These phones now make zero sense.

There is a certain type of phone that has never been mega popular. With the influx of handheld gaming computers, have they all but killed the gaming phone? That's what we're exploring today alongside a bitesized review of the ASUS ROG Phone 8.

[Glotttis]

Phone gaming is depressing. I used to install couple of games every time I upgraded my phone. Now I don't even do that. Phone gaming is just online casino wrapped in a game skin.

[PeanutBreathing]

Gaming phones never made sense simply because they utilise the same SoC and GPU as any other flagship. Sure they have a better thermal management, but there's really not much value add that you cant get from a typical flagship. It was cool to see in the wild, but if the SoC and GPU is the same, it makes no sense.

[YDINO]

They would make a lot more sense if they came bundled with a good controller

[biggusotongus]

Gaming phones are really like "Gaming headphones" or "Gaming chairs" at this point

[tzywg]

Gaming phone’s main problem is that there is no actual games for them to play. There are very limited high quality games for android, the most serious ones are probably switch emulation games.

[AKKI]

Mobile gaming (outside emulation) largely makes zero sense

[blablablablabla]

Honestly that's what I think at 3am when I'm supposed to sleep, and this needs to be talked abt more

[dvornikovalexei]

Never saw the point of a 1000$ phone. I'd rather buy a 400$ phone for necessity, a 500$ tablet for basic work and multimedia and a 100$ retro console. I mean those are what I use.

[cryininsect]

You can buy a base model S24 and a Switch for less money than buying a gaming phone. What a joke.

[triadwarfare]

Fun fact: the Nintendo Switch is powered by an underclocked Tegra processor from 2017.

Most midrange and high end mobile SoCs could probably beat the Switch by a wide margin in terms of graphical fidelity, but the business model of mobile games and the lack of a standard hardware configuration would make it hard to put a game with a console/PC like graphics in a phone.

[thegunnersfan]

Gaming phone and mobile gaming is huge in South East Asia. Every country in this region has big communities focusing in mobile game tournaments.

[rasheeddaley]

I bought an s22 last year because it had the snapdragon 8 gen 1, and was exited to be able to play games on the playstore but none grabbed my interest

[baoquoc]

the main issue with releasing ever-increasing performance phones is the app ecosystem ended up trailing behind hardware breakthroughs far too long, causing people to frustrated when all the powerful hardware is for nothing gaming wise, genshin Impact is absolute monster of a game, yet many people still wanted gta-like titles in mobile.

[Meleagru]

Using touch controls saps the joy of gaming on a phone.

[mishathasan]

It's like buying a gaming chair which is very awful to sit comfortablely

[lazarus]

I think they stopped making sense a good while ago 😮 Especially when they started removing features like the 3.5mm, SD cards, chargers and headphones

[legitimo]

I don't understand people paying 1k in a phone just for using tik tok and then complaining that they don't have a PC or etc.

I just paid 150$ in my Xiaomi and it do the same things any phone do.

[Nunoflashy]

I bought a Red Magic 9 Pro mostly for its design (Snowfall) and uninterrupted display without camera notch. I was going to get the S24 Ultra but I saw way too many compromises that don't make sense on a 1500€ phone, namely the lack of aptX codecs in order for Samsung to sell you their galaxy buds, which I'm not into and I'd rather use my IEMs, and it is also unforgivable on such an expensive phone and nobody talks about it.
The rather low capacity battery (the Red Magic has a 6500 mAh battery compared to 5000 mAh on the S24U) was also a factor in my decision, although not as bad as the exclusion of the aptX codec.
Another nice thing about the Red Magic is passthrough charging which I don't think the common flagship has. For someone who does emulation which is my case, I find this feature quite nice since it allows you to connect the phone directly to a power bank for example, and not run out of battery and you can keep swapping power banks if they run out.

Mobile gaming does suck, the native games that is, I find gaming phones the most useful for hard to run emulators such as PS2 and Switch. Yes a flagship such as the S24 Ultra could run it, but it will throttle after a couple of minutes and give you awful 1% lows in fps compared to a better passive cooling system which is usually found on gaming phones.

I got this one for 900€ (16/512) instead of the 12/512 S24U which costs 1400-1500€ where I live, and yes while it is still expensive, I believe there's value in these phones still due to the features I mentioned.
If cameras and nearly decade long updates are very important to you, then there's value on a flagship for sure, but I think these points are often overlooked when comparing performance and saying gaming phones do not offer anything new since they run on the same SoC.


...And yeah it has the headphone jack, which is a nice addition and something considered premium at this point apparently.


My only gripe with this phone is the lack of SD Card slot (which basically no flagship offers at this point, other than the Xperia), and being unrootable for the foreseeable future.

[MillionZillion]

The manufacturing industry bruh, if they decide not to concentrate too much on photography but on gaming, we'll currently be having slim gaming phone with the capability of a steam deck but mfs are only about Instagram and Snapchat clout chasing and so they're making these professional lvl equal cameras and we get little to no improvements for gaming phones

[codyrap]

IMO the Achilles' heel of gaming smartphones is actually software. Namely the fact that even though hardware started getting really good and you can pair a phone with sth like a Razer Kishi, devs simply don't port real games to Android (with too few exceptions). Hoping the Capcom+Apple collab will turn things around for smartphone gaming. It would be really cool to be able to use one portable device for all your needs including gaming. And that could even justify spending more money on it.