STACK #200 Jun 2021

FEATURE LIFE TECH

Are Buttons Best? Seasoned mobile gamers will be fast and fluid with touch controls, but physical buttons can still make a huge difference to fast, accurate gameplay, which is why we’re seeing them built into some new phones, or available as add-ons.

Fortnite Mobile

more, that’s important!) What you’re taking out into the world with you is, effectively, a full-fat mini gaming PC that laughs at Candy Crush and eats PUBG and Fortnite for breakfast, fast 5G connectivity and all. This 2021 crop of high-end gaming phones share some things in common. They all run Android 11, all feature AMOLED screens, and all use Qualcomm Snapdragon CPUs with that company’s high-end Adreno GPUs, supporting the sort of graphics tech usually found on gaming PCs, like DirectX 12 and Vulkan. That means regardless of which of these flagship devices you choose to travel with, the answer to “Will this game run on my phone?” will always be an emphatic, “Oh hell yes.” Which one you choose will come down to features and form as much as price and performance, but make no mistake – these phone manufacturers have looked at what gamers want from a phone and gone big, aiming for raw performance, a full bag of features and unique looks in each of these high-powered slices of gaming goodness. ASUS is a brand name that’s been, for years, known for its first-rate PCs, laptops, routers and more – and since they made the move into designing phones, they’ve been impressing the world with their ROG mobiles (before you

Among Us

headphone jack (yes, an actual headphone jack!) is stellar, with full hi-res audio support. The cameras, headed up by a 64-megapixel Sony sensor on the main lens, are first- rate, and the entire thing’s powered by dual batteries packing enough charge to see out a demanding day of gaming. Not to be outdone, mobile phone veterans ZTE have unleashed the latest in their incredibly well-reviewed RedMagic series

ASUS ROG Phone 5

The screen, made by OLED experts Samsung, runs at a blistering 144Hz and boasting a touch latency of under 25ms – perfect for fast-paced action games. The phone’s body contains

ask, it stands for “Republic of Gamers”!). The ROG Phone 5 is the latest update to this range of distinctive-looking phones, and it packs a proper punch with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processor delivering performance that’s 25 per cent faster than the previous generation, with Adreno 660 graphics a massive 35 per cent faster – all able to be monitored and tuned via ASUS’s inbuilt performance manager, to let you set performance profiles on a per-game basis and call them up on demand.

customisable ultrasonic triggers for easy control of games that use directional controls. The phone ships with its own clip-on external cooling fan, which can lower the phone’s CPU temperature drastically during demanding games, and this clever little cooler also adds two more control buttons. There's also a kickstand for when you want to take a break and watch a movie. Sound is just as vital to the gaming experience, and the ROG Phone 5’s dual front-facing stereo speakers are darn good on the fly – but the audio from the

Do You Need 5G? All three of these advanced gaming phones ship with support for 5G mobile networks, but the big advantage for gaming – the low latency of mmWave 5G – isn’t available in Australia just yet. When it is, these phones will be ready!

ZTE RedMagic 6 Pro

of gaming phones. This year’s upgrade – the RedMagic 6 Pro – is aiming to outdo its already brilliant predecessor by adding that same Snapdragon 888 CPU found in the ROG phone, along with the same Adreno 660 graphics. Running high-end games on

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