Who needs a gaming laptop, or a gaming console when you have one of the best gaming phones? A gaming phone has one job – to help you win! Or just have more fun playing games, whatever makes you happy.
You know what will make gamers happy? The best premium gaming phone, the Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro, a phone that performs like a dream but looks good enough that it won’t embarrass you in business meetings.
If you want a bigger screen, check out the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 for gaming. It’s got amazing performance, and you get a huge, tablet-sized display inside. Plus, the S Pen makes a nice precision controller for touch games.
Many of the best gaming phones on our list are on sale for Black Friday, so you can get a great discount on the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, the OnePlus 12R, or the Galaxy Z Fold 6, especially if you have a phone to trade.
Check out our complete list of all the best Black Friday phone deals. We’re keeping it updated live as we see new deals pop up.
Quick List
The Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro is the first Snapdragon 8 Elite phone we’ve reviewed and it’s a powerful beast. Asus has further refined its formula for a look that is more professional than pro gamer, without sacrificing performance
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2. ZTE Nubia RedMagic 9 Pro
The RedMagic 9 Pro is the benchmark beast among the gaming crowd, with the biggest battery, to boot. It’s not tops all around, but it’s the fastest, for sure.
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3. Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max
If you’re gaming on iPhone, you want the best performance, the biggest display, and the most battery life, and that means the iPhone 16 Pro Max is the only iPhone you should consider for serious mobile gaming.
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4. Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra
The Galaxy S24 Ultra can do everything, and of course that includes gaming. It’s overkill if you just want to play games, but if you want games and cameras and productivity and…
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For a phone that starts at only $499.99 / £649, the OnePlus 12R gives you great performance, a huge display, and amazing battery life. Everything gamers want, for much less.
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6. Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6
The Galaxy Z Fold 6 refines Samsung’s big tablet foldable with more durability and a wider front display, and this foldable makes a fantastic gaming phone with its powerful performance, huge inner screen, and S Pen support for more input options.
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The best gaming phone 2024
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The best premium gaming
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The Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro is a performance beast. It’s the most powerful phone we’ve reviewed so far. It’s got a subtle design for a gaming phone, amazing battery life, and tons of handy features.
Asus streamlined its gaming phone design last year, and the ROG Phone 9 Pro continues that trend. It’s still a bit chunky, but the soft-touch glass back makes it comfortable to hold. Asus even added some cool features like wireless charging and IP68 water resistance, which you don’t usually see in gaming phones.
For gamers, the larger 5,800mAh battery means you can game for hours on end, and the secondary USB-C port makes it easy to charge while you play.
The camera system is decent, but not amazing. It takes solid photos in most situations, but it can’t quite keep up with the top-tier camera phones from Apple, Google, and Samsung. However, it does have a cool new gimbal system for super-stable shots.
The real star of the show is the Snapdragon 8 Elite processor. This new chipset flies through games and benchmarks, and the improved cooling system keeps it running smoothly even during long gaming sessions. Plus, you get a choice between a gamer-focused UI or a more traditional Android look.
Overall, the Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro is a fantastic phone for gamers and everyday users alike. It’s expensive, but it delivers top-notch performance, a sleek design, and a ton of useful features. If you’re looking for a phone that can do it all, the ROG Phone 9 Pro is definitely worth considering.
Read our full Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro review
The best gaming for most people
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The fast following RedMagic 9 Pro, part of the Nubia line of gaming phones from ZTE, finally passed the champion this year in the sprint to the finish line. The RedMagic 9 Pro beat the Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro last year, a serious feat consider the RedMagic is a much less expensive device, and both of these phones are at the top of mobile computing performance.
How does the RedMagic 9 Pro deliver a higher-performance gaming phone for less? You don’t get a superfast display, the RedMagic tops out at 120Hz. This phone can’t handle water, so you won’t be gaming in the rain like you might with the Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro. You also don’t get LED gamer lights, though maybe that’s worth a pass to save some cash.
Instead, you get a phone that costs hundreds less than the Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro, but beats that phone by bare inches in almost every performance benchmark test we use, a real feat considering both phones use the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset as an engine.
If you want high performance for less money, you’ll be happy with the RedMagic 9 Pro, and you’ll have bragging rights secured. If you need a bit more, there are always premium options for big spenders.
Read our full Nubia Red Magic 9 Pro review
The best iPhone gaming
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While Apple’s MacOS computers may lag behind in gaming, the iPhone is an excellent game platform, and the best iPhone for gaming is easily the iPhone 16 Pro Max. It has the biggest, brightest display, the fastest performance, and the best design of any iPhone you can buy. If you can afford Apple’s best, you’ll be happier every time you play.
There are some things the iPhone simply does better when it comes to games. Many of the best controller accessories, like the Nomad Scuf and Sony Backbone, launched on the iPhone first. The iPhone also has access to Apple’s exclusive Apple Arcade store, which gives you a heap of games for a monthly fee.
With its A18 Pro processor on board, the iPhone 16 Pro Max is the most future-proof of all the iPhone models you can buy, whether you’re playing detailed games like Death Stranding or waiting for the latest Apple Intelligence features coming to iOS 18. If you don’t have a Pro phone, Apple says you may get left out of the AI party.
The iPhone 16 Pro Max offers great battery life, stunning photography, and that futuristic titanium build. It’s expensive, but it’s also the best iPhone for gaming, and one of the best gaming phones you can buy.
Read our full iPhone 15 Pro Max review
The best gaming and more
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It would be a pity if you bought the Galaxy S24 Ultra just to play games, because there is so much that you can do with this phone, you’d be ignoring too much, even if you’re dominating the field on Call of Duty: Mobile.
Don’t get me wrong, the Galaxy S24 Ultra is one of the best gaming phones you can buy. It has faster performance than even the Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro on many of our benchmark tests, and it’s design and features are head and shoulders above that gaming-focused phone.
It’s also even more expensive than a dedicated gaming phone, but for the extra price you get the S Pen, a water resistant stylus with an accelerometer for gesture controls. You also get, like, six cameras, including the 5X telephoto zoom that can take astrophotography shots better than any iPhone.
If you want to play games, but you also need to get serious work done, the Galaxy S24 Ultra is the phone to get. In fact, if you want to play but you also need serious ANYTHING, the Ultra is the phone to get. It’s the best phone for gaming and much more.
Read our review: Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra review
The best budget gaming
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What makes the OnePlus 12R a great gaming phone? That’s easy. First of all, it has the best battery life of almost any phone we’ve tested. The RedMagic 9 Pro lasted less than an hour longer, but the OnePlus 12R has a smaller battery, a much smaller price tag, and a gorgeous design that most other phones on this list can’t match.
The OnePlus 12R may be OnePlus’ bargain phone, but that doesn’t mean it uses bargain bin parts. The processor is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, which was the fastest Android processor we saw in 2023. Performance won’t match the fastest gaming phones, but it will beat every Pixel and anything else shy of a Galaxy S23, for hundreds less than Samsung’s flagship.
The OnePlus 12R also has a great, big display that is plenty bright for gaming outside. The cameras are solid, better than the dedicated gaming phones from Asus and ZTE. It’s even durable, with Gorilla Glass Victus 2 and enough water resistance to take a rain shower, if not a bathroom shower.
Watch for deals on this phone, especially if you live in the US, because OnePlus has a great history of discounts and guaranteed trade-in values. This is the best bargain gaming phone at its current price, but you may find it for an even better deal.
Read our full OnePlus 12R review
Take a look at our OnePlus discount codes for the best OnePlus offers and savings.
The best gaming foldable
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The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 is the best foldable gaming phone, with a huge inner display that opens up to 7.6-inches. It gives you only 10% less screen real estate than an iPad mini, even though it folds up slim and pocket-friendly like a smartphone.
The Galaxy Z Fold 6 uses a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset that has been specialized for Samsung, basically overclocking the big performance core. That makes the Galaxy Z Fold 6 the top performing foldable phone by far. The OnePlus Open uses a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, and it falls to the Galaxy Z Fold 6 in all of our benchmark tests.
The Galaxy Z Fold 6 improves over previous Samsung tablet foldables with a wider front display that makes it feel more like a normal smartphone, but the star of the show is the huge inner screen, which even works with a specialized S Pen for foldable phones.
Open the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and it’s a new story altogether. The interior display is huge, which makes it much more useful not just for gaming but also for drawing and productivity work. If you want to play games on the big screen, while staying mobile, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is the phone to consider.
Read the full review: Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 review
Best gaming phone FAQ
What makes a phone a gaming phone?
Unlike a gaming PC, a gaming phone often does not have different hardware than a premium non-gaming phone, like a faster CPU or GPU. Gaming phones usually offer better cooling, which helps performance over a long period of gaming. Gaming phones also include specialized software that optimizes performance while playing games. Gaming phones also include screen recording software so you can share you best gaming moments on your favorite social platforms or gaming networks.
Do I need a gaming phone to play games?
Almost any good phone can play your favorite Android and Apple Arcade games. A gaming phone will let you change settings to improve graphics, sound, or gameplay response. Gaming phones are less prone to overheating if you play an intense game for a long period. Dedicated gaming phones also have virtual controller buttons on the side of the phone that mimic a game controller, but all phones can work with a standard Playstation, Xbox, or other Bluetooth gaming controller.
Do I need a controller for my gaming phone?
Gaming phones are especially good at helping you control your games, and dedicated gaming phones have software options, sensors, and even accessories that give you more control over your gaming, without an external controller. The Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro comes with a cooling fan that also includes programmable buttons for gaming.
That said, pairing your phone with an Xbox, Playstation, or other Bluetooth gaming controller is a great experience, and you may not know what you’re missing. Games often run more smoothly when you have a controller and don’t need to rely on finger swipes for motion and action. You Android phone and iPhone will recognize a controller and offer default controls for most games when you pair over Bluetooth.
Is the iPhone a good gaming phone?
The iPhone is an exceptionally good gaming phone, and it may arguably be Apple’s best gaming platform all around (since Apple TV games are really just iPhone games). The iPhone has amazing performance, no matter which iPhone you use, because Apple’s processors have long outperformed every Android phone until only recently. Apple offers Apple Arcade, a subscription service with some exclusive games. There are also now emulator apps available on the Apple App Store, though you’ll need to copy your own ROMs from your old cartridges to play.