While it’s safe to say that you need a high level of diligence and legwork to determine what is the best gaming phone this year has to offer, it’s good that we have access to a wide spectrum of specialized phones that we can analyze. As a matter of fact, the top 4 choices are running an android system, so let’s see what the best android phone for gaming out there is.
Best Overall: Asus ROG Phone
We chose the Asus ROG phone because, first of all, the power it offers is the most you will find on the market, and it also displays a very thoughtful and ergonomic design.
The 6-inch AMOLED display will allow it to have a refresh rate of 90/second – which is actually the first OLED phone to do this on an AMOLED display. By having a higher refresh rate, it means what you will have faster response times, and the motion blur will be diminished considerably.
Another nice feature on this mobile phone that we like was the Air Triggers system that will allow the corners to act as bumper buttons in your game. You can expect a more optimized experience when gaming, thanks to it’s dedicated X mode, which can be upgraded by using the fan accessory that is included in the box.
The ROG phone from Asus brings an unmatched battery life in comparison with the other candidates.
Best for Everyday Use: Razer 2 Phone
This phone from Razer can be perfectly used for day-to-day activities and not only for gaming, that happens to be the only phone in our list that has IP67 water resistance and you can also charge it wirelessly.
You can take this Razer phone anywhere you need, as it should deliver all the excellence, it was built for.
Among its outstanding features, we couldn’t help but notice its crisp refresh rate of 120 Hz, which will make scrolling pages a satisfying and smooth experience. Another nice addition to this phone’s feature list is the built-in speakers that can be quite loud if played at maximum level.
The only feature that is barely performing at standards is the rear camera, which prompted users to report it as “just OK.”
Best Value: Nubia Red Magic Mars Phone
This brand new phone model from Nubia is bringing a nice storage room of 128GB and a decent 8 GB of RAM. The phone is presenting a wide array of useful technologies like it’s a cooling system that brings an innovative approach to it and an appealing game mode.
It runs a stock Android 9 Pie operating system
One of the downsides of this phone is represented by its screen, which is up to standards but nowhere near the ROG and Razer phones.
As a matter of fact, at the end of May, the Red Magic Mars 3 phone from Nubia is supposed to hit the US market, as it just got launched in China. And you should prepare for this phone to come with a 90 Hz OLED display, an upgraded processor (the Snapdragon 855), and a highly-efficient internal fan.
Best Accessories: Xiaomi Black Shark
Moving on with our quest to find the best phone for gaming, we arrive at Xiaomi Black Shark. A really useful feature that we appreciated at this phone is the possibility to add a gamepad, and you don’t have to use the one in the box necessarily, you can get one similar to what Nintendo Switch has. Having a physical joystick right on the phone can make a big difference when it comes to your gaming experience.
A big downside is the inexistence of a headphone jack, which can be quite a nuisance when you want to also enjoy the audio of the game and not just the gameplay. You can find it at a reasonable price, around $350 these days.
Xiaomi announced the launch of the Black Shark 2, only available in China for the moment, which will bring a Snapdragon 855 processor and a fingerprint reader. At the moment, it’s being sold at the price of approx. $480
Cooling Systems
What usually makes the difference between an ordinary phone and a gaming phone is the presence of an internal cooling system for keeping things at cooler levels.
When it comes to internal cooling, the ROG and the Razer Phone 2 are maximizing the heat-dissipation through a vapor chamber cooling system, so you won’t have to deal with just a specific part of the phone heating up to the max.
A nice touch by ROG is the copper heat sink that helps with combating the heat, and if this is not enough, they added an AeroActive Cooler system that you can attach on the back of your ROG.
The Shark from Xiaomi is using a liquid cooling system that, once it senses that certain parts of the phone are getting hotter, it will evaporate the liquid into a gas form, and then turning back to liquid to cool other areas.
Conclusion:
Although each device had their performance enhanced, we had to choose one that tops all of them. Their performances are pretty close to each other, and the process pretty fast, but the one that displayed better performances is the Razer Phone 2.
The feature that won us is the 120 FPS refresh rate that can offer extremely sharp texts and images, not to mention the animations we could test when playing Book of Ra. If you have any experience using any of these phones, we would love to hear about it in the comments section.
Guest article written by: Thomas Glare is a software engineer, but recently moved to the United States to study photography and journalism, as this was his dream from home. In his free time he likes to play lightning link online on his newcomer Nubia Red Magic Mars Phone.
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