Smartphone gaming is more popular than ever with games such as Battlegrounds Mobile India, Call of Duty: Mobile, Genshin Impact and Apex Legends striking a chord with the Indian youth. While games akin to Candy Crush and Subway Surfer are easy enough for most phones to breeze through, the ones we mentioned before are much more graphically intensive. So, a combination of a reliable CPU, GPU, and RAM are required for these games to run optimally with minimal frame drops and lag. Smartphones under ₹20,000 aren’t what you’d typically call ‘gaming phones’ but many of these budget phones in 2023 have enough firepower to run these games smoothly on Low or Medium graphics.
The segment features powerful enough budget chipsets such as the Qualcomm Snapdragon 695, Snapdragon 4 Gen 1, MediaTek Dimensity 930, Exynos 1330 and others that have proven to provide a good enough gaming experience without breaking the bank. At this price, you definitely won’t get to see more advanced gaming features such as inbuilt triggers and vapour-cooling chambers but the processors are getting increasingly competent at offering reliable performance while keeping the thermals in check. Some examples of smartphones that offer good gaming experience under ₹20,000 are the Redmi Note 12 Pro, Realme 10 Pro, Vivo T1, Samsung Galaxy M14, and Moto G71.
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- Stable performance with Android 12, Affordable, Long-lasting battery, 3.5mm audio jack, Smooth 120Hz refresh rate with 240Hz touch polling rate
- No stereo speakers, Extremely slow charging speeds, No ultra-wide camera, Night mode unavailable in 4GB RAM variant, Dated waterdrop notch design
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