The days of having to put up with lacklustre, pixelated titles on mobiles are done – in 2026 you can enjoy proper console quality games on the go from some of the biggest developers like Activision, Nintendo and Square Enix. If you’re one such person who values gaming and performance on the smartphone above all else then you’re in the right place. Here are our go-to recommendations for the best gaming phones you can buy right now.
If you’re a mobile gamer in 2026 then you are absolutely spoilt for choice. Titles like Call of Duty Mobile, Pokémon Go and Fortnite show that you don’t need an expensive home console to enjoy experiences from major franchises. Plus, you can take it a step further with cloud gaming, giving you access to the same type of triple-A games that used to exist solely on consoles, except now you can enjoy them on a more pocketable device.
Unlike other use cases, the most important thing for any gaming phone is the chipset. Without a reasonably powerful processor under the hood, it just isn’t possible to run the latest games with a level of performance that’s acceptable. The problem is that having a capable chipset does add a noticeable uptick to the cost of the phone in question, so for the most part, you won’t be able to find a gaming-ready handset amongst the best budget phones.
Instead, gaming-ready phones start to appear as part of the best mid-range phones and upwards, which start at around £400/$400. Of course, although the processor is the most important thing, it is hardly the only thing that makes the overall experience. The display is equally important, as a fast refresh rate (ideally above 120Hz) and a high peak brightness can elevate every session.
Depending on how long you plan on gaming for at a time, battery life is also crucial as the last thing you want is to be hit with a low battery alert in the middle of an intense online match. With all that in mind, our team of tech experts have done the hard work for you, testing the latest and greatest gaming phones and singling out the very best in this helpful guide.
Best Gaming Phone at a glance
- Best gaming phone: RedMagic 11S Pro
- Best iPhone for gaming: Apple iPhone 17 Pro
- Best Android flagship for gaming: OnePlus 15
- Best mid-range phone for gaming: Poco X8 Pro Max
- Best budget phone for gaming: Poco F7
- Best foldable phone for gaming: Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7
- Best slim gaming phone: RedMagic 11 Air
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Learn more about how we test gaming phones
Every phone we review undergoes a series of uniform checks designed to gauge key aspects, including build quality, screen accuracy, battery life, performance, and camera prowess.
These include formal synthetic benchmarks, scripted tests, and real-world checks, such as how much battery it loses per hour streaming video. We pay particular attention to how well gaming phones run some of the most popular mobile titles.
We also use every phone we review as our primary handset for at least a week to ensure our review is as accurate as possible. You can see a more detailed breakdown of our testing methodology in our how we test phones guide.
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Immense power
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Solid endurance
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Gaming-centric software is a pleasant touch
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Camera performance is underwhelming
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More expensive than predecessors
Last year’s Redmagic 10S Pro was a true beast of a phone that undercut the flagships on price but managed to match them with raw power, and things are mostly the same with the Redmagic 11S Pro. The key thing to know upfront is that the phone does come with a price increase, moving up to a starting rate of £709/$849, and while that feels very much par for the course these days as price bumps continue to occur everywhere, it’s still cheap enough to come in at less than the latest flagships, retaining that value proposition.
This time around, the phone packs the cutting-edge Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, the very same processor that you’ll find in the likes of the OnePlus 15 and the Honor Magic 8 Pro, and although it’s not quite the same night-and-day difference that the previous-gen Snapdragon 8 Elite chip provided, it still feels faster than before. Simply put, the 11S Pro won’t leave you wanting where performance is concerned.
Thanks to the new (and much larger) vapour chamber, the phone is actually capable of outperforming a lot of other Elite Gen 5-toting phones, which translates to a great time with taxing 3D titles. The phone made short work of both Wuthering Waves and Call of Duty Mobile, and the bright, 144Hz 6.85-inch AMOLED display does these games justice.
The touch triggers, which serve as Redmagic’s answer to typical shoulder buttons, are a great addition to have and arguably worth the added expense over the cheaper Redmagic 11 Air. They can be customised in Redmagic’s Game Space, which serves as the main suite of options to help you tweak gameplay to your liking. It’s also a helpful dashboard to see all of your installed games in one place, not too dissimilar to gaming on a home console.
There are plenty of other standout features here including a whopping 7500mAh battery and 80W wired and 80W wireless charging to go with it, so you won’t have any feeling of battery anxiety even if you really push this phone to its limits. The one area that does feel quite weak in comparison to everything else is the camera setup as it’s far behind what you can find elsewhere from the likes of Google and Apple for around the same price, but those competitors can’t quite compete on gaming performance, so it’s a bit of give and take that you’ll have to weigh up before committing to a purchase.
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Great battery life for the smaller Pro
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Finally, some fun colours
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Versatile camera system with welcome upgrades to zoom and the front camera
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Not the best looking iPhone
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Apple Intelligence is still a miss
If you’re an iPhone user who cares more about frame rates than f-stops, the iPhone 17 Pro is the one to buy. It might not be the showiest member of the 17 family – that honour goes to the ultra-slim iPhone Air – but the 17 Pro is the proper workhorse, and that really pays off for gaming.
Apple has given it the “true” A19 Pro treatment with a beefier GPU and much-improved cooling, and in testing, it simply holds high frame rates for longer than the Air while staying noticeably cooler in the hand. Long sessions of Call of Duty or more demanding titles don’t send it into thermal panic quite as quickly, which makes a big difference if you actually play for hours rather than minutes.
It helps that there’s now a genuinely strong library of premium games to take advantage of all that power. Console-style releases like Red Dead Redemption and recent Assassin’s Creed entries feel surprisingly at home on the 17 Pro, both visually and in how smoothly they run.
It’s also just a more comfortable size than the Max for many people, making it easier to grip during longer play sessions without feeling like you’re holding a tablet.
Crucially, the iPhone 17 Pro backs all this up with the basics done well. Battery life is a clear step up over previous smaller Pro models, and we ended most days with a comfortable buffer even after a fair bit of gaming.
Faster wired and Qi2 wireless charging help you top up quickly between sessions, and you’ve got plenty of storage options if you want to keep multiple big titles installed at once.
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Stylish design with unique finishes
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Top-end processing power without getting warm
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Huge battery and rapid charging
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Gorgeously detailed, smooth screen
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No more Alert Slider
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Only four OS upgrades promised
If you want a flagship smartphone with excellent gaming performance as just one of its many accomplishments, the OnePlus 15 is the phone to go for.
It can easily deliver excellent performance using the ultra-powerful Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 alongside up to 16GB of RAM, delivering better performance than Asus’ ROG Phone. The difference between it and the ROG Phone? You’re getting much more than just top-end performance.
You also get a high-end 6.8-inch AMOLED display with an LPTO-enabled 165Hz refresh rate and 3200Hz touch sample rate, vanishingly slim bezels and a pixel-packed 1.5K resolution. Oh, and did we mention it supports 165fps in games like Call of Duty Mobile? Because, it does.
It also sports a versatile triple 50MP camera setup, innovative cooling systems that utilise aerogel, a massive 7300mAh battery and rapid 120W charging, all of which should appeal massively to gamers.
Of course, you won’t get some purist gaming enhancements, such as shoulder trigger buttons, but it does support bypass charging, which powers the chipset and not the battery to avoid heat generation during longer gaming sessions.
If you’re looking for a top-end Android device that can handle games without breaking a sweat and much more to boot, the OnePlus 15 is an easy recommendation.
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Brilliant price-to-performance ratio
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Absolutely massive battery
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Vibrant screen with solid sound
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Good cameras that simply lack flexible shooting options
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A bit of bloatware
If ever you needed more proof that Poco is the leading brand when it comes to gaming on a budget, the Poco X8 Pro Max should be the thing to convince you. At just £469, we’re still dumbfounded by just how much raw power this phone is able to offer to the more budget-friendly side of the market. Simply put, if you don’t have more than £500 to spend, this is the frontrunner where gaming is concerned.
The star of the show is the MediaTek Dimensity 9500s chipset which is capable of some truly impressive feats. With a whopping 12GB RAM to lean on, the X8 Pro Max is able to run pretty much any game you want to throw at it with a very respectable degree of performance.
Zenless Zone Zero, which is a great game for testing the limits of any phone, runs brilliantly here. In fact, we found it possible to attain a stable 60fps during gameplay which is no easy task. With that kind of power in the tank, less taxing titles like Call of Duty Mobile have no issue with running here, and it’s the sheer lack of roadblocks in gameplay that makes the Poco X8 Pro Max so easy to recommend.
One thing we didn’t expect for a phone of this price is that the main 50MP camera is capable of putting out eye-catching shots. In the daytime, we captured a solid array of pictures packed with detail and great colour reproduction. The experience isn’t quite as efficient when using the camera in low-light conditions, and without a telephoto lens any zoom photography is fairly limited, but if you temper your expectations then you’ll appreciate what Poco has put together here.
An unfortunate setback that we picked up on during our review period with the phone is a noticeable degree of background battery drain, so much so that we don’t recommend keeping the phone switched on overnight. There’s also a fair amount of bloatware to contend with, likely included to keep the overall costs down, but it’s not enough to detract from the sheer value that this phone provides against the competition.
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Incredibly competitive price for the spec
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Multi-day battery life
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Big, bright screen
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Cameras remain a weak point for Poco
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HyperOS is packed full of bloatware
As much as we love the Poco X8 Pro Max and would easily recommend it to anyone after a more recent gaming phone on a budget, last year’s Poco F7 is a great alternative that’s worth considering for quite a few reasons, not in the least because it’s come down in price since launch and can be found with a discount if you shop around.
In fact, the F7 actually has a slightly larger screen than the X8 Pro at 6.83-inches, so if you prefer having a bit more space for apps and games to sprawl out then it’s a great choice right from the jump. Contrast is wonderful thanks to the AMOLED panel, and with a 120Hz refresh rate, it carries all the speed required to keep up with fast-paced titles like Call of Duty Mobile or Grid Autosport.
Arguably just as important as the display, Poco hasn’t forgotten about the battery life here as there’s a whopping 6500mAh cell under the hood. In our testing, we were able to get the Poco F7 to run for about two days under most use cases. Obviously your longevity will depend on how much you push the phone, particularly with gaming, but it does mean that if you want to spend a few hours breaking high scores or playing with friends online then you have the capacity to do so here and without needing to keep one eye on the remaining battery life.
Running the show is the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 which, despite being a bit older now than when we originally tested the phone, is still a capable chipset. At the time of the F7’s release, it trounced competing mid-rangers like the Pixel 9a and the Samsung Galaxy A56. Even more surprisingly, the handset wasn’t that far behind the performance of the pricier Poco F7 Pro either, which just further propelled the value proposition. Even with more demanding 3D titles, the F7 can keep up with the action.
For as much as we love the gaming performance of the phone however, it’s the onboard cameras that feel overlooked in comparison to everything else. With a good amount of light available, it is possible to nab a decent shot with the 50MP main camera and the 8MP ultra-wide but it falls apart pretty quickly in any scene that’s remotely challenging. It is a shame as it does feel like a missing puzzle piece within the phone’s overall tapestry, but if you’re after a high-performing gaming phone on a budget then it’s hard to imagine you’ll be too displeased with what’s on offer here.
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Lightest book-style foldable around
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Ultra thin design makes it really nice to use
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Larger, wider, wholly more useful screens
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Same main camera as Galaxy S25 Ultra
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Relatively small 4400mAh battery
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Slow 25W wired charging
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Zoom camera could be better for the price
If you want a totally different gaming experience, look no further than the foldable Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7.
The foldable nature of the book-style smartphone means you’ve got access to a large, high-res 8-inch 120Hz AMOLED display when you want to play games on a big screen while still folding down to a size resembling a standard smartphone.
And, with the phone measuring just 4.2mm unfolded and weighing in at 215g, it’s still lighter and thinner than most dedicated gaming phones.
It’s not just the sheer size of the foldable display that makes the Z Fold 7 the best foldable for gaming either; it’s also pretty powerful, sporting the same custom Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy as the S25 Ultra.
It’s more than capable of powering high-end AAA gaming experiences with high-level graphics and consistent gameplay even over longer periods of use, with a built-in vapour chamber for added cooling.
Elsewhere, a 4,400mAh battery should be enough to get you through even demanding gaming sessions, a triple rear camera setup headed by a 200MP lens that offers more versatility than a regular gaming phone, and it has a whopping seven years of OS upgrades to look forward to.
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Great price
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Powerful performance
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Useful gaming tweaks
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Gorgeous display
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Greatly improved cooling solution
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Under-display selfie camera is awful
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No headphone socket
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Only IP54 rated
Even though the Poco brand has made a name for itself amongst mobile gamers working to a budget, Redmagic has managed to become a pretty serious competitor in a relatively short space of time, and there’s a case to be made that no other phone encapsulates this quite as much as the Redmagic 11 Air. From a pure performance perspective, this is a phone that goes far beyond its £439 asking price, making most other mid-range phones feel sluggish by comparison.
The big allure of the Redmagic 11 Air is that, despite being a phone that’s cheaper than the Pixel 10a and the Samsung Galaxy A57, it outdoes both of them by having a Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset under the hood. Yes, you’ve read that right – the exact same chipset that powered almost all major flagships of last year (and a handful of 2026 heavy hitters) is inside a phone that costs less than £500/$500.
As you can probably imagine, by having that previous-gen flagship to hand, the Redmagic 11 Air is capable of quite a bit in the gaming space. High-end titles like Zenless Zone Zero run buttery smooth on this device, not just because of the chipset onboard but because of the super-fast 144Hz refresh rate of the 6.85-inch OLED display.
What makes the experience even better is the Redmagic Game Space, which is something of a centralised hub that not only gives you a dashboard to quickly jump into your favourite games, but a suite of customisable options to tailor the gameplay experience to your liking. This can involve managing plugins, setting a permanent crosshair of your choosing for improved aiming, and more. It all goes a long way towards making the 11 Air feel less like a phone and more like a console.
In fact, the focus on raw power is arguably to the 11 Air’s detriment as it lacks a lot of the key non-gaming features that you’d want in a phone. For example, the 11 Air only carries an IP54 rating so we recommend keeping it as far away from pools of open water as you can, and the under-display selfie camera leaves a lot to be desired. Still, you know what you’re getting into with a phone like this, and on a pure cost/value basis, the Redmagic 11 Air simply can’t be beat.
FAQs
Overall, we’d pick the RedMagic 11s Pro as the best overall gaming phone you can buy.
We’d recommend the iPhone 17 Pro if you love gaming but want to stick with an iPhone.
Test Data
| RedMagic 11S Pro | Apple iPhone 17 Pro | OnePlus 15 | Poco X8 Pro Max | Poco F7 | Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 | RedMagic 11 Air | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Geekbench 6 single core | 3814 | 3870 | 3553 | 2636 | 2094 | 2318 | 3132 |
| Geekbench 6 multi core | 11773 | 9994 | 10642 | 8437 | 6294 | 8828 | 10084 |
| Geekbench 6 GPU | 270021 | – | – | 19928 | – | – | – |
| 3DMark Solar Bay | 12175 | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| AI performance | – | – | – | 2488 | – | – | – |
| Max brightness | 1800 nits | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| 1 hour video playback (Netflix, HDR) | 4 % | 5 % | – | – | 5 % | 8 % | 5 % |
| 30 minute gaming (light) | – | 7 % | – | – | 5 % | 7 % | 10 % |
| Time from 0-100% charge | 61 min | 80 min | 45 min | 75 min | 40 min | 87 min | 65 min |
| Time from 0-50% charge | 30 Min | 21 Min | 19 Min | 42 Min | 17 Min | 31 Min | 22 Min |
| 30-min recharge (included charger) | – | – | 70 % | – | 82 % | – | 66 % |
| 15-min recharge (included charger) | – | – | 42 % | – | 46 % | – | 36 % |
| 30-min recharge (no charger included) | 50 % | 67 % | – | 34 % | – | 49 % | – |
| 15-min recharge (no charger included) | 28 % | 40 % | – | 16 % | – | 24 % | – |
| 3D Mark – Wild Life | 7762 | 5400 | 6166 | 6244 | 4341 | 5574 | 6929 |
| 3D Mark – Wild Life Stress Test | 71.23 % | – | – | 57 % | – | – | – |
| GFXBench – Aztec Ruins | – | 59 fps | 90 fps | – | 61 fps | 70 fps | – |
| GFXBench – Car Chase | – | 60 fps | 90 fps | – | 66 fps | 71 fps | – |
Full Specs
| RedMagic 11S Pro Review | Apple iPhone 17 Pro Review | OnePlus 15 Review | Poco X8 Pro Max Review | Poco F7 Review | Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 Review | RedMagic 11 Air Review | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UK RRP | £709 | £1099 | £849 | £469 | £389 | £1799 | £439 |
| USA RRP | $849 | $1099 | $899 | – | Unavailable | $1999 | $499 |
| EU RRP | – | – | – | – | – | – | €499 |
| Manufacturer | Nubia | Apple | OnePlus | Poco | – | Samsung | Nubia |
| Screen Size | 6.85 inches | 6.3 inches | 6.78 inches | 6.83 inches | 6.8 inches | 8 inches | 6.85 inches |
| Storage Capacity | 256GB | 256GB, 512GB, 1TB | 256GB, 512GB | 512GB | 256GB | 256GB, 512GB, 1TB | 256GB, 512GB |
| Rear Camera | 50MP main + 50MP ultrawide | 48MP + 48MP + 48MP | 50MP + 50MP + 50MP | 50MP + 8MP | 50MP + 8MP | 200MP + 12MP + 10MP | 50MP + 8MP |
| Front Camera | 16MP selfie camera | 18MP | 50MP | 20MP | 20MP | 10MP + 10MP | 16MP |
| Video Recording | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| IP rating | IPX8 | IP68 | IP69K | IP68 | IP68 | Not Disclosed | IP54 |
| Battery | 7500 mAh | 3998 mAh | 7200 mAh | 8500 mAh | 6500 mAh | 4400 mAh | 7000 mAh |
| Wireless charging | Yes | Yes | Yes | – | – | Yes | – |
| Fast Charging | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Size (Dimensions) | 76.54 x 8.9 x 163.82 MM | 71.9 x 8.8 x 150 MM | 76.7 x 8.1 x 161.4 MM | 77.9 x 8.2 x 162.9 MM | 77.9 x 8.2 x 163.1 MM | 143.2 x 4.2 x 158.4 MM | 76.5 x 7.9 x 163.8 MM |
| Weight | 230 G | 206 G | 211 G | 218 G | 216 G | 215 G | 207 G |
| Operating System | Android 16 (RedMagic OS 11) | iOS 26 | OxygenOS 16 (Android 16) | HyperOS (Android 16) | HyperOS 2 (Android 15) | OneUI 8 (Android 16) | RedMagic OS 11 (Android 16) |
| Release Date | 2026 | 2025 | 2025 | 2026 | 2025 | 2025 | 2026 |
| First Reviewed Date | 27/05/2026 | 18/12/2025 | 13/11/2025 | 07/05/2026 | 27/06/2025 | 17/07/2025 | 29/01/2026 |
| Resolution | 1216 x 2688 | 1206 x 2622 | 1272 x 2772 | 2772 x 1280 | 1280 x 2772 | 2184 x 1968 | 2688 x 1216 |
| HDR | – | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Refresh Rate | 144 Hz | 120 Hz | 165 Hz | 120 Hz | 120 Hz | 120 Hz | 144 Hz |
| Ports | USB-C port, SIM port, headphone jack | USB-C | USB-C | USB-C | USB-C | USB-C | USB-C |
| Chipset | Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Leading Version | Apple A19 Pro | Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 | MediaTek Dimensity 9500s | Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 | Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy | Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite |
| RAM | 16GB | 12GB | 16GB | 12GB | 12GB | 12GB, 16GB | 12GB, 16GB |
| Colours | Nightfreeze, Sub Zero | Silver, Cosmic Orange, Deep Blue | Infinite Black, Ultra Violet, Sand Storm | Blue, White, Black | Black, White, Cyber Silver | Blue Shadow, Silver Shadow, Jet-black, Mint | Black, White |
| Stated Power | 80 W | – | 120 W | – | 90 W | 25 W | – |
Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.
