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Phone Arena
2 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Phone Arena
Apple's iPhones may just kill my favorite niche phone brand
That's it? A simple Games app? Apple is making an actual push into gaming. And for ROG Phones, this is bad news While Apple got Assassin's Creed: Mirage and will be getting Shadows, Android is still stuck with the Funko Pop edition (Assassin's Creed Rebellion). Resident Evil Village launched on iDevices with an A17 Pro or M-class chips, and is a technically impressive feat. The same goes for RE4: Remake. Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding is available on iOS/iPadOS, with absolutely no word or mention of plans to bring it to Android. Ironically, Android had the chance to be ahead in this game So what needs to happen? iOS 26 Apple announced a new Games app coming with iOS 26 — and at first glance, it might not look like a big deal. But after thinking about it for a bit… I'm starting to sweat for my beloved niche gaming phone : the Asus ROG what is this Games app? Essentially, it's a game launcher that can be navigated with a connected controller — turning your iPhone into a portable console experience. It comes with an easy discover section, news updates on game seasons and limited-time events, and even a social layer: high score comparisons, friend challenges, and party/game invites are all baked a Games app isn't a revolution — but it adds just the right layer of polish. One of my personal complaints about iPhones for gaming was the lack of a dedicated mode — no way to lock brightness or block notifications that ruin your clutch be fair, there is a Gaming Focus mode among the many Do Not Disturb modes that Apple introduced with iOS 15 in 2021. You can set it up to block notifications, prioritize specific apps or contacts, et you still need to activate Gaming Focus manually, and remember to deactivate it when you are done gaming. Alternatively, you can do a deep dive and set iOS up yourself, to automatically start Gaming Mode when you open a specific app. Again, you need to remember to do this every time you install a new game. Android phones , on the other hand, typically recognize games and put them in their game launcher, which does everything for you automatically. Ironically, that's a more Apple-ish Focus Mode doesn't stop the phone's auto-brightness from fluctuating, and that can be a problem when you are claw-gripping the phone in a sweaty deathmatch. Having your brightness drop during a duel is a pain point!If Apple is looking to make things just right, it should be planning to include these and make them automatic in the Games worth noting: at WWDC 2025, Apple put a lot of emphasis on Sony controllers — it looks like a partnership might be brewing. Could this mean future games will ship with controller-first support? Could we see more PlayStation titles ported to iOS? If so, Android is in real trouble.I've been an ROG Phone fan for years. The series always had phenomenal hardware — sensitive screens, ultrasonic shoulder buttons, fan extensions, top-class speakers. It really does feel like a handheld console at times. But my biggest gripe has never been the hardware. It's Android matter how powerful the device, the Android platform simply doesn't have a robust library of high-quality games. Yes, we've seen slow progress — titles like Call of Duty Mobile, Genshin Impact, Diablo Immortal, the new Delta Force, and Arena these were mostly developed from the ground up as mobile titles, and do come with that certain mobile game feel. Specifically the multiple layers of menus that are designed to be confusing, special currencies, and the comparatively shallow comparison, iOS is leaps and bounds ahead. It's getting true console-level games — ones that were originally made for the PS, Xbox, and PC:Now, all is not perfect. These ports may target 30 FPS, which they may or may not hit. And, generally, touch controls don't agree with them very well, and it's recommended to have a controller — that's the downside when a game hasn't been developed as a mobile title from the ground up. Or, it just shows that these developers are yet inexperienced with the platform — touchscreen gaming is very, very new to it shows that there's a genuine push from Apple in that direction, and things are just now ramping up. For example — Cupertino bought its first-ever gaming studio recently. Granted, developer RAC7 is mostly a two-man operation, but it did push out the super-successful Apple Arcade game Sneaky Sasquatch. Obviously, Apple is in its first steps of a pretty hard push into the ironic twist. Android was first to getting an actual console game ported to it way back in 2016! Back then, Nvidia had the vision of creating a tablet for gamers. The Nvidia Shield was launched in 2015, and as a push to be 'taken seriously', Nvidia struck some sort of exclusive deal with a result, the excellent Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance was available on the Play Store! It was followed by MGS 2 and MGS 3 in 2017!Now, since this was an exclusive deal, you couldn't download the games on a device other than the Nvidia still, it very much showed that it's possible to port such games to Google's operating system, so long as there was an initiative behind and sadly, since the Nvidia Shield is a dead product and the exclusive contracts are gone, these games are simply gone from the Play Store now, instead of living on a fruitful life. You can't possibly tell me that today's flagship smartphones can not run what a tablet from 2015 further drive the point that this is not far-fetched — the excellent video editing app LumaFusion has been on iOS since 2016, and it took for Samsung to partner up with the developer for the app to finally arrive to Android — in 2023. The added bonus is that LumaFusion is not exclusive to Samsung devices right now, so you can go ahead and download it to benefit from that partnership, even if not on a Samsung phone ASUS needs to act fast. The ROG Phone line has been drifting toward 'mainstream flagship with LED lights on the back' — which waters down its niche appeal. In my opinion, the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate was the last true gaming beast from the company. Time to circle back and double down on what made the brand Android needs to catch up in the premium games department. Maybe Asus can leverage some connections and make some sort of partnership like the aforementioned examples. Ideally, that'd be done by Google, but let's face it — Google is kind of busy with and going all-hands on AI right Google would be the one to make the step and entire premium publisher and Google is over-invested in pouring resources into AI — which may or may not be the right call long-term. But in the short term, it means thatcould very well kill my favorite niche phone brand. Which would be a shame, as the ROG Phones have been THE de-facto gamer phone for so many years now.
Irish Daily Mirror
13-06-2025
- Irish Daily Mirror
Redmagic 10S Pro gaming phone review: I tested world's most powerful handset
Redmagic is the world-renowned gaming smartphone brand that offers more superior performance for gamers along with plus points such as the highest frame rates, sharpest graphics and the longest battery life. It is a global leader in this category, offering similar specs as the Asus ROG Phone series but at much more affordable prices. Late last year, Redmagic 10 Pro was the first phone to market with the blazing fast high-end Snapdragon Elite chip that has powered all of the main 2025 Android flagship smartphones. Now comes Redmagic 10S Pro which is powered by an even more powerful Snapdragon 8 Elite Leading Version chip and enhanced ICE-X cooling. The amazing new handset offers stellar features such as a 144Hz no-notch display and a gargantuan 7,050mAh battery with support for up to 80W fast charging. I've been testing it for several weeks and here are my experiences… Redmagic 10 Pro was one of the most powerful phones you could buy so the boosts in performance on 10S Pro are relatively minor compared to the jump from the 9 Pro to the 10 Pro. The Leading Version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite system-on-a-chip (SoC) is responsible for the step up, and this is because it overclocks the CPU and GPU. The two Orion Prime cores now run at 4.47GHz, up from 4.32GHz on the 10 Pro, while the six performance cores are the same. The Adreno 830 GPU, meanwhile, runs at 1.2GHz here, up from 1.1GHz on the predecessor. The gaming powerhouse now offers configurations with up to 24GB RAM (which is insane for a phone) and 1TB of superfast UFS 4.1 Pro storage. The model I reviewed included 512GB of storage and 16GB of RAM. The RAM is the latest LPDDR5T, which offers more bandwidth than the LPDDR5X used in the 10 Pro. In benchmark tests on Geekbench 6, AnTuTu 10 and 3DMark, the 10S Pro scores higher marks than the 10 Pro and all the current competition including big rival Asus ROG Phone 9. On the graphically demanding 3D Wild Life Extreme test, for example, the phone achieves the best score I've seen. The improvements over the 10 Pro are most noticeable when gaming, which is music to the ears of most people who will buy this handset. In everyday use, the phone handles high frame rates and graphics settings in AAA games easily. Redmagic 10S Pro naturally runs the firm's latest OS based on Android 15 which comes with Google Gemini for an AI-enhanced gaming experience. One of the key Redmagic features that ordinary flagship smartphones don't give you is designed to ensure you can enjoy marathon gaming sessions without any throttling of performance. The firm does this with clever cooling systems and on Redmagic 10S Pro it introduces an advanced 10-layer ICE-X cooling architecture featuring Liquid Metal 2.0 with the sort of impressive thermal conductivity you normally find in high-end gaming PCs. Redmagic had added liquid metal to the 10 Pro. It is an alloy that melts at a low temperature and has high thermal conductivity. It's often used for gaming PCs and laptops and this is because it performs better than a typical thermal compound. On the 10S Pro there is 30 percent more liquid metal in direct contact with the chip and this guides heat to a vapour chamber that spreads the heat around. On top of this, for gaming you can enable the 23,000rpm fan which sucks in cool air from outside and pulls it over the chipset before expelling warm air out the other side. Like all of RedMagic's handsets, the 10S Pro includes a suite of gaming optimisation software that lets you adjust settings such as the power consumption of games, the option to force titles to run in vertical or horizontal orientation, and customisable controls that include using shoulder-button-style sensors or a virtual joypad with buttons. On top of all this you get a 6.85in 1.5K AMOLED display with a 144Hz refresh rate, 2,000 nits of peak brightness, and a super responsive touch sampling rate of up to 2,500Hz and multi-finger 960Hz capabilities. It's one of the best looking screens on any phone currently, gaming or otherwise. I love how you can personalise the Redmagic 10S Pro fan's RGB lighting with up to 15 colors, adding a distinctive aesthetic to the device's sleek transparent and industrial-looking metal chassis. Redmagic 10S Pro, like its predecessors, is a contender for best smartphone design. My review unit came with a charging brick that had Chinese plug pins but I tested it with other charging bricks and found it could recharge at the 80W speeds claimed. The rear camera system includes a 50MP wide angle camera, a 50MP ultrawide and a 2MP camera that the firm said enhances photo quality in certain modes. What I love about the camera's lenses is they are flush with the phone's body and do not have a bump. Only Google Pixel 9a comes close to being as flat as this unique device. The firm said the phone will get three years of OS upgrades and three years of security updates which, while not matching the likes of Apple and Google, is decent support in the gaming phone arena. There is no better-spec immersive gaming smartphone experience on the market right now than Redmagic 10S Pro. Redmagic 10S Pro is on sale at and costs from €649 (for the 12GB/256GB configuration) up to €999 (for the 24GB/1TB configuration). You can also buy Redmagic 10S Pro on Amazon.
