Gaming phones have great software and hardware to make playing on the go easier with a lot more options, but are they really worth buying over mainstream phones?
It’s 2021, and if you play a lot of games on your smartphone, you might wonder whether a mainstream flagship smartphone will serve just fine – or whether a gaming phone is right for you. In truth, the best phones you can buy aren’t too different from the top gaming phones. Both will pack top specs, big batteries, and great screens. For everyday use, not to mention playing casual games, you won’t go wrong with either. But let’s drill down to the real differences between the two categories – how much better it is to play on a proper gaming phone, and what you’ll be giving up by not picking up a more mainstream handset. Gaming phones aren’t uniform in their features, with unique advantages and perks that differ from model to model. Overall, they do improve the mobile gaming experience – to different degrees, of course. These advantages include both hardware and software features. There are a few things that are common among most of them, including powerful specs with leading chipsets (right now, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 is the best silicon) and expansive RAM (8GB at least, though the Asus ROG 5 Ultimate goes up to 18GB). Gaming phones also typically have big batteries around, and perhaps beyond,5,000mAh that allow players to stay in the game for hours and still have enough capacity to last until the end of the day. More often than not, gaming phones also have 3.5mm headphone jacks, a feature that’s rarely seen on mainstream flagship phones. Gaming phones also typically have software that eases the playing experience. These are often branded as ‘gaming modes’ that have a mix of automatic and manual features. The former include upping the performance or streamlining power consumption so the battery doesn’t overheat, while the latter include toggle settings to block out calls, texts, and other notifications while in a match. Of course, there are mainstream phones that have their own gaming modes, like the recent OnePlus 9 or Sony Xperia 1 III, but they typically have much more limited options and settings than gaming phones.
