Best Gaming Phones 2021

If you wanted to game on the go, you once needed to have a handheld console. With the advent of the smartphone and app stores, however, games have become more and more popular on your phones, almost entirely replacing handheld consoles.

Gaming on your phone is great because you already have one on you almost all the time, so you don’t have to carry around something else. It’s also more varied than handheld console gaming as it is much easier to publish a game to the main app stores than it is to release a console game.

While you can game on most phones, to get the best experience, you want to get a phone designed for gaming. These tend to offer features such as high-refresh-rate screens, shoulder buttons, large batteries, and high-performance processors. Generally to keep costs down and to help to manage temperatures, sacrifices are made in other areas, such as camera quality, expandability, and build density.

To help you pick a good gaming phone we’ve drawn up a list of the best gaming phones in 2021.

The Asus ROG phone 5 is the update to the ROG phone 3. It offers a 1080×2448 AMOLED screen with a 144Hz refresh rate for the smoothest possible gaming experience. It comes with a 6000mAh battery so you can game for as long as possible before needing to recharge, which won’t take long thanks to the 65W fast charging capability. The phone itself is powered by a snapdragon 888 processor, supports 5G, and runs Android 11.

To help give you the best possible game control, it includes two shoulder buttons so you don’t have to cover the screen with your hands as much. The phone comes with up to 256GB of storage and up to 16 GB of RAM. With all this processing power, it can get quite hot, to help manage the heat a cooling fan is available which comes with extra buttons for further control options, even without that though the phone is relatively bulky and heavy.

The Lenovo Legion Phone Duel offers a 1080×2340 AMOLED screen with a 144Hz refresh rate. While the 5000mAh battery is smaller than the one in the ROG Phone 5, the 90W fast charging is even faster, so you’ve less downtime when you need to charge your phone.

The Duel comes with 16GB of RAM and a Snapdragon 865 plus CPU and 5G support. It comes with up to 512GB of storage and uses Android 10. Rather than using a notch, or a hole-punch camera, for the front-facing camera it uses a popup camera, this may be preferred by some, especially given the lack of impact on the screen, but the mechanical action of the popup may break over time.

The Nubia Red Magic 5 is a comparatively cheap gaming phone. It comes with a 1080×2340 AMOLED screen with a 144Hz refresh rate. The 4500mAh battery life is relatively small but the fast-charging capability is great at 55W, allowing for a full charge in just 40 minutes.

It still comes with Android 10, and up to 256GB of storage. It’s powered by the Snapdragon 865 processor and supports 5G and dual sim cards. The phone can run very hot, but an extra cooling fan is available that can clip onto the back.

The Black Shark 3, a Xiaomi sub-brand, comes with a 1080×2448 AMOLED screen and a 90Hz refresh rate. While the screen is slower than some competitors on this list, it does help to keep the cost down. It comes with a 4720mAh battery and supports 65W fast charging which can fully charge the battery in just 38 minutes.

It comes with Android 10, supports 5G, and has up to 256GB of storage. The phone has a metal rather than a glass back which means that it doesn’t support NFC or wireless Qi charging, which is a relatively large negative point for convenience.

The Razer Phone 2 has a 5.72-inch 1440×250 screen with a 120Hz refresh rate. The 4000mAh battery is relatively small for a gaming phone, while the 18W fast charging is a little slow if you’re waiting for it to recharge. It comes with up to 128GB of storage and an IP67 rating meaning It can survive temporary submersion in water. It can also wirelessly fast charge at 15W.

The cameras are relatively weak with two 12MP rear cameras and an 8MP front camera. The phone is now relatively old, running Android 9, which can make it hard to find. It also has relatively large top and bottom bezels which look a little outdated.

That was our round-up of the best gaming phones in 2021. Are you a big mobile gamer? Which games do you like to play, and which of these phones would you buy?