What makes gaming smartphones different from non-gaming smartphones?
Table of Contents
This is not just a smartphone. It’s a gaming smartphone.
Have you notice lately about a new breed of smartphones? Aside from the growing popularity of the folding phone, gaming smartphones are all on the rage right now. The rise of mobile gaming gave way for smartphone manufacturers to make gaming focused devices.
So are they just regular smartphones with slightly better specs on some areas or are there things common among these monstrous computing devices?
Here’s five distinct features that a gaming smartphone could or should have. We are not saying that all these things exist in a single smartphone but more often than not, these come as standard to be able to say that your smartphone is gaming focused.
1. High Refresh Display
What’s the difference between high resolution and high refresh displays? High resolutions are typically 1440p or 4K AMOLED displays mostly seen on flagship smartphones. High refresh rate displays are higher than 60Hz (the standard refresh rate even on laptop monitors). Gaming smartphones can have 120Hz or 144Hz refresh rates which provides a very smooth animation for gaming. It also allows you, the player, to react sooner to moving targets or elements in the UI. You have to see it to appreciate it. The Asus ROG Phone 3, ZTE Nubia Red Magic 5G have 144Hz refresh rate and a 1080p resolution. The OnePlus 8 Pro has a 120Hz refresh rate and a 1440p resolution. Notice that as the refresh rate increases, the effective resolution decreases. It’s a trade off to preserve battery life and maintain a cool thermal for the smartphone.
2. Enormous Battery Capacity
The Asus ROG Phone 3 has 6000mAh battery. ZTE Nubia Red Magic 5G, 4500mAh. Xiaomi Black Shark 3 Pro, 5000mAh. If you plan on gaming for longer sessions, your smartphone need to last for longer. Yes, you can plug in your smartphone to a powerbank while gaming but that’s not a wise idea if you want to maintain the performance of your smartphone. Your typical smartphone have 2500 to 3000mAh battery capacity. It’s perfect for regular daily tasks. But for high refresh rate gaming, a bigger lithium power source is needed. That’s why the big gaming smartphone brands are packing the highest possible battery to give you the edge to win.
3. Even Bigger Storage
OnePlus 8 Pro and Xiaomi Black Shark 3 Pro give you 256Gb of internal storage. And so is the Asus ROG Phone 3. ZTE Nubia Red Magic 5G, 128Gb. We all know that game files when downloaded locally can take up a lot of space. So gaming smartphones, in following this principle needed to have big storage spaces for these games. 256Gb is great but having the option of adding an external micro SD card, it’s even better. This means that you can allocate you faster internal storage for your games, and your external storage for all your other files.
4. Custom Cooling Solution
How does your smartphone keep itself cool? Simple, it transfers the heat from the CPU and other components to the case. That’s why when you hold your smartphone that just performed a very heavy task, it’s really hot. Yes, you are the heat sink. You absorb and transfer the heat from the device to your hands. Gaming smartphones, on the other hand, goes way beyond this solution and provide you with a custom cooling solution to accelerate this process. You will not see it but inside an Asus ROG Phone 3 are bigger copper heat sinks and thermal paste. Yes, the same thing you use on your desktop and laptop CPU. In effect, it can dissipate heat faster than your conventional smartphone.
5. Performance, Performance, Performance
It’s all about the performance. If your gaming smartphone has a weak CPU, it will not stay on top that long. Samsung Galaxy S20, Snapdragon 865 chipset. The same with Xiaomi Black Shark 3 Pro and ZTE Nubia Red Magic 5G. Asus ROG Phone 3’s got a better one, the Snapdragon 865+. In short, only the best processor with the highest possible speed will be allowed in this category. As soon as a new high performance processor is released, a gaming smartphone could have that hardware to maximise your gaming credibility – if only on paper.
Now you see how gaming smartphones are different from your pedestrian smartphones. They are based on performance, endurance and efficiency. Although your smartphone has these qualities too but nothing beats a smartphone that was specifically built, designed and sold to be good at gaming.
