Gaming phones were all the rage from around 2017 to 2020—ROG Phone, Razer, Nubia, etc. The segment still exists, and one could argue they’ve never been better—so why don’t people seem to care anymore?
In an age where gaming handhelds are at their peak and gamer culture remains at an all-time high, gaming phones seem like the odd one out of the formula. They pack some of the best hardware you can get in a phone, and while they’re chunky, there are probably not a lot of phones that run as smoothly as they do.
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What are gaming phones, exactly?
A gaming phone, as we know it, is a smartphone engineered specifically to sustain peak performance during long video game sessions. They’re made for playing games, and while regular phones can obviously play games (and are often good at it), gaming phones go the extra mile to make sure your gaming experience is actually nice and remains nice while you play.
What makes a gaming phone a gaming phone is the fact that it prioritizes performance and gaming features over everything else—often sacrificing camera quality, water resistance, or a slim design to make room for better cooling and specialized hardware.
The stuff you get on a gaming phone can vary depending on the manufacturer. Often, you’ll get active cooling, with stuff such as built-in centrifugal fans (seen in RedMagic phones) or external aero-active cooler accessories (ASUS ROG phones). High refresh-rate displays are also a staple. Normally, you’ll get screens up to 120Hz on normal phones, but gaming phones often push to 144Hz, 165Hz, or even 185Hz refresh rates.
They also have a higher touch sampling rate (often 720Hz or higher), meaning the screen registers your finger tap faster than a normal phone, reducing input lag.
They also have larger batteries, thicker, more industrial-looking designs, and some might even take things a step further with stuff like touch-sensitive or physical buttons on the side of the phone.
Right now, we only have two major players, out of which only one probably rings a bell. We have the ASUS ROG Phone range, which, as of the time I’m writing this, features stuff like “AirTrigger” ultrasonic shoulder buttons, a side-mounted USB-C port (for comfortable charging while playing), and the “AeroActive Cooler X” accessory. This clip-on fan physically chills the phone. The latest entry is actually pretty good, featuring a Snapdragon 8 Elite and some pretty insane specs.
Then, we have Nubia’s RedMagic range, which is cheaper than ASUS and packs a similar punch. But these aren’t sold in the US. Everyone else has largely exited the genre. But why is that?
Why aren’t they popular?
Most other major players have left the field. Lenovo largely exited the gaming phone market a couple of years ago to focus on their gaming handhelds (like the Legion Go S) and gaming tablets (Legion Tab Gen 3). Once a major player backed by Xiaomi, Black Shark has been much quieter recently, with slower release schedules compared to the rapid-fire annual releases by both ASUS and Nubia.
But why is this? At one point, they were pretty trendy, but this is not the case anymore. And there are a few reasons why this is the case. When you buy a gaming phone, you are paying for a high-end processor and cooling system, but to keep the price competitive, manufacturers cut corners elsewhere. A $1,000 ASUS ROG Phone will often take worse photos than a $500 Pixel or iPhone. Likewise, most gaming phones have no significant water resistance, and they are thick, heavy, and often have “aggressive” designs (RGB lights, sharp angles) that many professionals find embarrassing to use in a workplace setting.
The few things that gaming phones do have over regular phones might be bottlenecked by either the phone’s software or other hardware. For one, very few mobile games actually support framerates above 60fps or 90fps—most competitive mobile games (like PUBG Mobile or Call of Duty Mobile) are capped by developers to ensure fairness or stability. So you don’t actually take advantage of the higher refresh rate display. The higher touch sampling rate is useful, but tapping your screen is always clunkier than clicking a mouse or smashing a key on your keyboard.
The other problem is that while gaming phones keep most of these trade-offs, regular flagships are actually pretty good for gaming. And the few advantages gaming phones did have are already staple features on flagships. Phones like the Galaxy S25 Ultra now have massive “vapor chamber” cooling systems that can handle sustained gaming without a loud fan. Likewise, 120Hz OLED screens are now standard on almost all premium phones, and the flagships perform pretty much the same as the gaming phones since they have the same (or better!) SoCs.
And you can also make standard phones more “gamer-y.” Gaming controllers like the Backbone One or the Razer Kishi range simply attach to the sides of your phone and make gaming on your phone feel a tad more native.
A high-end gaming phone costs $800–$1,200. A Nintendo Switch 2 (or Switch OLED) or a Steam Deck costs $350–$500. It makes no financial sense to spend $1,200 to play mobile games (which are often microtransaction-heavy) when you can spend half that amount for a device that plays “real” AAA PC/console games. The value proposition of gaming phones collapsed when the Steam Deck arrived.
So if you want to buy a phone, buy a phone that’s good at, well, being a phone. If you want a console, buy a console. But the weird amalgamation between both seems to have no reason to exist these days.
9/10
- Brand
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ASUS
- SoC
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Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform
- Display
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6.78 inch FHD+ 2400 x1080
- RAM
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LPDDR5X 12GB
