I’ve been running a galaxy S9 for years and have never run into a bottleneck with it.
Why do y’all keep needing more and more power packed into your phones? It doesn’t make any sense to me.
I think its more about the power efficiency. Samsung’s exynos line as well as their few latest samsung foundry nodes are not known for being very power efficient, so I think people were holding for the Pixel 9 with a custom TSMC manufactured chip in hopes of it consuming less power and outputting less heat
Because I wanted a foldy boi.
That said, I plan on hanging on to my Z Fold 3 for at least the next half decade.
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I have a pixel 6 and a OnePlus 7 pro. Between the two of them, the OnePlus runs games much better. That is with a snapdragon 855.
I’m looking forward to upgrading to a better phone for gaming.
That said, the pixel phones right now just don’t hold up against snapdragon 8 Gen 2, etc.
But I need to run a web browser at Mach Chicken so I can justify tossing a perfectly good phone for a new $1000 phone.
because i want to play genshin impact on my phone.
Pokemon go chugged on that thing. I ran it alongside my oneplus 8 for a while, and I promise it wasn’t running perfectly.
Nevermind that the oneplus 8 ran at 50% higher fps.
Wait until the new iPhone kills the mobile gaming market. It’s probably going to be more powerful than the switch 2. Slap on a backbone controller or a dock and you don’t need a game console at all.
The current gen android stuff is also pretty capable but nobody makes games that aren’t gacha trash for android.
Pushing the leading edge of phone design opens new use cases, it’s not always just about “doing the same shit, slightly faster”
Your smart fridge is more powerful than the Switch but that doesn’t prevent Nintendo from selling Switches.
Unless Apple ships a controller grip with their phone, Apple will never compete with gaming handhelds.
The shit pushed to Android is the same shit pushed to iOS. You can get excellent games like Rollercoaster Tycoon (the original one), GTA, Fortnite, PUBG, the list goes on, all from good old Google Play.
Performance isn’t what’s keeping phones from taking over the gaming market; control schemes and competitors are.
You bring up an interesting point, and now I’m wondering: how would a gaming-focused phone sell in a post-Switch world? We all remember the Xperia Play, but maybe it was just too early. What if Apple released an “Arcade edition” of the next iPhone for $1000, which featured a slide out controller or some other slick integration of physical controls? How well would that sell, and what impact (if any) would it have on Switch/Steam Deck sales?
I mean, Asus and nubia have been making a gaming-specific phone for many generations now. Razer even gave it a try back in 2018, but I don’t think they released any follow up devices.
Lenovo also made a couple devices, but announced earlier this year that they’d be discontinuing their gaming phone business.
There seems to be a fan base and market for gaming-specific phones, but given Lenovo and Razer got out of the game and the fact that you haven’t seemed to have heard of any of these devices/product lines: my guess is that they are super niche.
I appreciate the links and examples, but none of those has physical gaming controls like I was suggesting. Obviously high end hardware is important in a device like this, but the physical controls were my key point.
I hear you, and fair enough, but I think the fact that none of these gaming-specific phones has physical controls like you described built in speaks to how impractical that ask is.
And I think it’s important to note: there’s weren’t just powerful phones (in fact, many of them seemed to get bested by other phones in more benchmarks than they won), they were specifically marketed and sold as gaming phones; that was the specific niche that Asus, Lenovo, Razer, and others all sought to fill. Despite that, and despite basically all those companies having a ton of general experience building gaming hardware of one sort or another, none of them thought it was a good idea to include physical input methods on-device. They pretty much all have accessories that turn it into something looking akin to a Switch or DS, but none had them baked into the actual phone.
And I honestly think that makes a lot of sense. Thumb sticks aren’t super pocket-able, and I feel like even if they could be made to fit into a pocket, sliding them in and out of bags and pants over and over would make them fail faster. And while A/B/X/Y buttons might be more reasonable on that pocket-ability metric, do you want to smush them (or thumb sticks, for that matter) against your face while you take a call?
While current controller-esque buttons and thumb sticks remain the primary input method for games, I really don’t see gaming phones including those input methods within their physical form factor. It might be a limitation of my imagination, but I just can’t envision how one would make that work (and it seems I am not alone in that).
We’ve been hearing about Apple coming back to the gaming market for quite a long time now and absolutely nothing happens. The iPhone 15 isn’t going to change anything in this regard, it’s going to be a party trick with a handful of popular games ported to it and then nothing else.
Don’t forget when the games disappear from the stores in the future.
I won’t ever forget you Infinity Blade games!
Even Apple has to abide by the laws of physics. 3nm is fast, but a small, tightly packed, passively cooled device containing a large, heat generating element powered by a another large, heat generating element is unlikely to outperform a well ventilated, actively cooled device that is able to draw power from an outlet.
This is of couse ignoring the Apple reality distortion field, which in recent memory has succesfully perpetuated the idea that a tiny photo sensor can outperform a large one.
Nintendo is fighting the same forces of physics and they’re beating every other mobile platform so far. Switches still sell great depite their CPU and GPU be in the equivalent of a five year old Android tablet.
Apple is making huge steps in chip design that has giants like AMD and Intel beat. AMD still has better chips half a year after the release of a new M series, but Intel has basically given up on being power efficient. Everyone else is just playing catchup to Apple. AMD and Nvidia are beating the shit out of Apple in GPU performance but for day to day use, Apple’s hardware accelerated media engine and TPU are great at hiding their lacking GPU.
What Apple does lack is I/O. The base iPhone 15 still has USB 2.0 speeds and the M1 Macbooks couldn’t even drive two screens. That’s where the competition is still ahead in a wag Apple can’t mask with a proprietary accelerator.
Luckily, Apple doesn’t care for silly things like games and enforces their own look onto the world, creating a great market for competitors to operate in. They sell their laptop replacement iPads with stupidly gimped software that prevents them from ever replacing laptops. They demand high app store premiums to scare away any serious games publisher. They gimp their browser and forbid proper terminal emulators just to piss off developers. They take the revolutionary HoloLens concept and turn it into an iPad you strap to your face.
Apple could crush the Switch if they wanted to. Their hardware is powerful enough and their designers are smart enough not to create a Pippin 2.0. They just don’t care about power users, gaming, and every other market they don’t bother to compete in.
The performance of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 GPU is already about 10-20% faster than the A16 chip, depending on the benchmark.
Even if Qualcomm only gives the Gen 3 a 10% performance increase, that is enough to beat or even surpass the A17 in gpu performance (rumors suggest something closer to a 30% increase). The Gen 2 already outcompetes the A16 in GPU power consumption and efficiency as well. This may change with the A17 since it’s on TSMC’s 3N node, however this node has been having issues which is why TSMC introduced the 3NE and 3NP so we will have to wait for power usage numbers from the A17 to see.
Overall I’m disappointed with the improvements between the A16 and A17. 10% on the CPU and 20% on the GPU (due to have 20% more cores) doesn’t seem like the type of upgrade I would expect from switching nodes. Hopefully next year they can do more with the improved N3 nodes. I’m also getting the feeling that Apple is trying to deploy more complex transformer models on their devices which is why we are seeing such a focus on the NPU.
I think you hit on the main point which is that nobody will pour money into developing for android. Apple also has the ability to make deals with companies with Capcom and Ubisoft to ensure games come to their platforms. I can’t see Google doing this since they already “tried” and failed to have a AAA mobile gaming platform with stadia. The only other company with enough motivation and money to bring big games to android is Samsung, but their mobile chips aren’t doing too well (despite their RDNA 2 architecture making it easier to port games).
Steam could step in with a proton layer if they wanted to. Android is technically linux already and the newest snapdragon stuff is comparable to the steam deck in raw power.
We’re ripe for some multiplatform shenanigans.
Unfortunately, Valve would also have to build a CPU translation layer (Like Rosetta 2) since games run on x86 architectures and snapdragon uses an ARM architecture. The steam deck uses a Zen 2 CPU architecture which is already x86 so there would be little motivation on their part to do this. Currently proton uses wine to convert windows api calls into linux calls. The big thing Proton does is allowing games that use DirectX to run on Vulkan which is natively supported in Linux. So unless Valve makes the Steam Deck 2 with ARM or another company decides to make an x86 to ARM translation layer, then I don’t see something like Proton coming to android any time soon.
Pushing the leading edge of phone design opens new use cases, it’s not always just about “doing the same shit, slightly faster”
It’s about creating new shit that runs at the same speed.
wasn’t it the Pixel 10 that was gonna use TSMC and Google’s fully custom design instead of recycled Exynos?
Yeah. This isn’t news.
The only thing i expect for Google Pixels is for them to have a clean Android install, i couldn’t care less if it’s hardware was equivalent to my low end Motorola.
You should though. I have a Pixel 7 Pro. I’ve seen all the reviews/tests showing how bad of a chip it is. But in day to day use it’s fast snappy and pretty good.
it does however warm the device a lot and warmth = battery loss.
Tensor G1 and G2 would probably be absolutely fine if fabbed on TSMC.
Not just the fab. Google has to get away from Samsung radios too. Even a mediatek radio would be better at present.
I don’t have issues with the radios personally (I did on my Pixel 6)
Small question.
Which apps make your phone heat up?
None specifically. Its just warm when browsing around, especially on 5G
So, it’s just dealing with high data traffic and using it’s antenna. It is normal for any phone to heat up under those circunstances. 👍🌡️📱
Yeah it’s not abnormal at all, just a bit more than other phones i’ve had. And heat is just wasted energy. Overall love the phone
And an unlockable bootloader.
Decent CPU and RAM.
High rate screen
Unlockable bootloader
SD card
Removable battery.
Such a phone would be an instant buy for me, but nobody wants to make them
Ah, Fairphone?
Shit cpu
What phone are you using which has all those things with a good cpu?
I’m not, that’s my point
If you call snapdragon 778 a shit cpu and want all those features, you will not be getting a smartphone for a long time. I have used smartphones with half the processing power of 778, and they all work fine. My point being, fairphone 5 is the closest to that ideal smartphone, yet you dismiss it based on SoC alone. Snapdragon 778 is anything but shit.
I have used smartphones with half the processing power of 778, and they all work fine.
And that’s fine, but I don’t want the chip from 5 years ago, I want to chip with modern performance that can do any modern task you can throw at it like driving a high refreshed screen when playing random video games.
And not the size of an iPad.
and an unlockable bootloader
Such a phone would be everyone’s dream to be honest. 🌠📱
My phone (Moto G8 Play) does have a microSD slot and a headphone jack, while in terms of hardware is the bare minimum nowadays (only having 2GB of RAM).
But at the very least having a Motorola is probably the 2nd best thing when it comes to minimal bloatware.
a Motorola
Chinese brand is a no go
Privacy is a whole other topic. 🥲
But i just care that my phone is worth the money i paid for it. 💵📱
are aware that you can just flash plain AOSP on any phone, right?
EDIT: Well, this aged like milk. If you happen to have a phone that is not easily unlockable or that has no well-maintained AOSP ROM, Universal Android Debloater is a pretty decent way to clean up your OS.
99 percent of phones can’t be unlocked nowadays
Dude this kind of response is so fucking annoying. Any time someone says they prefer tech that works someone like you shows up to But Ackshually them about it.
Some people want the product to be what they expected out of the goddamn box.
not any phone. And you have to rely on someone to maintain the build. And hope that it’s stable. And the manufacter has to allow unlocking bootloader without sacrificing a goat.
I’ve tried and failed miserably.
I did that in the beginning, when Android was new. I do not want that hassle. I just want to use my phone
You will inevitably run into various minor issues like the fingerprint sensor not working very well, or face unlock is fiddly, or auto-brightness behaves strangely, or double-tap to wake has stopped working, etc etc.
Any phone? Really? Even the ones with locked bootloaders? How about the ones that don’t have any 3rd-party ROMs?
Didn’t we already know that the 2025 Pixel will be TSMC and not before?
We don’t know anything. I don’t see how Google is going to get TSMC fab time though. Unless the purchased it so far back for that time. They are way to small or maybe they’ll be on an older node and no the cutting edge on at that time.
