No Other Gaming Phone Even Comes Close

[00:00] This, my friends, is a solid 2,432-karat white  sapphire crystal. And you might be like, "Hey,   Jerry, how did you get your hands on six inches  of rock-hard, scratch-proof sapphire?" That's a  

[00:17] great question, and I'm going to need you not to  ask so many questions. While six inches is far   above average, it actually is nowhere near the  largest man-made sapphire block in existence.   There's a company called Arc Energy  that makes a 65,000-karat boule of  

[00:33] sapphire that weighs 660 lbs. The boule  is nearly two feet wide and one foot tall,   and it has enough white sapphire  inside to make 4,000 smartphone covers.

[00:45] Which brings us to today's victim: the new  Red Magic Astra gaming tablet Golden Saga,   which uses this level-eight scratch-proof  sapphire crystal and real gold as some of   its ultra-premium, top-of-the-line materials  inside the most luxurious gaming tablet on  

[01:00] the planet. I'll give this tablet away  to one of you at the end of this video. Today, we're going to take my sacrificial sapphire  and show how it might be cut up and transformed  

[01:13] into something useful. Since most level-eight or  level-nine scratch-proof screens are exceptionally   superior, we can find examples of sapphire crystal  on watch faces, the backs of phones, and sometimes  

[01:25] even on phone screens. The problem is , though,  is that the only thing on the planet that will cut   scratch-proof level-nine sapphire is a level-10  diamond. We'll get to that part in a second. The other rock here on my desk is actually  fossilized dinosaur poop called coprolite.  

[01:41] It doesn't have anything to do with sapphire; I  just wanted some dinosaur poop on my desk just   for fun. Thumbs up for that. Anyway, aside from  having real sapphire on their Astra gaming tablet,   Red Magic also sent me a new limited edition  Red Magic 11 Pro Golden Saga gaming phone,  

[01:58] which supposedly also has real sapphire  on the back. The sapphire covers the new   golden liquid cooling loop, and it has a  literal gold-plated internal vapor chamber,   which means we've got to do what we  always do and verify those claims.

[02:14] Let's start with how the sapphire is cut.  Diamond saws are actually pretty common on   construction sites. You can get diamond blades  like this one for about 20 bucks at Home Depot;   they handle cutting tile or granite countertops.  This saw, however, is specific to lapidary work.  

[02:30] As you can see, the diamond dust, or grit, is  fine enough to be embedded into the edge of   the blade. As the metal holding the diamond dust  wears away, new diamonds are exposed, making it   a self-sharpening system. Since the diamond dust  is microscopic, the saw blade itself has no teeth  

[02:47] to damage my fingers with. I can touch the blade  while it's still spinning and still count to ten. As you can see, the level-10 diamond dust  in the blade is making short work of our   level-nine sapphire boule. The main thing we  have to watch out for is the boule cracking.  

[03:01] Since sapphire boules are created at around  2,000°C, there's a lot of brittle stress   built up on the inside. You might have noticed  that the tip of my boule has been broken off.   This is where the seed crystal originally was.  The seed crystal is kind of like the blueprint  

[03:16] from which the rest of the crystal grows. Aluminum  oxide dust is melted down over the seed crystal,   and as the new liquid cools, it  orients itself into a crystalline   form based on how the original seed crystal  was placed—kind of like cloning or an icicle.

[03:32] What takes millions of years to happen  naturally below ground can happen in   just a few hours here high above ground with,  of course, the right equipment and scientific   know-how. It does take about a week to slowly  cool the boule back to ambient temperature,  

[03:45] though. The slow cooldown process helps reduce  internal stress and subsequent fracturing, since   a fractured boule wouldn't be very useful when  cutting out screens, back panels, or watch faces.

[03:57] With our sapphire cut, you can see it's not  totally clear. This is where polishing comes   in. We have a range of diamond-laminated grinding  wheels ranging from 80-grit to 3,000-grit. The   higher the number, the finer the polishing diamond  grit. As the grit gets finer, the scratches are  

[04:14] reduced, turning our sapphire into an optical  lens. A more industrial setup, like the one Red   Magic uses on their Golden Saga sapphire devices,  could get the crystal even more optically clear   than we have here. Ultra-fine aluminum oxide dust  can get up to 20,000-grit or higher, but you get  

[04:31] the point. Industrial sapphire cutters also use  high-end lasers to get their exact dimensions. Sapphire is pretty cool. Keep in mind, though,  never to call it "sapphire glass," since they   have very different elemental structures,  hardnesses, and values. Sapphire glass  

[04:46] would just be blue-tinted glass, and sapphire  crystal might look like glass, but it's actually   a gloriously premium, jewel-grade gemstone,  and we should put some respect on its name. but here we are. I wouldn't have it any other way.  

[05:04] Hopefully, the sapphire crystal on the back  of the Red Magic 11 Pro Golden Saga holds up   to the hype that I just generated. Inside  the box, we get our external cooling unit,   which can drop the temperature of your cooling  loop by 18 degrees. Everything about this phone  

[05:19] is overkill, including the 80W charging brick.  We also have two USB-C charging cables—because   why not—a carbon fiber case, also literal  gold-plated SIM card removal tool, and an  

[05:31] individualized gold-plated collector's card.  My number is 297, so it's a pretty rare device. The cooling loop on the back is the same  liquid-filled pump that we found on the   normal non-gold-plated version of the 11 Pro  that we durability tested earlier this year,  

[05:46] except now the liquid is gold instead  of blue. We'll get a closer look at   all the gold on the inside, but  first: the sapphire scratch test. A plastic- or fiberglass-backed smartphone  would scratch at a level two or three on  

[06:00] the Mohs scale of hardness. Regular  glass would scratch at a five or six,   and real sapphire crystal would scratch at  a level eight or nine. Diamonds, of course,   are level 10. Just like we expected, we don't  see any scratches until a Mohs 8. Red Magic  

[06:15] is indeed using real sapphire crystal on the back  of their Golden Saga smartphone. Very impressive. Now, one thing that makes this teardown  much more difficult is that sapphire has   a thermal conductivity 40 times higher than  regular glass. So, as I try to soften the  

[06:31] glue holding this watertight phone together,  the crystal is so good at getting rid of heat   that it cools itself down before I have a chance  to lift the crystal off. This is extremely good   for gaming but bad for taking phones apart.  I'm using a new tool from iFixit called the  

[06:46] "Clampy" anti-clamp, which should help me  get the back sapphire off in one piece. Sapphire is impervious to scratches, but  it can still shatter like glass if it's   ever dropped. The marks you see on the  underside of the sapphire is just the  

[06:59] aesthetic tinting getting rubbed away by  my tool. And look at that—Clampy got the   sapphire off in one piece. I'll put  this sapphire down with the rest of   my sapphires. You know your desk is cool when  it's covered in sapphires and dinosaur poop.

[07:13] Where was I? Ah, yes. The coolest part  of the Red Magic 11 Pro Golden Saga,   aside from the golden sapphire, is the  cooling loop. Under the carbon fiber sheet,   we can see the full loop in all of its glory. We  see the liquid flowing around inside the loop,  

[07:27] dissipating heat from the gold-and-silver air duct  up top. I can feel the piezoelectric pump at the   bottom vibrating through my fingertips.  I'll pop the microphone cover off of my   microphone so you can hear the vibrations for  yourself. She's humming along rather nicely.

[07:49] To get to the golden vapor chamber, though, we  need to remove the nineteen T4 Torx screws holding   down the back hardware. Then we can lift up the  gold-and-silver alloy air duct and cooling loop.   Red Magic has had cooling fans inside their  gaming smartphones since the early days,  

[08:04] but only with this 11 Pro have they managed  to make the whole thing IPX8 watertight,   meaning the fan itself is waterproof. Air  is allowed to flow through the air duct,   so water, of course, would be able to enter as  well; however, the duct itself is sealed off  

[08:18] from the rest of the phone. For some reason,  it definitely has gold plating on the inside.   There's probably not a single other person on the  planet who would actually check for gold inside   of the air duct except for me, but Red Magic  actually did it, just like they said they would.

[08:33] Here is also where we can see the mesh that  lets the air and water flow through the vent,   while the red gasket keeps the liquid from  entering the rest of the electronics inside of   the phone. Speaking of which, I'll unplug the  massive 7,500 mAh battery. It's got more than  

[08:48] twice the capacity of an iPhone 17—but  who's counting? It also has pull tabs,   but the glue does need a bit of extra  persuasion from my pry tool to let loose.

[09:00] With the battery gone, we can start to get  a glimpse of our golden vapor chamber. I'll   remove one more screw holding the motherboard  and pop that out so we can get a better look   at Red Magic's gold. Now, gold-plating the vapor  chamber probably doesn't help all that much with  

[09:14] actual thermal conductivity, since gold moves  basically the same amount of heat as copper.   But where gold excels is being literally immune  to atmospheric oxidation. If you remember Lady  

[09:26] Liberty here in the USA—may she rest in peace—she  was originally made out of shiny copper but has   since turned green due to atmospheric oxidation.  Which, once copper is oxidized or tarnished,   that layer acts as a thermal barrier. So, the  reason electronics get gold-plated is to keep  

[09:42] them clean and useful for longer. Still  pretty wild that France would just gift   us a whole statue. To be fair, though, her  torch is gold-plated, which is kind of cool. And look at that—everything still works,  including the liquid cooling. I'm a big  

[09:58] fan of Red Magic. They're pushing boundaries and  trying new things where everyone else appears to   have given up. Instead of taking the new Red  Magic Astra gaming tablet Golden Saga apart,   I've decided to give it away. It has the  same sapphire and gold-plated internals as  

[10:12] the smartphone. Let me know your favorite TV show  or YouTube channel down in the comments (besides   mine, obviously), and I'll pick a random  winner from anywhere in the world. Current   pricing for the limited editions is down in the  description. It's actually pretty reasonable,  

[10:26] all things considered. Thanks a ton  for watching. I'll see you around.