The Razer Phone 2 is poised to be the gaming phone to beat

Razer is introducing a new flagship smartphone, the Razer Phone 2, that’s meant to establish a foothold in the new gaming phone market. I had the chance to spend some time with Razer’s new flagship and found the new phone looks nearly identical to the first, but it has a new aluminum frame that has gone through a complete structural revamp. The Razer Phone 2 is meant to be a gaming phone, so there have also been relevant improvements made to the screen and audio, but also helpful additions that weren’t in the phone last year, like waterproofing.

Gaming phones are increasing in number, but not in maturity. Manufacturers that produce gaming computers — Razer and ASUS, for starters — are turning to phones because they’re now able to provide features like HDR and high refresh rate screens (for smoother on-screen visuals) that are buzzwords for gamers on both sides of the spectrum. Fortnite and PUBG for mobile are blips on the radar compared to some of China’s biggest mobile games, like Honor of Kings with 200 million monthly players.

While plenty of highly capable flagship smartphones exist, these companies hope that they’ll be able to do enough to improve the gaming experience. This year, Razer isn’t reinventing the gaming phone, but instead is adding signature features like Chroma and partnering with mobile game studios to optimize games for the Razer Phone 2, in order to stay ahead.

Internally, here’s what’s changed with the Razer Phone 2. The new brain of this gaming phone is a Snapdragon 845 chipset — what most other Android flagships are using — clocked at 2.8GHz with an Adreno 630 visual chip. To cope with heat dissipation, Razer even has a scaled-down version of the vapor chamber cooling technology used on its Blade 15 laptop, designed to keep the phone from getting too hot.

A substantial upgrade to 8GB of RAM, LTE gigabit antennas for faster data, 64GB of storage, and a massive 4,000mAh battery powers the device. The Razer Phone 2 runs Android 8.1 with Nova Launcher by default, but Android Pie is currently in testing and planned as an over-the-air upgrade. A new flagship Android phone shouldn’t launch with an outdated OS, but that’s unfortunately the situation here.

Gaming phones need content, and it’s a been a fact that the best mobile games have been on iOS, not Android. Even as Android has matured and game release dates have been closer to each other, it still hasn’t come out as the leading mobile game platform. Razer tells me it’s aware of this problem and is teaming up with game studios to not only optimize their games for the Razer Phone — PUBG Mobile, Rival: Crimson x Chaos, Marvel Future Fight, and RuneScape to name a few — but also exclusive content for the future.
Source: https://www.theverge.com

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