What's the Best Phone for Gaming? (2016) #Helpful Post

Hey guys this is Austin. What’s the best phone for gaming? To find out I gathered a

few of the latest flagships, the Samsung Galaxy S7, LG G5, iPhone 6S Plus and the Nexus 6P.

They each have their strengths, the S7 has a beautiful glass and metal build that’s

packed with features, the G5 has a modular design and dual cameras, the iPhone has a

big display with incredibly well optimized hardware and the Nexus 6P is running pure,

stock Android Marshmallow. That being said the 6P and the iPhone are a few months older

than the G5 and S7 which means they’re at a slight disadvantage but don’t count them

out just yet. The three Android devices do have an advantage when it comes to screens

with higher resolutions though compared to the iPhone’s still solid 1080p. They all

take different approaches to specs too with the iPhone sporting a dual core processor,

the G5 and S7 sharing a quad core chip and the Nexus rocking an octa core CPU. Things

aren’t quite so simple when you actually benchmark things though. Geekbench 3 shows

that the Apple A9 inside the iPhone is pretty solid but the Snapdragon 820 in the G5 and

S7 is right up there. Move over to the graphics side with GFXBench and the G5 and S7 are the

clear winners where the Nexus falls a fair bit behind. One important thing a benchmark

might not capture is temperature. Since there are no fans inside to keep things cool performance

in a phone really relies on the rest of the chassis for passive cooling. Heat is almost

always a limiting factor with a smartphone as it might technically be possible to run

hotter but companies aren’t exactly going to let you burn your hand on a phone. To test

I’m using a thermal camera to not only see the temps but which parts get hottest, being

a big phone made out of aluminum the Nexus 6P gets only slightly warm where the plastic

coated metal finish of the G5 performs very similarly. The glass back of the S7 does get

fairly warm while gaming but it’s concentrated by the processor where surprisingly the iPhone

temperatures rise to the point where it’s almost uncomfortably hot. All of this is important

but the real test is how these things work in real use. The Walking Dead: Michonne is

a great example of a game that’s essentially the same across everything from a phone to

a PC, while Telltale’s engine is getting a bit old it still works well. Lara Croft:

GO is a much more laid back puzzle game that’s fun for a quick blast when you’ve got a

few minutes where Modern Combat 5 does it’s best to be a Call of Duty style FPS which

while it looks great the touchscreen controls let things down. Minecraft: Pocket Edition

has been around for years and has steadily become one of the most solid versions of the

game where Geometry Wars 3 is a great mix of solid controls with bite sized gameplay

and impressive graphics. While most games are shared across iOS and Android the iPhone

has quite a few exclusives like Badland 2. The Infinity Blade series might be a few years

old at this point but it still looks fantastic where Warhammer Freeblade takes advantage

of 3D Touch to let you zoom in on enemies depending on how firmly you press down. The

big advantage on Android are emulators, older systems like the Super Nintendo are no problem

at all. It’s the same story for the PlayStation 1, right out of the box the emulation is rock

solid and while N64 isn’t quite as smooth you can absolutely still get playable games

out of it. So put it all together and what is the best phone for gaming? The iPhone has

the best selection of titles but having emulators is a big advantage for Android. The Nexus

is able to run most games but you’re losing out on performance compared to the G5. It’s

a solid phone but the nicer design and compatibility with Gear VR give the edge to the Galaxy S7

this time around. Speaking of, I recently rounded up a list of the 5 best smartphone

life hacks so definitely go check out that video and I will catch you in the next one.