More importantly, the theme of Red Magic's launch event is "AI Evolution, Beyond Gaming," and the Red Magic 9S Pro series is being positioned as an "AI gaming phone" for the first time.

(Image source: Red Magic)

We are not unfamiliar with the concept of AI phones, such as the OPPO Find X7 series and the Samsung Galaxy S24 series, which have a large number of AI functions built-in, or even integrate large models into the underlying system architecture. These can all be called AI phones. But if Red Magic wants to refine AI phones specifically to the "gaming" niche and create an experience that differs from other AI phones, that would be a considerable challenge.

So, can Red Magic leverage the AI trend to bring gaming phones back to the mainstream market and compete directly with various AI flagship phones?

AI Gaming Phones, Red Magic is Stirring Things Up Again

As the first batch of Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 mobile platform gaming phones, the Red Magic 9 Pro series has been released for half a year now. According to Red Magic's previous update and iteration schedule, the Red Magic 9S Pro series announced this time should only be a minor upgrade and won't have significant upgrades.

The biggest upgrade of the Red Magic 9S Pro series lies in the processor, which has been upgraded from the previous Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Lead. Those familiar with the naming rules of the recent two generations of Snapdragon 8 series flagship platforms should not be unfamiliar with this. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Lead is actually the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 For Galaxy that was previously exclusive to the Samsung Galaxy S24 series and is now made available to the public.

In terms of specifications, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Lead continues the "1+5+2" core layout, consisting of 1 Cortex-X4 super core, 5 Cortex-A720 large cores, and 2 Cortex-A720 downclocked large cores. The clock speed range on the Lead version has been expanded to 365MHz to 3398MHz, which means it will have more flexible scheduling and extreme performance release in high-performance demand scenarios.

(Image source: 9to5Mac)

Just looking at the adjustments in the main frequency, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Leading Edition is not superior to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Standard Edition, especially when referring to the previous generation. There is also no significant performance gap between the Standard Edition and the Leading Edition. As a brand that focuses on the esports market, Red Magic chose to install the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Leading Edition in the first batch, mainly considering the demand for game performance scheduling and laying the groundwork for its AI esports functionality.

The other core configurations of the Red Magic 9S Pro will not be adjusted, including the BOE Q9+, new generation under screen camera, ultra-thin under screen fingerprint, and a dual 50 million pixel imaging solution with a 2 million pixel macro lens. Overall, the biggest highlight of Red Magic's half generation upgrade this time is the optimization of this processor and AI esports, while the improvements in other peripheral configurations can be almost negligible.

Gaming phones encounter AI, improving gaming experience is key

The use of AI technology for optimization in mobile games has become a trend in the industry, and back in 2018, OPPO first introduced the AI game mode on the R15 series. When users enter this mode, the system will automatically clear background applications and allocate CPU/GPU resources reasonably to achieve a better gaming experience.

In recent years, as the open world type has become the hot spot in the mobile game market, a series of games with high performance requirements for mobile phones have emerged, such as Genshin Impact, Magic Tower, and Singing Tide. In order to ensure that mobile phones remain smooth in operation, many game optimization schemes based on AI technology have also been widely used. For example, iQOO's super-resolution algorithm utilizes trained large models combined with machine learning to improve the resolution of game graphics.

The same type of technology also includes frame insertion algorithms, which are based on trained techniques and utilize image recognition to improve the overall frame rate of the game, preventing players from experiencing significant frame rate fluctuations during the game.

Essentially, both super-resolution algorithms and frame stabilization techniques are based on already trained large model divergence schemes, and these techniques often only work for some popular games. For esports phones, they can only perform stably in popular games, making it difficult to keep up with ordinary flagship phones.

Xiaolei speculates that Red Magic may add an adaptive game model in the new version of RedMagicOS, actively identifying player frame drops and resolution reduction issues during gameplay, and adding them to training after analyzing the problems to continuously optimize the smoothness of the game.

However, "fluency" is actually the most basic requirement in the field of esports, and for the audience of Red Devils, the standard cannot be set at such a low level. Considering that many game companies have tried to integrate AI big models into game characters before, perhaps Red Magic will also develop a corresponding AI game assistant. Like most AI intelligent assistants, Red Magic's AI game assistant can provide some clearance advice or game tutorials to help players improve their chances of winning.

In addition to providing AI game assistants, there is also a one click vlog function similar to that provided by Honor in MagicOS 8.0, which can be replaced with one click editing of kill or exciting moments on gaming phones. But similar features are actually supported by built-in screen recording assistants in some games, such as Honor of Kings and League of Legends mobile games.

Anyway, in order for esports phones to make good use of AI to help players improve their gaming experience, simply achieving "smoothness" is far from enough. After all, most flagship phones nowadays have good performance and excellent heat dissipation efficiency, which cannot be separated from gaming phones that mainly focus on esports. Perhaps only after completing the integration with the AI big model can we truly usher in the next spring of the Red Devils.

How can AI+esports and gaming phones break through?

As early as 2019, the emerging mobile phone brand Black Shark launched its first gaming phone. At that time, the mobile gaming market was rapidly growing, and the demand for mobile terminal performance by users became the main contradiction, fully stimulating the development of the esports mobile phone market. In the future, multiple mobile phone brands focusing on the esports market, such as Red Magic, iQOO, ROG Phone, etc., were born and aimed at this blue ocean.

But objectively speaking, there is a clear difference between esports smartphones and products like esports laptops. The former is difficult to achieve significant performance breakthroughs, as flagship level chips that can be freely chosen are all taken over by MediaTek and Qualcomm. With the continuous growth of semiconductor technology, mainstream flagship smartphones have approached or even surpassed gaming phones in terms of processor, GPU, memory, and other configurations. For example, both Apple's A-series chips and Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 series processors have greatly improved performance, allowing ordinary flagship phones to provide a smooth experience even when running large games.

Even worse, according to a market report by Counterpoint, about 70% of flagship smartphones released in 2023 are equipped with liquid cooling systems or graphene cooling technology. The battery capacity and charging speed of flagship phones are also constantly improving. For example, the Oppo Find X5 Pro is equipped with a 5000mAh battery and 80W ultra fast charging, making it comparable to gaming phones in terms of battery life and charging speed.

In terms of hardware, both parties cannot bridge the gap, so the same applies to the software part. Game phones usually come with built-in operating systems and features designed specifically for gaming, such as game modes, performance enhancement modes, etc. However, mainstream smartphone operating systems are also constantly being optimized, adding similar features. This has gradually made ordinary phones catch up with gaming phones in terms of gaming experience. In 2023, the Android system introduced a specialized game optimization framework (Game Mode API), which improved the performance and stability of game runtime. Apple has added high refresh rate support and low latency touch technology specifically designed for gaming in iOS 16, making the iPhone more competitive in gaming performance.

But the entry of AI big models into the mobile phone market may leave enough survival space for Red Devils.

For example, gaming phones can utilize big model technology to bring a more personalized user experience. Based on user game data, they can recommend suitable game settings and configurations, and even automatically adjust game modes to adapt to different types of games and user needs. This personalized service can not only improve user satisfaction, but also increase user stickiness to the device.

Or, in other words, AI can also learn user behavior habits, interests, and emotions in the game, adjust the reactions and behaviors of virtual characters in real time, and improve the immersion and realism of the game.

Anyway, under the wave of AI, both mass market smartphones and niche mobile terminals are at a time full of opportunities and challenges. The Red Devils dare to make AI the core keyword in this press conference, and naturally will make unique AI feature optimizations in their new products, providing a more comfortable gaming experience for players who love mobile games. But what kind of AI tricks the Red Devils will showcase will not be known until the press conference on July 3rd.