Smartphone gaming modes are fun, flashy, and unhelpful

Gaming phones have gotten a bad rap for being expensive pieces of overpowered hardware that barely offer tangible improvements in gaming performance over “regular” flagships. However, selling smartphones has another aspect that almost every company except Apple is engaged in.

Say hello to humble play mode. Or game booster. Or competitive mode. The name differs, but the promised goal is the same: to give you a bit more grunt, complete with some UI tricks to improve the gaming experience. It’s a good argument on paper, but these modes games really have real benefits?

To test the effectiveness of the game modes, we played a few popular games on the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra and the Xiaomi 12 Pro, both of which are based on Qualcomm’s high-end Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip and come with their own. own game. booster stuff. We also tried the game modes offered on the Asus ROG Phone 5S and the OnePlus Nord N20 5G. No matter what processor or company game mode we used, the results were always the same. Game modes just aren’t very useful.

Test game modes

Let’s first look at the game modes on the S22 Ultra and the Xiaomi 12 Pro. I chose metrics like max CPU and GPU load, max FPS, CPU temperature rise, and net battery degradation after an average gaming session of around 30 minutes . Pushing all the graphics and performance presets to the max, I played each game with and without the Game Optimization settings enabled, with a cooling off period of around 40-45 minutes between each session.

Also, I made sure there were no background apps, the screen brightness and resolution were set to maximum, and the refresh rate was set to adaptive mode. to reach dynamically up to 120 Hz. At the end of my tests, I came out surprised in a disappointing way. Just take a look at the table below to draw your own conclusion:

As is evident, a dedicated game mode makes little difference when it comes to meaningful metrics like raw GPU and CPU usage. After all, that’s what the companies promise: to deliver an extra touch of power. While the numbers are somewhat disheartening, the real issue is how a 2% increase in CPU or GPU usage affects the actual gaming experience.

That is to say, it is not at all the case. Even in the rare scenarios where a game booster app or dedicated system tool increased CPU or GPU load, there was no noticeable difference in the actual gaming experience.

Just to make sure my eyes didn’t deceive me, I left three fiery PUBG-Mobile gamers are testing the mettle of the game optimization tools preloaded on the Galaxy S22 Ultra and Xiaomi 12 Pro. Just as I found in my testing, they didn’t notice a difference either. CPU and GPU can technically work harder, but that doesn’t actually translate to vastly improved gameplay.

Impacts on temperature and battery life

I also monitored how these tricks affected battery consumption patterns and their thermals. Again, there was no discernible difference. For example, the average increase in CPU temperature after a 30-minute session of graphics-intensive gaming – with and without game mode – amounted to 5-6 degrees on the Celsius scale in a cooled room at 24 degrees Celsius.

As for the battery consumption, there was a difference of about 3-4%. However, this can also be attributed to the fact that these game modes kill all background activity – preventing other apps from draining the battery, weighing down the silicon, or gobble up network bandwidth.

The results above were recorded after running a game with no bells and whistles on the Galaxy S22 Ultra to take early readings. This was followed by activating the dedicated game plugin available on Samsung’s Galaxy Store, activating Priority Mode, and then launching the title from the Game Launcher app.

What’s the point?

Unlike PC games, which often overwhelm gamers with a slew of settings to fine-tune the gaming experience, mobile games are relatively straightforward. Except for a few outliers like Genshin Impact on mobile, the majority of the most popular and graphically demanding games limit things to a few performance tweaks.

There are several reasons for this. Mobile gaming is even more of a casual experience, and forcing players with a ton of complicated presets just isn’t the best strategy. It’s less about the available silicon firepower and pushing it to its limits, and more about firing up a game and having a good time.

Take ultra popular games like PUBG-Mobile and Call of Duty: Mobilewhich really push a phone’s hardware, but only offer a few quality adjustment toggles to get the gaming experience you want based on the hardware available.

If you’ve got a flagship phone in your hands, it already packs more than enough brute force to easily crush any game you throw at it. No game booster magic is needed to go from High to Ultra graphics settings.

I have over 20 games installed on my Galaxy S22 Ultra, ranging from titles as light as candy Crush kill some time on the bus at demanding games such as Dead Trigger 2 to let off steam by shooting zombies during work breaks. However, I rarely make it a point to enable game mode to play these games.

In a reasonable world I shouldn’t have to, especially on a flagship phone. After all, the whole point of shelling out over $1000 on a flagship phone is to ensure that you don’t have to mess with something like a game booster to enjoy 60fps gaming with the best quality graphics on an OLED screen. Everything is supposed to “work”, and it often does.

Test outliers

If you have a non-flagship phone in your pocket, expectations are already low, especially for high-end gaming. However, the game modes don’t make a difference in this scenario either. We tested the effectiveness of game mode on a budget phone like the OnePlus Nord N20 5G, switching between Pro Gamer and Balanced presets.

During the game PUBG-Mobile with the HD graphics preset there was around 2-3% peak CPU and GPU usage with Pro Gamer mode, but the FPS number stuck at 30fps. Similar was the story that was playing Asphalt 9 at high quality settings, with Pro Gamer mode only increasing maximum GPU usage by 4-5%. However, this small increase in CPU or GPU usage did not produce any noticeable improvement in the gaming experience.

I also tried some outlier games like Genshin Impact (with its greedy system requirements) and a few others that can reach 120 frames per second. On the Asus ROG Phone 5S with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888+ inside, switching between standard mode and X mode for gaming only produced a 2% increase in GPU usage, a 5% CPU load peak, while the average FPS ranged only 2-3 frames per second. Again, there was no discernable difference in the actual gameplay experience for either scenario.

Upping the ante and moving on to arguably the most powerful smartphone on the planet – the Asus ROG Phone 6 – the status quo remains unchanged. After playing two games on the ROG Phone 6 with its Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset, Andy Boxall of Digital Trends said he “couldn’t see any obvious difference” between the phone’s X Mode and Dynamic Mode.

The silver lining of game modes

Game modes may not provide a tangible improvement when it comes to the raw gaming experience, but they do help improve things in other ways. For example, the floating game launcher panel on Samsung phones lets you take screenshots, record onscreen activity, quickly adjust brightness, and turn off things like Bixby and the Edge panel while playing games.

There’s also an option to disable navigation gestures on the Edge screen, and Discord integration is also on the table. Enabling priority mode blocks calls and other notifications to provide a distraction-free experience. The customizable sliding panel lets you access your most frequent apps in a pop-up view, which is neat.

Each smartphone manufacturer that offers a dedicated gaming mode or launch experience offers some of the amenities mentioned above. And they help to some extent, especially if you want your battle royale experience to be uninterrupted and want a one-click tool to record screen activity or access priority apps.

Android phones, especially flagships, don’t have to sing game mode anthems to send a point home. They can already pass all mobile games. Having tools that add shortcuts or minimize annoying notifications is great, but expecting major performance gains from a game mode is a wishful thinking these days.

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