Gaming on smartphones is growing at a fast pace and with each passing day, the army of smartphone gamers is growing only stronger. For this growing breed of new-age gamers, smartphone makers are launching powerful gaming focused smartphones which can handle not just apps of daily use, but also graphics intensive applications and resource intensive games. While there are many gaming phones in the country that fit this description, like the Galaxy S23 Ultra, OnePlus 11, Vivo X90 Pro, the best gaming phone in India at the moment is the iQOO 11. All these phones offer very good experience in games thanks to their powerful flagship-grade hardware and in some cases also rich, gaming-centric feature set to help them stand out from the crowd. So if you’re in the market for a new smart phone for gaming then your search ends here. Here’s a look at the best ones you can buy.
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iQOO 11 is the best phone you can buy in India for gaming right now. It is as powerful as they come and offers some key gaming first features to enhance your experience when you decide to game on the device. At the heart of these experiences is the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC Qualcomm that can power anything and everything you throw at it. The chipset is generally power efficient, but the iQOO 11’s impressive handling of thermals ensures the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 remains very stable on the device even when the SoC is pushed to handle CPU and GPU intensive tasks. But as mentioned above, it is the gaming first features, some of which are even baked into the phone’s hardware that set it apart from the competition. It also gets a dedicated Game Space which acts as the hub for all things gaming and can display the games you have installed, device’s CPU, GPU, and temperature performance, among other gaming statistics, for example number of hours you’ve games in the the week and which games you play the most.
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While the Galaxy S23 Ultra isn’t marketed as a standalone gaming phone, and is a device that offers good performance in all aspects of interest for a flagship phone buyer, what cannot be ignored is just how good at gaming this new phone from Samsung is. Again, at the core of such experiences is the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC, which is going to remain a regular fixture through this list of best gaming phones in India. But if the 8 Gen 2 is good for gaming, what makes the S23 Ultra better than most other devices with this chip is the fact that it uses a slightly more powerful version of this chip under the hood. Yes, on the device you get a custom Snapdragon 8 Gen for Galaxy SoC, that offers higher base clocks for performance cores than what you’d find on other devices in the list. Plus, because of its new and improved vapour cooling chamber, that’s significantly bigger than the one found on its predecessor, the Galaxy S23 Ultra emerged as one of top-ranked phones for gaming in India.
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While Apple is also not the one to market their phones explicitly as gaming phones, it cannot be ignored just how good some of their phones are for gaming. Especially, the flagship devices, which year after year, impress with their performance in games. Majority of the credit for this should go to its high-performance chipsets that often set the benchmark for performance. Similar is the case this year, with the A16 Bionic SoC totting iPhone 14 Pro Max running circles around graphically demanding games with the sheer muscle it hides under the hood. The phone has enough juice to power any game you throw at it – rather available on the App Store. It also has a big battery and an equally big, fast refresh rate display paired to this chipset to bring to life some really immersive gaming experiences on screen. So be rest assured, if you end up buying the iPhone 14 for gaming, you’d not be left disappointed.
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The Vivo X90 Pro is amongst the first batch of MediaTek Dimensity 9200 SoC phones in the country, that automatically makes it a worthwhile investment if you’re looking to game on your next phone. This chipset on the device has been paired with 12GB of RAM to ensure users don’t face any issues while gaming on the device. On top of that, Vivo has also added a big vapour cooling chamber on the phone to keep the thermals in check, and ensure that the phone remains stable while gaming and resource intensive tasks. But that’s not it, Vivo’s also shipping the phone with the latest and super-fast UFS 4.0 storage, that helps improve app load times and in certain cases in-game performance as well.
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OnePlus 11 is another phone that utilises the power of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC for powering games. While the chipset is obviously at the heart of everything good the OnePlus 11 does in the gaming department, what also makes gaming on the device an enjoyable experience is the presence of a fast refresh rate display that’s also one of the most colour accurate AMOLED panels on a phone at the moment. This essentially means that when you game on the OnePlus 11, the visuals generated by the core hardware of the device, look as real, and as vibrant as they can on a phone right now. So buy this phone if you want a device that can make games look alive and feel immersive thanks to the big, colour accurate display on the device.
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Powered by the custom Tensor G2 chip that’s been developed especially for the Pixel 7 series of phones, this latest flagship from Google is a beast for gaming. While the phone’s not as powerful as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chips on the list, or for that matter, the A16 Bionic SoC chip device, the iPhone 14 Pro Max, we can still get very good gaming performance on the Pixel 7 Pro. It’s big display, and battery ensure that games not only run on the device, but also look great and run longer on the Pixel 7 Pro compared to many of its competitors.
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This is another phone that does not feature the most powerful chipset that’s available on a phone right now, but, it still packs enough to run the most demanding of titles at highest of settings without a hitch. The A15 Bionic SoC inside the device may pale in comparison to the A16 Bionic found inside the iPhone 14 Pro Max, but you do get a similar sized display and battery as the flagship iPhone for this year to make the iPhone 14 Plus a very good phone for playing games on it.
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If you’re not exactly in the mood for breaking the bank, but still want a phone that can run games at the highest settings and that too in a stable manner, then your best bet is the OnePlus 11R. It’s powered by the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 which sits just below the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC, and brings to the table good thermal efficiency and stable peaks to run any game you throw at without much trouble. Depending on your variant of choice, OnePlus has paired this chip with up to 16GB of RAM on the device, for smooth, lag free experiences. Plus, you also get a big 6.74-inch fast refresh rate panel and a big battery that can charge at a superfast speed of 100W to ensure there’s very little that comes between you and the games you want to play on the device.
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One of the best performing Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 devices we’ve tested to date, the Realme GT 2 Pro is a beast when it comes to gaming. During our tests it performed extremely well in games and did even better in benchmark tests where it even beat some higher priced phones with its performance in synthetic benchmarks. The GT 2 Pro is also among the rare breed of phones that come with flat screen displays. So if you’re looking for a device that’s good for games and benchmarks and also has a flat screen panel that doesn’t interfere with your long gaming sessions, then this is the device for you.
Best Mobile Phones for Gaming in India (November 2024) Faq's
Which is te best mobile phone for gaming?The iQOO 11. It is the perfect mix of performance and gaming features which make it arguably the best phone any gamer could buy in the country right now. At the heart of the device is the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, which the most powerful SoC available to Android phones at the moment. This has been paired with a whopping up to 16GB RAM and 256GB of storage. iQOO’s also added a high refresh and resolution screen on the phone. This is a 1440x3200 OLED panel capable of refreshing up to 144Hz. All these combined with the phone’s in-built game mode, makes this a solid phone for gaming. Proof of this is also found in benchmark results, where the iQOO 11 has scored some of the best results we’ve seen on any phone to date.
Which is the cheapest gaming phone in India?While there are many affordable gaming phones available in India, the Poco M5 is the best of the lot. This is because it comes packing MediaTek’s most powerful mid-range chipset, the 6nm Helio G99 SoC. The phone offers lag-free performance not just in tasks of daily use, but also works well in games that do push the device’s capabilities to the limit. However, at no point does the phone come up short, as the chipset inside it is one of the best for multi-tasking and moderate gaming. While the phone may not run the most demanding of titles such as Call of Duty Mobile at extreme settings, users can expect to game at mid to high settings at 60 fps.
Which phone is best for PUBG in India?There are many phones that offer very good performance in PUBG, with any phone being powered by a flagship chipset from either MediaTek, Qualcomm or Apple, promising to run the game without a hitch. However, there are some phones that offer slightly better performance in the game because of their ability to handles thermals better and in effect provide more stable performance for a longer duration. Arguably the one phone that does this the best is the iQOO 11. It’s powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC and offers stable peaks for the long gaming sessions. Additionally, this device also comes with gaming first features such as motion control and pressure-sensitive button mapping to elevate gaming experiences in PUBG.
Which Snapdragon is best for gaming?Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is the current king of Qualcomm mobile chipsets, and as such, it is also the best when it comes to gaming. The chipset uses a four CPU cluster architecture where there's one big prime core based on the ARM Cortex-X3 architecture and two ARM Cortex-A715-based performance cores as well. But arguably the biggest advantage it brings over other Snapdragon chips is that it offers major upgrades in the GPU department. This is because the new chipset gets the Adreno 740 GPU, which offers a claimed 25% improvement in handling of graphics intensive tasks, and that too while consuming 45% less energy in comparison to previous generation chipsets from Qualcomm. And that’s not it. It is also the first Qualcomm Snapdragon chip to bring with itself support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing. The latter would ensure that any phone running this chipset will be ready to handle ray-tracing once we have games that can take advantage of this technology.
