The new REDMAGIC 9 Pro smartphone is powered by Qualcomm's very latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC, with Red Dead Redemption 2 running through an emulator at just 10FPS... unplayable but impressive nonetheless. Check it out:
Serg Pavlov used the REDMAGIC 9 Pro smartphone running a Windows emulator called "Mobox" and playing Rockstar's incredibly successful Red Dead Redemption 2. The game was running with an in-game resolution of 1280 x 720 (720p) with low graphics settings, which, through the emulator... pumped out 10FPS on Qualcomm's best Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC.
You have to remember that this isn't running natively; it's running through a Windows emulator, so performance falls off a cliff. But it's a promising tease into the future. If an emulated version of Red Dead Redemption 2 can run at 720p 10FPS, we can expect a few more years to pass before we get to a stable 30FPS in games like this.
Imagine a future where Rockstar releases Grand Theft Auto 5 Mobile on flagship SoCs running at 720p or even 1080p 30FPS... it would be a fantastic thing to have Grand Theft Auto 6 on the PlayStation 5 Pro, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S consoles, and eventually the PC, while GTA 5 Mobile is on smartphones.
You can't neglect gaming smartphones because it is a huge, huge market, and it never sleeps... there's a new gaming smartphone on the horizon every few months with better SoCs inside (Qualcomm never sleeps with its SoCs, and neither does Apple) that provides even more performance for smartphone-based gaming. 720p 10FPS sucks now, but that's through an emulator, a native version would run much better, probably closer to 30FPS+ easy.
