Smartphones Will Never Kill Dedicated Handhelds

There was a time when it looked like dedicated handheld gaming would die a quick death thanks to the rise of smartphone games, but it hasn’t turned out that way, and thanks to the nature of each device, it probably never will.

Phones Just Aren’t Designed for the Needs of Gaming

All you have to do is look at so-called “gaming phones” to see where the main weaknesses of phones as gaming devices lie. These phone are big and bulky, with elaborate cooling solutions.

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They are more often than not seriously compromised when it comes to being a phone, and have to give up ro downgrade features in order to be better at running games.

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ASUS ROG Phone 9

Experience an unmatched mobile gaming experience with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform, 12GB RAM, and 256GB storage. You’ll also enjoy a cutting-edge 185 Hz display with adaptive refresh rate for power savings.
 

No matter how powerful it is, a sealed modern smartphone doesn’t like to run sustained performance intensive tasks, and there’s just so much you can do to get heat out of a phone passively, especially one inside a phone case.

This is why a comparatively modest handheld like the Switch can run circles around midrange phones that are supposed to have better hardware. The Switch can sustain its performance thanks to a great miniature active cooling system. The closest phones have come to this is a big clip-on fan over the vents of a gaming phone, which also compromises its dust and water resistance.

Of course, at some point. phones will become powerful enough to do better than the Switch without the heat, but when the Switch 2 launches we’ll start this whole dance all over again.

Nothing Bad Happens When Your Handheld’s Battery Dies

I think most people would agree that having your phone’s battery die is something you really don’t want to happen, yet there are few things that drain a phone’s battery faster than a video game.

A dedicated handheld is just a gaming system, It’s not your GPS, your lifeline to stay in contact with other people, or any of the other things our digital Swiss Army Knives do for us each day. So while my phone can run some pretty amazing games, it can’t do it for long, and I had better plan for a way to charge it up, or it won’t make it through the day.

If my Switch battery dies, the only result is mild annoyance.

Smartphone Controllers Offer a Compromised Experience

With the exception of games that are designed from the ground up for touch screens, gaming on a phone is a bit of a chore unless you add physical controls. It’s great that phones support most controllers these days, and game developers are pretty good about offering gamepad support in their titles.

The problem comes when finding a way to attach a physical controller to a phone. There are all sorts of brackets and, of course, dedicated phone control systems like the Razer Kishi V2.

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Razer Kishi V2

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Now, don’t get me wrong. These are all workable, but they can never be as comfortable or slick as the Switch or Steam Deck. Fundamentally, you’re mating two things together that were not designed in tandem, and so there’s always some sort of compromise.

Handheld PCs Have Doubled the Competition

When smartphones were only up against handhelds like the Switch or Sony’s sadly failed Vita, they might have had a fighting chance, but thanks to the success of the Steam Deck, handheld PCs have dramatically increased the amount of choice handheld gamers have.

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ASUS ROG Ally X (2024)

The ASUS ROG Ally X (2024) is a handheld gaming PC designed to take your favorite titles on-the-go. With the AMD Z1 Extreme processor and 24GB of RAM, you’ll find that the ROG Ally X packs a punch in the power department. It’s capable of playing games like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 at over 100 FPS using recommended settings. USB4 and USB-C allow the ROG Ally X to be converted to a desktop through a USB dock, making it even more versatile.

We’ve really only experienced the first generation of good handheld gaming PCs with the Deck, ROG Ally, and Legion GO, but there are many more coming. Even better, more hardware manufacturers, like Intel, are entering the handheld gaming PC market. So competition will drive prices down, and performance and efficiency up.

I also expect handheld gaming PCs to start offering smaller devices than the premium models we’re used to. So, with increased portability, it will eventually be no real hassle to include a dedicated gaming device in your bag.

In fact, I almost forgot about another type of handheld vying for your pocket—emulation handhelds. Setting aside the legal issues, companies like Anbernic are pumping out dozens of awesome little gaming handhelds that offer all the retro gaming you would want up to the PlayStation 2 era in some cases.

Phones Have a Place in Gaming

Despite my stance that mobile phones won’t and can’t eliminate the need for dedicated handhelds, I still love mobile gaming and I think it’s carving out its own niche in the overall gaming universe. Despite most of the games for mobile being free-to-play slop, some companies are working out how to make F2P games suck less. Just look at Genshin Impact or Hearthstone.

I love playing games on my iPad, and the touch interface of phones has given rise to fun and interesting titles. Luckily, there’s no reason both types of device can’t exist together, and it means no matter what, there’s something in your pocket that can scratch your gaming itch.