Gaming phones are powerful, cool — and completely unnecessary

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Gaming phones are powerful, absurd — and completely unnecessary

(Prototype credit: Tom's Guide)

When I say "gaming phone," you probably get an image of a handset with RGB, sharp accents, futuristic sounds and plenty of horsepower. They're big devices with huge batteries and large, expansive displays. They promise the ultimate gaming experience with minimal touch latency, an abundance of RAM, and profiles that push the processor to the max.

But what if I told you that y'all didn't actually demand nigh of that. In fact, you tin get an equally expert, if not improve, mobile gaming experience on a mainstream device rather than a gaming phone.

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Although the best gaming phones are still niche devices, they have introduced some modernistic mainstream features that have found their manner into other phones, such as loftier refresh charge per unit displays and infinitesimal touch latency. We can't continue without acknowledging that fact.

Merely the fact that these features are finding their mode into devices just underscores the fact that if you're looking for a great mobile gaming experience, yous don't accept to confine your search to only gaming phones.

Gaming phones: Neat, but that'south almost it

OnePlus nine Pro (Paradigm credit: Tom's Guide)

There are plenty of good gaming phones. Well-nigh recently, the ROG Telephone v demonstrates an incredible feat of applied science with more power than you'll probably demand in nigh games.

Even for competitive games, like Telephone call of Duty: Mobile or PUBG Mobile, the power that some of these gaming-centric devices pack is under-utilized. Honestly, when I reviewed the ROG Phone 5, the only title that made information technology struggle was Genshin Affect.

However, I accept institute that gaming phones aren't the best investment for the price they control. More oftentimes than not, they don't excel at doing other tasks y'all rely on your phone for, notably taking pictures. For that reason, I think the best gaming phone remains the iPhone 12 Pro Max considering it has a big screen, tons of horsepower, and it does everything else right, too. And the A14 Bionic chip from Apple tree is still beyond Qualcomm's Snapdragon 888, which powers the leading Android devices.

ROG Phone 5 (Paradigm credit: Tom'south Guide)

Simply if you're in Android state, the new OnePlus 9 Pro matches the best gaming phone to date, the ROG Phone 5, in terms of performance while doing everything else better, too — cameras come to mind, since the ROG Phone 5'southward photography performance was nix curt of atrocious.

Gaming phones: Struggling to truly stand out

In a earth with a greater diversity of parts available to telephone manufacturers — like you see with custom gaming PCs — I recollect that gaming phones would stand out more. Nevertheless, since the summit-tier gaming phone and the highest-end flagship are both going to use the same system-on-chip (SoC), we hit a bottleneck.

For instance, the OnePlus ix Pro and ROG Phone 5 both use the Snapdragon 888, which is a great SoC. Just that is the most crucial part of the equation, since the SoC also includes the GPU, which powers your games.

The differences betwixt the two phones then come down to RAM, cooling systems, battery size and charging, and additional features or accessories. Most of these add marginal benefits, especially when mainstream smartphones start adopting some things that gaming phones pioneered (such as the OnePlus Cool Play cooling organisation featured on the OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro).

At kickoff, gaming phones were interesting. They offered unique ideas well-nigh cooling, charging, screen engineering, and accessories (like the ultrasonic triggers on the ROG Phones). Nowadays, though, there's less of a lead for the gaming-specific devices because mainstream phone makers take caught onto some of the innovations.

ROG Telephone 5 Ultimate (Prototype credit: Tom'due south Guide)

Nosotros have loftier refresh rate displays, super fast charging, amend cooling/heat dissipation systems, and improve sound setups. As it stands right now, there is no need for a gaming phone because they're just currently pushing the boundary with how much RAM they pack in. And we can accept a long chat most the true, real-world usefulness of 18GB of RAM, for instance.

Gaming phones: Outlook

(Image credit: Tom's Guide)

That's not even to mention that the well-nigh mainstream telephone of all is too the all-time mobile gaming device. In our criterion tests, the Apple A14 silicon is still quite a ways ahead of the Android contest. Just take the iPhone 12 Pro, which netted 51 FPS in the extremely intensive 3DMark Wild Life Unlimited exam. Both the OnePlus 9 Pro and ROG Telephone five hitting 34 FPS. That'southward quite a significant divergence and it's more than just an iPhone vs. Android fence.

I have the privilege of spending a lot of my fourth dimension with many dissimilar phones and I hope to continue that for a long time. Part of the responsibility that comes with this privilege, however, is letting you all know how to make the all-time ownership decisions.

In my personal and professional person stance, gaming phones aren't necessary. They're certainly nifty and cool, merely they're often big, bulky, and weak in other regards similar cameras. Moreover, you can get similar gaming performance from a more mainstream smartphone, like the iPhone 12 Pro or OnePlus 9 Pro.

• More than: iPhone 13 leak just revealed the blueprint nosotros've been waiting for

Jordan is the Phones Editor for Tom's Guide, roofing all things phone-related. He'southward written near phones for over v years and plans to continue for a long while to come. He loves nothing more than relaxing in his home with a book, game, or his latest personal writing projection. Jordan likes finding new things to swoop into, from books and games to new mechanical keyboard switches and fun keycap sets. Hashemite kingdom of jordan tends to lurk on social media, but you can best reach him on Twitter.

Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/opinion/gaming-phones-are-powerful-cool-and-completely-unnecessary

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