Top 8 Best Gaming Smartphones 2022 | Articles | Phones

Smart­phone users spent more than $90 bil­lion on mobile games in 2021. And the vol­ume of the Russ­ian mar­ket, accord­ing to pre­lim­i­nary cal­cu­la­tions, reach­es 74 bil­lion rubles. The indus­try is grow­ing rapid­ly — at the begin­ning of 2022, the audi­ence of mobile games in Rus­sia reach­es 69.3 mil­lion peo­ple.

And they all need high-qual­i­ty, inex­pen­sive and pow­er­ful gad­gets. What is the best phone to buy for gam­ing? We iden­ti­fied the main fea­tures of a good gam­ing smart­phone, and col­lect­ed a rat­ing of 8 mod­els.

All prices are valid at the time of writ­ing.
Arti­cle updat­ed 02/04/2022 — added infor­ma­tion about ASUS ROG Phone 5.

Mobile games are becom­ing more and more pop­u­lar every year among chil­dren and adults. Pho­to: lampon.ru

Char­ac­ter­is­tics of good gam­ing phones
Top best gam­ing phones under 35,000 rubles
Com­par­i­son of bud­get gam­ing smart­phones
Top best gam­ing smart­phones in 2022 under 100,000 rubles
Com­par­i­son of the best smart­phones for online gam­ing

Characteristics of good gaming phones

• Screen size from 6 inch­es. Play­ing on a small screen is very incon­ve­nient. Espe­cial­ly if the game has com­plex con­trols on the dis­play, a lot of small fig­ures.
• Screen res­o­lu­tion from 1280x720. First­ly, a juicy, bright pic­ture is pleas­ant for the play­er, and sec­ond­ly, if the image is dull, of poor qual­i­ty, a per­son will strain his eye­sight more dur­ing the game. Con­stant eye strain leads to dry­ness, irri­ta­tion, red­ness.
• Capa­cious bat­tery from 3000 mAh. To with­stand increased load (com­ple­tion of stan­dard tasks + games) and not be dis­charged quick­ly. This vol­ume is enough for 6–8 hours of active play.
• RAM from 3 GB. The more it is, the high­er the phone’s per­for­mance, the less it freezes, spon­ta­neous­ly clos­es appli­ca­tions.
• Built-in mem­o­ry 128 GB or more to down­load any appli­ca­tion.
• Many cores (from 4) so ​​that the smart­phone does not freeze dur­ing the game, quick­ly process­es data.

The secret of the pop­u­lar­i­ty of mobile games is sim­ple — it’s afford­able enter­tain­ment that is always in your pock­et. Pho­to: dvfu-english.ru

Top best gaming phones under 35,000 rubles

Samsung (A127F) Galaxy A12 Nacho

The mod­el for 15,990 rubles opens the rat­ing of the best bud­get gam­ing smart­phones. A phone with a large screen (6.5 inch­es) and good res­o­lu­tion (1600x720). It is con­ve­nient to play, and even small details are vis­i­ble on a bright screen.

Smart­phone Sam­sung Galaxy A12 smart, does not slow down, can quick­ly process a large amount of data. All thanks to a high-per­for­mance octa-core proces­sor and 4 GB of RAM. The smart­phone has 128 GB of inter­nal mem­o­ry. If it is not enough for all appli­ca­tions and games, you can buy a mem­o­ry card. A sep­a­rate slot is allo­cat­ed for it.

The Sam­sung Galaxy A12 Nacho is a bud­get smart­phone for gam­ing and enter­tain­ment. Pho­to: teknobizdeyiz.com

The phone has a 5000 mAh bat­tery, which is enough for at least 12–14 hours of active use.

Nice bonus­es: 48 megapix­el main cam­era, face recog­ni­tion sen­sor, fin­ger­print scan­ner. This is an inex­pen­sive, but good smart­phone for a child and an adult for games, study and enter­tain­ment.

Smartphone Samsung (A226B) Galaxy A22s

The next mod­el in our top bud­get gam­ing phones for 20,800 rubles. It dif­fers from the pre­vi­ous mod­el in res­o­lu­tion and screen size. For a com­fort­able game, a large and juicy dis­play is installed (6.6 inch­es ver­sus 6.5 for the pre­vi­ous mod­el). Screen res­o­lu­tion 2400x1080 (ver­sus 1600x720 for Sam­sung Galaxy A12 Nacho). Thanks to Full HD + tech­nol­o­gy, the pic­ture will be of increased clar­i­ty and bright­ness.

The smart­phone has a pow­er­ful 5000 mAh bat­tery. There is a fast charg­ing func­tion. With its help, you can restore the bat­tery charge in just 2–3 hours.

Sam­sung Galaxy A22s is a styl­ish and ver­sa­tile smart­phone for games, stud­ies, work and enter­tain­ment. Pho­to: click-or-die.ru

Effi­cient oper­a­tion of games and oth­er appli­ca­tions is ensured by an 8‑core proces­sor and 4 GB of RAM. Built-in mem­o­ry 128 GB, mem­o­ry cards up to 1 TB are sup­port­ed.

Addi­tion­al­ly:

• 48 MP main cam­era, adjustable depth of field when shoot­ing, 115 view­ing angle for cre­at­ing beau­ti­ful panora­mas;
• fin­ger­print sen­sor and face recog­ni­tion;
• light sen­sor (auto­mat­i­cal­ly adjusts the bright­ness of the dis­play depend­ing on the light­ing in the room).

Smartphone Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro

This is a uni­ver­sal smart­phone for 27,450 rubles. Xiao­mi Red­mi Note 10 Pro is one of the best bud­get smart­phones for games, work, for a child and an adult:

• on the screen of 6.67 inch­es it is con­ve­nient to play, work with any appli­ca­tions (this is more than the two pre­de­ces­sors);
• screen res­o­lu­tion 2400x1080. The image is bright, clear;
• the refresh rate of the image on the screen per sec­ond is 120 Hz (120 times). There­fore, the pic­ture looks very live­ly and nat­ur­al, which is espe­cial­ly impor­tant when play­ing;
• the phone can eas­i­ly cope with demand­ing games, sup­ports mul­ti­task­ing thanks to the eight-core proces­sor and 8 GB of RAM;
• bat­tery capac­i­ty 5020 mAh — this is enough for 12–14 hours of active use.

Xiao­mi Red­mi Note 10 Pro is a bud­get phone with a large screen and a capa­cious bat­tery. Pho­to: farpost.ru

Addi­tion­al ben­e­fits:

• costs Goril­la Glass v5. Accord­ing to the man­u­fac­tur­er’s lab­o­ra­to­ry tests, it does not break in 80% of cas­es when dropped from a height of 1.6 m onto a hard floor.
• the main cam­era is 108 megapix­els, there is a spe­cial mode for night shoot­ing, a macro cam­era for pho­tograph­ing small objects.

OnePlus Nord

The mod­el for 34,450 rubles com­pletes the top of cheap gam­ing phones.

The smart­phone is equipped with a pow­er­ful eight-core Qual­comm Snap­drag­on 765G proces­sor and an Adreno 620 graph­ics proces­sor. 12 GB of RAM is respon­si­ble for per­for­mance (the max­i­mum among mod­els from this bud­get top). Thanks to this com­bi­na­tion, the phone can eas­i­ly cope with any task: run­ning mod­ern games, 3D ren­der­ing, etc.

One­Plus Nord is a great solu­tion for those who are look­ing for a bud­get and ver­sa­tile smart­phone. Pho­to: en.gearbest.com

For juici­ness, bright­ness and nat­u­ral­ness of the pic­ture, a dis­play with a diag­o­nal of 6.44 inch­es and a res­o­lu­tion of 2400x1080 is respon­si­ble.

Con­tin­u­ous oper­a­tion up to 12 hours (at full load) is pos­si­ble thanks to a 4115 mAh bat­tery. It is equipped with pro­tec­tion against over­heat­ing and a fast charg­ing func­tion (it will take up to two hours to ful­ly charge the phone).

Addi­tion­al­ly:

• 48 MP cam­era for beau­ti­ful pho­tos;
• sen­sors: prox­im­i­ty, light­ing, fin­ger­print.

Comparison of budget gaming smartphones from our top

We chose the key fea­tures of the described phones, brought them togeth­er in one table.

Gam­ing phones from our rat­ing received the fol­low­ing rat­ings on a scale from 0 to 5:

Top best gaming smartphones in 2022 under 100,000 rubles

Xiaomi Black Shark 4

A smart­phone from the mid­dle price cat­e­go­ry for 41,500 rubles. Equipped with a 6.67-inch AMOLED E4 screen with a res­o­lu­tion of 2400x1080 and an image refresh rate of 144Hz. This com­bi­na­tion guar­an­tees a clear, bright pic­ture while play­ing games and watch­ing videos. The screen response time is 8.3 ms — the smart­phone responds to any press with light­ning speed, which is espe­cial­ly impor­tant dur­ing the game­play.

Black Shark 4 is a typ­i­cal phone from Xiao­mi: styl­ish, pow­er­ful, with a capa­cious bat­tery and excel­lent per­for­mance. Pho­to: xataka.com

Xiao­mi Black Shark 4 has a capa­cious 4500 mAh bat­tery. There is a fast charg­ing func­tion (pow­er 120 W, the phone charges 100% in less than 30 min­utes).

Unin­ter­rupt­ed work is pos­si­ble thanks to 8 proces­sor cores and 8 GB of RAM.

Addi­tion­al ben­e­fits:

• 48 MP cam­era for cre­at­ing high-qual­i­ty pic­tures;
• var­i­ous sen­sors: light­ing, fin­ger­print, face recog­ni­tion.

One Plus 9R

One of the best smart­phones for games for 46,110 rubles. Its advan­tages:

• large screen — 6.55 inch­es. This is 16.6 cm — enough for games, watch­ing videos and even cre­at­ing vir­tu­al con­tent on your own;
• screen res­o­lu­tion of 2400x1080 with the most real­is­tic col­or repro­duc­tion. This can be achieved with Has­sel­blad’s Nat­ur­al Col­or Cal­i­bra­tion;
• 256 GB of inter­nal mem­o­ry, which is def­i­nite­ly enough for games and impor­tant appli­ca­tions;
• capa­cious 4500 mAh bat­tery — the phone works up to 12 hours with­out recharg­ing;
• 48 MP cam­era for tak­ing pic­tures.

One­Plus 9R is a smart­phone not only for games, but also for shoot­ing high-qual­i­ty videos. Record­ing is very smooth thanks to EIS sta­bi­liza­tion. Pho­to: superplanshet.ru

It dif­fers from the pre­vi­ous mod­el from the top in the size of RAM. As much as 12 GB (against 8 GB for Xiao­mi Black Shark 4) com­bined with 8 proces­sor cores ensure smooth oper­a­tion of the device.

Google Pixel 6

Bright and styl­ish smart­phone for 66,674 rubles. Equipped with a capa­cious 4614 mAh bat­tery. It pro­vides work till 12 o’clock, at reg­u­lar use. The slim and slim smart­phone is com­fort­able to hold and play com­fort­ably thanks to its octa-core proces­sor. It ensures high-qual­i­ty work of appli­ca­tions with­out freezes and crash­es.

The smart­phone has a diag­o­nal of 6.4 inch­es with a res­o­lu­tion of 2400x1080 — this is enough for a com­fort­able game for many hours.

Equipped with a large and bright dis­play, pow­er­ful proces­sor and excel­lent cam­era. Pho­to: flipboard.com

A fea­ture of the Google Pix­el 6 is its own opti­mized tool­bar for games. Google Play even has a games cat­e­go­ry that is “opti­mized for Pix­el 6”. This improves the game­play. Since now devel­op­ers can imme­di­ate­ly cre­ate games that are max­i­mal­ly adapt­ed specif­i­cal­ly for Pix­el 6. This min­i­mizes the num­ber of bugs and prob­lems with games.

Among the nice addi­tions is the main cam­era of 50 megapix­els. The phone is suit­able not only for gam­ing, but also for shoot­ing pro­fes­sion­al-qual­i­ty pho­tos and videos for social net­works.

ASUS ROG Phone 5

A real gam­ing giant for 72,990 rubles (ver­sion with 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of inter­nal mem­o­ry). There are more expen­sive ver­sions of this mod­el with 12 and 16 GB of RAM and 256 GB of built-in mem­o­ry. Enough mem­o­ry for all your favorite games.

ASUS ROG Phone 5 is a pow­er­ful smart­phone for gamers. Pho­to: beritawarganet.com

The device is equipped with a capa­cious bat­tery — 6000 mAh (works up to 17 hours with­out recharg­ing at con­stant load). This is our top record! The pecu­liar­i­ty of the bat­tery is not only in its huge capac­i­ty, but also in its device. This is not a sol­id bat­tery, but two sep­a­rate 3000 mAh bat­ter­ies locat­ed on oppo­site sides of the proces­sor.

What are the ben­e­fits for the user?

• Fast charg­ing. Both bat­ter­ies are charged at the same time. In about 1–1.5 hours, you can ful­ly charge the gad­get.
• Less heat (pre­cise­ly due to the sep­a­ra­tion of the bat­tery), which means less dis­com­fort dur­ing the game.

The smart­phone has a diag­o­nal of 6.78 inch­es with a res­o­lu­tion of 2448x1080 — this is enough for a com­fort­able game for long hours. Asus has pleased gamers with a high refresh rate of 144Hz. This guar­an­tees a clear, bright pic­ture dur­ing the game.

The Asus ROG 5 is a nim­ble, styl­ish gam­ing smart­phone. And even more about its advan­tages and fea­tures, we told in a sep­a­rate review ded­i­cat­ed to him.

Apple iPhone 13

Which smart­phone is bet­ter to buy for gam­ing? An excel­lent choice is the Apple iPhone 13 for 95,294 rubles.

It has a mod­ern and ultra-fast A15 Bion­ic proces­sor with four cores. It is respon­si­ble for the per­for­mance of the phone, fast data pro­cess­ing, launch­ing appli­ca­tions. The smart­phone is equipped with a large screen (6.1 inch­es) with a rich, col­or­ful dis­play (2532x1170 is the best indi­ca­tor in our rat­ing).

Thanks to OLED tech­nol­o­gy, the screen is 28% brighter than pre­vi­ous mod­els. This means that the user will see more small details, sat­u­rat­ed col­ors — and this is impor­tant when play­ing.

Apple iPhone 13 is a smart­phone for those who want to get real plea­sure from the gam­ing process. Pho­to: apple.com

A nice bonus is an excel­lent cam­era (2 main 12 megapix­els each), which allows you to take gor­geous pic­tures at any time of the day.

The com­par­i­son table shows that accord­ing to some char­ac­ter­is­tics, the iPhone is infe­ri­or to oth­er devices from this top. For exam­ple: 4 cores ver­sus 8 from com­peti­tors, a small­er bat­tery (3208 mAh ver­sus 4000+ mAh) and less RAM (4 GB ver­sus 8 and 12 GB). But this is off­set by the excel­lent adap­ta­tion of games for the iPhone and the ener­gy effi­cien­cy of the A15 Bion­ic proces­sor.

Even with this bat­tery capac­i­ty, the iPhone will last up to 8 hours with­out recharg­ing with active use. Every­thing is done so that the user does not notice the short­com­ings and can enjoy their favorite games. There­fore, the Apple iPhone 13 smart­phone takes its right­ful place in our rank­ing of the best gam­ing phones.

Comparison of the best smartphones for online gaming from our top

We chose the key fea­tures of the described phones, brought them togeth­er in one table.

The gam­ing phones from our top received the fol­low­ing rat­ings on a scale from 0 to 5: