

For years, gaming consoles and PCs have been the de facto means for playing your favorite video games. Handheld gaming devices from Sega and Nintendo have always taken second place after PCs and consoles, thanks to the latter's better performance and display output. However, when Nokia presented Snake on the Nokia 6110 device in the late 1990s, it was on.



Since then, mobile phones – and eventually smartphones – have been at the forefront of a hardware and software revolution that has been seeking to establish mobile gaming.



Smartphones are an integral part of our lives. Therefore, it only makes sense that smartphones should also form part of our gaming lives, especially for those who can't resist catching up on the goings-on in the city of Los Santos in GTA: San Andreas.



The Benefits and Opportunities



When Nintendo and Sony released the DS and PSP respectively in 2004, it was a direct response to the growing need for gamers to continue the fun while on the move. Being restricted to the sofa wasn't cool anymore. Additionally, with advances in internet technology, people could link up on a multiplayer platform and continue the fun on-the-go.



At the basic level, smartphones are communication devices used to call, text, check emails, and browse the internet. But for the average gamer, smartphones have the potential to be much more than a simple communication gadget.



The key question here is whether the PC or console gaming experience can be replicated on an average smartphone. Consoles and gaming PCs use high-end graphics to achieve high-quality gameplay. Console quality is often a bit harder to achieve on smartphones because of hardware limitations, which is why smartphone manufacturers are taking the front seat when it comes to improving hardware and performance.







More smartphone manufacturers are beginning to appreciate the value of gaming smartphones by putting more time and money on R&D to help give smartphones the power they need. These efforts are already bearing fruits. Smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, the Nexus 6P, and the HTC 10 with beefed up hardware are worthy adversaries to earlier consoles and gaming PCs.



Take the Galaxy S7 Edge for instance. It comes with an Adreno 530 GPU, 4 GB of RAM, and the Snapdragon 820, the latest in the line of Snapdragon processors. In comparison, Sony's PS2 came with 147 MHz GPU, a humble 300 MHz processor, and only 32 MB of RAM. Considering how well this console ran games like God of War, high-end smartphones are poised to give console and PCs a run for their money in years to come.



Software platforms are also contributing greatly to the development of advanced smartphones. Windows, iOS, and Android mobile platforms have full support for advanced hardware architectures such as multiple processing cores and 64-bit chips. Android, which is the most popular mobile operating system globally, freely opens up its code for developers and manufacturers for experimentation to help come up with the next generation of smartphones.



Smartphones and Virtual Reality





The past few years and especially 2016 have seen increased hardware and software production geared towards VR and augmented reality gaming. Wearable VR devices such as Google Cardboard, HTC Vive, Samsung Gear VR, Zeiss One have been designed to work with smartphones running both Android and iOS mobile platforms.



These devices can compete with console or PC VR devices on a number of fronts, the major one being ergonomics and usability. For instance, using Sony's PlayStation VR requires you to connect the device to the stationary console, which limits movement. With something like the Zeiss One, you simply plug in your smartphone into the device and you can freely move while interacting with the virtual world.

The smartphone VR space has opened the door for developers to come up with interactive games and set the tone for the future development of VR games for smartphones.



The Limits



Unlike consoles and gaming PCs, smartphones have the obvious problem of hardware restrictions. The smaller size of many of these devices means that they cannot be fitted with high-performance GPUs and CPUs that are typically found on PCs and consoles. Many are often limited to mediocre processors, RAM, and storage, which make them unable to run demanding games.



It might also be difficult for gamers who are used to large, 4K screens to adapt to the smaller screens on smartphones. Most smartphones, however, offer different types of connection ports such as HDMI and TV-out for connection to TVs and multipurpose screens, which is one of the coolest ways to circumvent the screen size issues.



The Takeaway



Compared to console and PC gaming, smartphone gaming is a relatively new field. Still, smartphones have come a long way from Nokia's Snake to some high-performance games such as Asphalt Airborne. This suggests that if the current trend of growth for smartphones continues, we are bound to see smartphones replacing the likes of PSP and Nintendo DS as devices of choice for gamers in years to come.