The rise of the Android gaming phone

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
David (00:02):
Hello, and welcome to Android bites powered by Esper I'm David Ruddick.
And each week I'm joined bymy co-host Michelle ramen.
As we dive deep into the world of Android.
And this week we're touching on theintersection of two industries that I
think I, I think everybody in the Androidworld, like gaming a little bit, at least.
So we're gonna talk about Androidand gaming hardware and Michelle.

(00:23):
Yeah, we have very special guest.
I.
Thanks,

Mishaal (00:26):
David.
I think, you know, the guest,the company that he works for,
I think needs no introduction.
You know, Asus has been around forliterally decades and unless you're
totally unfamiliar with computinghardware, in which case, I'm kind of
curious how you even ended up listening tothis podcast in the first place, this tech
brand, you know, they have their hands inall sorts of PC and PC adjacent spaces and

(00:46):
their Republic gamers or Rog subbrand isparticularly well known among PC gamers.
You may not know, or probably haveheard if you're an were enthusiast
that Asus, they also make smartphones.
They have been doing so for quitesome time, actually they weren't
smartphones before Android came tothe market, but they were making
phones before Android was the thing.
But today their two most prominentAndroid smartphone lines, the Zen

(01:08):
phone, which is like a regulator for theaverage everyday user and the Rog phone.
The Zen phone started in 2014.
The Rog lineup startedin 2018 respectively.
So today on the show, as Davidmentioned, we invited a guest
to talk about gaming hardware.
So we've invited Chiha Kong.
Who's the global technicalPR for smartphones.
ATUs to talk to us about thisintersection between mobile

(01:31):
gaming, hardware and Android.
So thank you for joining us, Joe.

Chih-hao (01:34):
Yeah.
Thank you very much.
Happy to be.

Mishaal (01:37):
So it's been over four years since the first RRG phone was released
and there have been four successes to it.
The most recent one being the RRG phonesix series, which was announced last
month, I believe so for those wonderingwhy there's been four successors in
four years, even though we're now atthe RRG phone, six series, look up
the superstition around the numberfour, and then you'll understand

(01:57):
why there's a lot of brands thatjust skip the number four entirely.
So anyway, back to the topic athand, clearly Asus believes in and is
invested in its gaming phone lineup.
Considering there are now four successorsto the original Rog phone yet, from
what I've read online, you know, seeingthe earnings reports, this belief
hasn't converted into profitability.

(02:17):
So I wanted to ask you chiia whatabout the mobile gaming market
drives Aus to continue its in.

Chih-hao (02:22):
Right.
I, I think it's a good question.
I, I won't comment so much about theprofitability or the financial aspects of
it, but rather if we look at the gamingaspect or the Rog phone lineup, you know,
our Rog Republic of gamers brand, it'sbeen around for, for quite some time.
So why do we do the Rog phone?
Right.
Why, why do we invest into this category?

(02:44):
It really boils down to what the brandis, what the brand Rog Republic of gamers,
what do we want to do with that brand?
And what does that brand want to providefor, uh, let's say our, our users
throughout the ages, you know, categories.
So R G originally started asmaking motherboards, right?

(03:06):
So it was, uh, the, the firstproduct we put the Rog label on.
It was, uh, one of ourmore high end motherboards.
And that was designed withmore enthusiast features.
So over the years, the Rog brand.
If you follow Asus closely, whichI assume most people don't, but you

(03:27):
know, in the industry, you will findthat we kind of branch out into almost
every aspect of gaming in terms ofgaming, peripherals, gaming hardware.
If it's with gaming, there'sgoing to be a product or most
likely with the IG logo on it.
Right.
Gaming phones is not an exception,but what took us so long in a way,

(03:50):
Rob, I think one is, is the hardware.
Ready for it.
And is the timing correct?
Do we see that segment of gamers becomesignificant enough and are the existing
solutions good enough to addressthat niche or that need in a way?
So we might not always go head on atthe beginning, I should say, but, uh,

(04:15):
if gamers are moving somewhere or addingin, let's say a way to play games,
we strive to meet them in that area.
Right?
Be it, the DIY PC traditional PCbuilds all the components inside
or be it laptops, you know, gamingperipherals, headsets, game keyboards,
mice monitors, and of coursegaming phones the topic of today.

(04:38):
So I think that kind ofgives a good explanation.
Why we continue to invest into this.
The smartphone is maybe arguably themost personal smart device that we own.
Right.
Most of us own tons of differentdevices, but the smartphone is the
one that's closest to us or thatwe touch on most of during the day.
So it also keeps us connectedto people, to users or to gamers

(05:03):
in this specific, you know, howpeople interact with devices.
I think that's an importantaspect of product design.
So in that sense, it, it, itmakes a lot of sense for us to
engage into this category and, anddevelop it and see what we can do.

Mishaal (05:18):
So I don't think anyone would argue that
smartphones aren't a big market.
They're absolutely massive.
Literally like everyone who'sconnected to the internet in some
way, probably owns a smartphone.
But a couple of weeks ago wetalked about different segments
of the smartphone market.
We talked about small phones, for example,you know, is there actually a market
for people to invest in and what peopleactually buy a small phone and that's

(05:40):
actually up for debate considering notmany companies are making small phones,
Asus being one of the rare examples,but that's gonna be thinking, you know,
just because there are gamers who havea smartphone and there's a lot of gamers
and there's a lot of smartphone users.
How big is that intersection?
Are there actually a lot of peoplewho game on smartphones, how
big is the mobile gaming market?
Is there actually a hugemarket for you to tap into?

(06:02):
Can you talk to us a bit about that?

Chih-hao (06:04):
Sure.
I, I think in, in terms of absolutesize, I would say most smartphone
users are not gaming smartphone users.
Right.
And they are most likely not going to be.
So that's on the, let's saythe more pessimistic end of the
spectrum, I have to look at it.
And then on the more positivelook or optimistic end is almost

(06:26):
everyone who uses a smartphone hasplayed games on their smartphone.
Of course, this generally speaking willbe a casual game, some easy form of game
to just kill some time simply becausethat's the device you have with you.
So, but that gives thepotential of growth, right.
But also we see several yearsand I think it's, you know, four

(06:47):
years for us, five years, but.
Very rapidly, a slow start,but increasing very fast.
We see a huge chunk of userswhere gaming on their smartphone
is their primary platform.
Now that might seem a bitodd perhaps to most of us.

(07:07):
I, I generalize by saying us, youknow, the three of us coming, let's
say from the more westernized, theimmature markets in that sense, maybe

Mishaal (07:15):
if

David (07:15):
I could just jump in with an analogy here, it's sort of
like, imagine if in 1992 youhad a game boy, but not an NES.
Like that would be super weird.

Chih-hao (07:26):
right.
But also we see that if I justlook at myself, how many gaming
platforms have I owned over the years?
Not all of them, butyou know, most of them.
And how many do I use at the same time?
It's a game on a PC.
I obviously game on a smartphone.
I have portables.
I actually don't have a.

(07:46):
Like traditional, you know, Xbox orPlayStation at home, but I could have,
so it's not mutually exclusive for,let's say us, or let's say Europe.
And we see of course marketslike north America where the
console is very, very strong.
But if we kind of pivot thatperspective a bit and look at markets
in to the east, such as China,where game consoles have not been

(08:09):
a thing for various reasons, right?
And you see markets developing countrieswhere the cost of ownership in a way
is prohibitive, disposable income.
What you choose to put your disposableincome on is vastly different.
So we do see, you know, nowadays everybodygrows up with a smartphone, not just,

(08:33):
you know, us here with that privilege,but also in a lot of countries with huge
populations of obviously China, you know,markets like Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam,
Latin America, Everybody has a smartphone,but not everyone has a gaming piece.
You know, the, the entry for me, I'vebeen gaming for 30 something years.

(08:53):
So it's very naturalfor me to game on those.
Let's say legacy systems, right.
But it's very easy to forget also thata, a PC is quite a large investment,
especially if you are going to gameon it, console is obviously cheaper,
but there's also a lot of games,cost money, and these type of things.
So smartphone is somethingthat we naturally, or a lot of

(09:15):
people invest money on, and thenthey are capable to play games.
I say capable, uh, not allsmartphones, obviously play games.
Well, uh, so we do see a largepopulation, especially markets in, in
Asia who have only a smartphone startedthere, let's say gaming career, right.

(09:36):
Playing games on a smartphone.
If we look at, you know, just my kids,even, you know, in, in our part of the
world, They grew up playing games ona smartphone before they play games
on a, a PlayStation or an Xbox or anNintendo, whatever that may be, right.
That's their perspective.
They're very, very used to,it's not foreign to play

(09:57):
games on a smartphone for us.
It's more like an additionbecause we didn't start off
playing games on a smartphone.
That was not how we used thesmartphone, but that's not the
same as kids today, or people whodon't have access to anything else.
Right.
And then when you started gaming ona smartphone and, and you know, it's,
it's just a form of entertainment.

(10:17):
And then you like that, thatis your frame of reference.
And you want to do it more whereyou want it to perform better and
you may get into competitive games.
It's the same lineage as PCgamers, you know, playing counter
strike 20 something right.
Years ago, it's, it's the same.
You kind of start upgrading.
So once that momentum gets going, wedo see that there are a lot of, uh,

(10:40):
or let's say more and more people.
Playing games on a smartphone andnot because lack of choice, right?
Because the preference and wantingto have better performing hardware,
because gaming on our smartphone, itoccupies more and more of their usage
scenario in that sense of a smartphone.
So that becomes a, a dominating thing.

(11:02):
Uh, if we look at the tech world, fromour perspective, we see a lot of people
or the industry in general, puttinga lot of emphasis on cameras, right?
Cameras and photography on a smartphoneas if we assume that is the one thing.
That's the single one thing thateverybody who buys a smartphone,
that's what they're gonna do.
They're going to spend all of theirtime taking photos and shooting video.

(11:22):
So that becomes, you know, we, we, youjust need the best, definitely that that's
true for some and in the same vein, right?
It's this gaming performance.
For those extremes.
There are these people who spend a lotof time, uh, playing games and they
want the best smartphone for that.
And so that's kind of where we goin and I think that market grows

(11:44):
more and more larger every year.
Definitely.
So is there a sizable market?
I believe so.
Yes.
And is it growing?
Yes, it is.
Uh, we do see that is, youknow, as the population grows,
I think it's a good analogy.
We, we talk about it, uh, internallyfor many, many years, the number
of gamers do not decrease, right.

(12:05):
It, the, the, the pool of people who are,who become gamers just keeps increasing
because you, you don't stop being a gamer.
Right.
It's just a form of entertainment,you know, it's not like.
Started watching movies.
And then suddenly you don't watch moviesor you suddenly hate watching movies.
It's a choice of what you do, butit's just an additional thing.
And now playing games, it'snot stigmatized at all.

(12:28):
Right?
Growing up, maybe 20 something30 years ago, it could be, you
know, it was a bit niche nowadays.
It is just, nobody's goingto look at you differently.
You know, strangely, if you say youlike playing sports or you want to
go to the movies or you, you know,you play games, it's very normal.
So that pool just increases.
And then the way we play, howwe do it, where we do it on what
platform it's just diverging.

(12:50):
Right.
And, and smartphone is a big part of that.

Mishaal (12:53):
The data I agree with you.

David (12:54):
Yeah.
Totally on all this uh, because thething that really resonated to me when
you're talking about when a personfirst games, more commonly that's on
a tablet or a smartphone now, and morespecifically, it's a touch experience.
They expect to be able tointeract with the display.
Um, I've had people tell me, like,you know, oh, I've got kids and they

(13:15):
will literally walk up and try totouch any screen, like a giant TV.
Yeah.
Just because they expectthat interaction model.
The analog that I bring up is there areall these people out there who say, oh, I.
Talking to my computer.
I don't want to talk toGoogle or Alexa or whoever.
And my response is, guesswhat you're going to, because
your kids are doing that.
And that's their firstinteraction with a computer.

(13:36):
A lot of the time growing up, theycome to expect that interaction model.
So I think that totally tracks,obviously, kids who get into
gaming and get into gaming on aphone are gonna wanna have a good

Mishaal (13:46):
gaming

Chih-hao (13:46):
phone.
Right?
Exactly.
And you know, it it's, it's notalways close to our hearts in the way,
because we grew up in different times.
I mean, every generation hastheir own way of entertainment
or interacting with devices.
Just as you say, you know, the firstkids now touching a device touch
interaction is just second nature.

(14:07):
Right.
They don't need to learn it.
It's just there, but we had to learnit because that wasn't necessarily
the first, you know, oh, touch is sobad, but then you, you know, you kind.
Realize that no, it's pretty smart.
Right.
And, you know, gaming, we, we grewup gaming on joysticks, you know, one
stick, two buttons or D cross DPAD.
But is that really, I tend tothink about my own behavior.

(14:31):
Is that really the best way to playgames, you know, going on, you know,
I, I, it's a fair point, right?
It's a bit of a tension.
I think the, the comment I'm I'mabout to make, but one of the things
I really thought about recentlythis year was the steam controller.
The control that they made,uh, a few years ago, right.

(14:51):
Was very polarizing becauseit prominently featured.
That capacitive touch pad, right?
Yes.
And people hated it.
But if you think about, you know, ifyou're playing mobile games, mobile
games, they do play best with touch.
And it makes sense because you can havea much finer grain control with a touch

(15:13):
pad, especially on a smaller surfacethan with the, you know, a digital deep
pad or even sometimes with the joystick.
So they really had somethingsmart going on there.
I think maybe the kindof the adoption rate.
Wasn't very good, probably becausethat's not what, how we are used or
the target demographic we're usedto controlling games, but yeah.
Uh, times change, I thinkthat's the takeaway.

Mishaal (15:36):
Yeah.
And there are certainly, I guess, aheadof their time, which brings me to the
next thing I wanted to talk about,which is gaming phones themselves.
The recent wave of gaming phones prettymuch started around four, four and a half
years ago, but they've actually existedwell before that there have been gaming
phones going back more than a decade withthe Nokia end gauge, which was like, I

(15:57):
was literally a child and nothing was out.
So I have zero experience usingthat thing, but apparently
people really loved it.
And there are still some efforts toget like, uh, Java games poured to it.
Keep it.
And then, uh, I do rememberthe Sony Xperia play because
like that thing was so cool.
It was around the time when Sonywas really trying to get PlayStation
gamers to actually buy the Sony Xperiaphones that didn't really pan out.

(16:20):
Then there were a couple of otherinterim gaming devices released, you
know, of them also really panned out.
Cause they also were kind of clunkykind of GBA style form factors.
And then that brings us to late2017 with the razor phone one
with the first razor phone.
And then just a few months later,the Rog phone to show me black shark,
the new beer, red magic, you just,all of a sudden had four different

(16:42):
brands released four different.
Dedicated gaming smartphones.
And this wave, I'm actually wonderinglike what led this wave to kick off,
cuz surely, you know, a lot of thesedevices had to have been in development
behind the scenes for at least a year.
And so for all of these to suddenlybe released in 20 17, 20 18, there
had to have been something that drovethe market to say, we gotta do this.

(17:05):
Now we can't wait.
It wasn't just like onecompany released it.
Then everyone said, oh, wegotta do this ourselves.

David (17:11):
I mean, obviously you wouldn't be able to talk about it, but blink
twice if it's a Qualcomm partnerprogram that started around that time.

Chih-hao (17:20):
I mean, I.
Can't comment on that part.
But I think if we look back on the mobilespace devices, like the engage or the
experi play, they're good examples.
I wouldn't call them.
I wouldn't say that they've failedor they didn't pan out in Sofar.
It's really difficult to saywhy we don't see an engage 16 or

(17:40):
whatever iteration it will be on.
Right.
I could be many reasons obviously, butI would say if you look back at two
decades or something like that, right.
Of smartphones that we've had now youcan find almost every form or every form
factor, not just for gaming that we'retalking about here, but you, you saw some
really wild designs of smartphones inthe past, so really, really crazy stuff.

(18:03):
And you still kind of do, I guess,I guess it's more homogenous now,
but that's kind of smartphoneswas a frontier of technology.
And, and still is in a waytoday where you try different
things, you play around with it.
The market is huge and becausethe market is huge, there is also
room to do things differently.

(18:23):
Right.
And we look at the current crop, or, youknow, as you said, around, uh, twenty
seventeen, twenty eighteen, lots ofdifferent gaming smartphones, I think
it's why do we see a lot of gaming?
I think that time, the mobile gamingmarket really started booming as
well, maybe a few years prior to that.
And then it's more of, uh, ofcourse, uh, the Chinese market being
a, a big driving factor of that.

(18:45):
You know, we have huge gamingpublishers there, uh, first party,
uh, game producers for mobile.
So that kind of started getting a lotof traction and we started seeing games.
More and more games, I should say,kind of that critical mass of good
games or great games that required morefrom your hardware from your device.

(19:06):
I should say, kind of pushingentry into that segment.
And of course, gaming phones havechanged a bit from the first ones,
especially, you know, the ones thatwe made, but overall they've been
following similar formulas, I think,which is slightly different from the, uh,
let's say original gaming smartphones.
Like if we mentioned the engageor even the experi play, right.

(19:27):
They were trying to begaming handheld first.
Or primarily they weren'tbeing gaming smartphones.
Right.
They were kind of being PSPS orGBAS, but with phone capability
you could kind of call 'em.
So, so maybe that's kind of whatwent wrong in a way, because they

(19:49):
were trying to be something thatcould then easily be replaced by a
dedicated handheld gaming device.
So right.
If you,

David (19:58):
and they also, the confluence of like the internet and connectivity
really was the big one, you know, whereeverybody was online and suddenly that
mattered so much more than like the gaming

Chih-hao (20:09):
functionality.
Yeah.
I mean, they were.
In a way they designed themselves to be asecondary device, which is perfectly fine.
There's nothing wrong with that.
But if you're making a first primarydevice, but you're making it, so it
becomes a secondary device, then peopleare going to treat it a secondary
device and by another device as yourfirst device, but then it becomes when

(20:31):
you're a secondary device, then you'recompeting with the other secondary
devices for whatever niches that may be.
It can be a lot of different niches.
And if we take gaming as a niche,if you are gaming smartphone or your
smartphone, that's gaming, capable as asecondary device, then suddenly competes
with game boys PSPS or what have you.
Right.

(20:51):
And as a secondarydevice, you're going to.
Against those devices.
So when we looked at Rog phone, it'sa primary device, it's a primary
device that's designed around gaming.
It's not a gaming console, right?
It's still a smartphone.
So you need to have, or westrive to obviously, uh, to make

(21:11):
a good smartphone experience.
It doesn't mean that it has to be theabsolute best at everything that a
smartphone can do, but it has to havethat fundamental smartphone experience
because we don't expect you to use, or thepeople who buy the RG phone or use the RG.
We don't expect them touse another smartphone.
Surely some people do, you know, theycarry on two devices, but that's not the

(21:33):
fundamental design logic of that device.
And maybe that's where thiscurrent crop of phones.
Got it more correct in a way, perhaps?

Mishaal (21:43):
Well, I mean, I'd say there's clear evidence of it succeeding
and considering the absolutesize of the mobile gaming market.
I think.
There's no going back, like this isgoing to continue to be a product niche.
Like I read a recent report fromprotocol that cited an analyst
from NewU the mobile gaming market.
Is projected to reach a hundred billionthis year, just an unfathomable number.

(22:06):
And that's out of a total of projected200 billion overall for the gaming market.
So just half of the entire gamingindustry, which is already bigger
than Hollywood, like way bigger thanHollywood is just mobile gaming.
And that's just, just, it's just insane.
Like just so much money there.
It's, it's, it's really hard for us inthe west, you know, who grew up with
console gaming and PC gaming to wrap ourheads around just how big mobile gaming

(22:30):
is and how much money can be made from it.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
And I'm sure, you know,

David (22:34):
you can speak to this as well, but what I always noticed early on covering
Android, for example, Android marketcarrier billing was such a huge deal
globally when it rolled out, people wereso excited and I couldn't understand at
the time, but what I came to understandwas micro transactions are so immensely
popular, especially in the se Asia.

(22:56):
And at the time carrier billingwas the way most people process
their micro transactions.
They would bill through their carrier.
Now, obviously we've moved on tolots of direct to consumer banks
and debit situations, onlinebanks, et cetera in Asia, but.
I think you still havethat cultural trend.
Whereas in the west micro transactionsare a new thing and consumers in the

(23:16):
west generally react quite poorly tothem because we are, I think just, I
would say maybe we expect ownershipof software and things like that.
We've been trained by that model.
I think they're justlike buying video games.
You go to the story, you buy a video game,you get it in the box, you take it home.
There's that cultural expectation.
Whereas probably in Southeast Asia,online gaming for gambling and things like

(23:39):
that have been popular for decades therespending money online and then not really
getting anything back aside from the joyof the experience of playing the game.
That's so much more rootedthere and we have it in America.
We have online gambling, of course.
When I look at like, okay, yeah, mobilegaming is poised to be this huge thing.
Well, of course people have been spendingmoney in small quantities with the hope of

(24:01):
winning something or otherwise like, youknow, just having a good time for ages.
And this is another proliferation of that,you know, it's, it's not a slot machine.
It's a lot better than the slot machineif you ask me, but people like this stuff.
And I think they get a lot out of it.
And it was hard for people inthe west to understand that
you could get that out of a.

(24:21):
People could not relate to that idea.
Meanwhile, they're playing candy crushfor like six hours a day on their iPhone.

Chih-hao (24:27):
Going back to kind of the, the way of, I I'm saying we are, as you
know, from our perspective here is we'reused to, as, as Michelle mentioned,
you know, we're paying or maybe was,was you, uh, David, we we're pay for
a game and then it's done, you know,I've, I've, I've made my transaction
and there will be no more transactions,you know, that's how it's gonna be.
And, you know, you said thatwe, we're not so used to micro

(24:50):
transactions in games here.
That's correct.
But also in a way, I would say, ifwe look at micro transactions in
entertainment, it's not that alien to us.
Right.
You know, let's not talkabout gambling, video rental.
That's a micro transaction.
You could buy the BI movie, but you couldalso rent it and then you could rent
it again and, and, and over and over.

(25:10):
Right.
But you never got, got to keep it.
And then you had these, uh,maybe even closer, you had these,
uh, arcades every five minutes,there was a micro transaction.
That's a great analogy.
Yeah.
And then you just kept putting moneyin and then you play the games or
you got these tickets and then youcould turn the tickets in and you
got the, you know, a plus you orsomething right now without going into.

(25:32):
Good and bad of that type of, uh, let'ssay business model, I should suppose
it's been around, even in, let'ssay, you know, quote unquote Western
cultures for, for a lot of time, notspecifically in the mobile games or
the gaming or the games, I should say.
I shouldn't say gaming,but games, video games.
Right.
But it's been part of our societyas well for quite some time in

(25:54):
other forms, you know, if I'm sureyou can think of many, many other
examples where this phenomenon exists.
So this is just another payphonedefinitely pay as you go, you know,
pay, you know, these type of things.
It's is it good?
Is it bad?
Well, I think everybodyhas an opinion on that.
Definitely it's time has changed.

Mishaal (26:16):
micro transactions are a hot topic and, you know, since this is not
a gaming podcast, I'd like to circleback and get back to gaming phones in
particular, because I'm sure we have a lotmore to discuss on gaming phones, Android.
One of the things that I've noted whilewatching the rise of gaming phones is
a lot of the hardware innovations thatthey first brought to market take.

(26:37):
For example, razor, one of the firstones to ship a one 20 year display
on a smartphone they're widelycredited with being the first.
Although I believe sharp did it firstwith a smartphone in Japan, but Jesus
was the first to ship a 90 Hertz OLETpanel in the first R G phone and the
first to ship a one 20 Hertz OLET RG phone two you're breaking barriers
again with the 1 65 Hertz OLET display.

(26:59):
I don't believe is the first inthe rogue phone, six RRG phone six,
but, um, you know, there aren't manyphones that can refresh that quickly.
Gaming phones have ultimate pushingthe boundaries when it comes to memory
with devices like the RG phone, fiveultimate having a whopping 18 gigabytes
of memory, which is more than a lot ofpeople's laptops or even desktop ECS.

(27:21):
So why all in this subject, I wanted toask you to you, how, what are some of
the other ways that gaming phones havedriven innovation in the smartphone?
So like what other featureshave you seen trickled down
from gaming phones to regular

Chih-hao (27:32):
devices?
Right.
I think in terms of hardware, we ofcourse see, as you mentioned, you
know, panel animations or pushing theboundaries in panel technology, refresh
rates, these up things, the amount ofmemory, obviously that you put in that
starts tricking down, you always quitefrequently still get debate or comments
or, or questions, you know, do I need16 gigs around, do I need 18 gigs?

(27:54):
Do I need 20?
You know, we had the samediscussion back when it was 12.
Do I need 12 gigs around?
I think, I don't think anyonequestions that nowadays, but.
12, we had questions on eight and so on.
Right?
So gaming smartphones by virtue of beinga high performance platform in a way
where we push the boundaries, enjoysthe benefit of trying new things on it.

(28:16):
So a lot of trickling down, you know, howcooling, I think most of the things that
we're talked about, cooling innovations,what are the things that we can do with
cooling in that form factor, battery,technology, size of battery, charging
speeds and these type of things, butalso on the software end, we see, you
know, we're trying our things and stufftrickles down, or they get implemented

(28:37):
in, let's say regular smartphone errors.
But of course, I, I would also agree thatthe biggest innovation in a way that has
impacted almost every flagship out there,regular smart is the fast refresh rate.
I remember still the discussionswe had back with RG fund one with
the 90 Hertz people asking us, whydo you need a 90 Hertz display?

(28:58):
I can't see a difference.
And that was not just a one off comment.
We heard that so, so much, youknow, I can't see a difference.
It's just going to eat up your battery.
And now I don't think, you know,nobody claims that anymore.
I think it's kind of by being first or,or pushing boundaries or doing things
a bit differently, you get questioners.

(29:19):
Do you really need that?
And do you really needa fast refresh display?
No, I guess the answeris no, but is it nice?
Is it nicer?
Yes.
And cooling.
As I mentioned, I think a lot of these.
It's the experimentation.
We see gaming phones equipped withRGB lights, lots of flashy stuff.

(29:41):
They're just aesthetics.
Just recently we see another phone, right?
Following the same vein, but leaningvery heavily into that part instead.
So we do see a lot of inspiration comingfrom a lot of different aspects of
gaming phones and, and gaming phonesobviously take inspiration from a lot
of other industries and areas, youknow, not just from smart phones, but
you know, we're looking at what we'redoing on PC, on the larger platforms.

(30:05):
And, and, you know, there, there's just alot of, I think the biggest trickling in
a way is that to have that open mind, toallow us to try things play around with.
To put a 6,000 milliamp hourbattery inside a phone and then
see what we can do with it.
And that, that starts coming down.
And, you know, we will wonderthe first to really, really push

(30:26):
5,000 million hours in our phones.
And now it's really, really common.
So these things, uh, yeah, I thinkthat's the best part of gaming phones.
We just get to play around withthem and, and do lots of fun stuff.
And some work obviously very well, andsome might stay on gaming smartphones
only, or maybe they don't pan outand, and, you know, start going away.

(30:48):
So yeah,

Mishaal (30:49):
one of the things that you brought up a couple of times, and
which actually has trickled down toother devices, you know, just, you
know, the cooling technologies fromwhat we've seen from most of you
don't know, most arm devices are fanbecause arm chips are intended to be
placed inside a very low power devices,generally running low power workloads.
But as we're seeing with arm expandinginto the realm of high performance

(31:11):
computing, and we're seeing devices that.
To be able to run high power workloads,especially gaming is one such very
high demanding sustained workload.
You need these devices to be able to runat their maximum or near their maximum
clock speeds for both the CPU and theGPU, but doing that draws more power.
It generates more heatand it drains the battery.

(31:32):
So you want to be able to sustainthe performance while also reducing
the heat generated so that you'reactually able to hold the device
in your hand while you're gaming.
There's so many different things youcan do to sustain that performance.
You know, you can tweak thekernel to decide how to ramp up.
The clock speeds went to rent themup, like went to move tasks between

(31:54):
the clusters in the, in the CPU.
But then on the hardware side, youalso have cooling solutions that are
integrated into the design of the phone.
We've heard of like graphite sheetsor like copper vapor chambers.
And these have been seen firstsince the innovations have
been led by gaming hardware.
And now a lot of, or at leastmost flagships, at least have one
form of internal cooling solution.

(32:15):
They might not be as large or asrobust as puts on gaming phones, but
flagships disease tend to have them.
So I wanted to ask you to how OEMs haveto play this delicate balancing act
between designing a flagship to yourdevice with a flagship to your chip set.
Considering this onward, this upward trendof these chips becoming more and more
power on green, more and more powerful.
You have to keep up these coolingadvancements have to keep up

(32:37):
with these more powerful chips.
So what are some of the recent innovationsthat have come out in cooling that
enable OEMs like Acus tame, these SOCs?

Chih-hao (32:46):
Right.
I think cooling in a smartphone as atopic that is very easily misunderstood.
If I try to phrase myself even experiencepeople or, or people experience tech
often get it wrong, or, or there aremisconceptions of, of cooling, right.
The innovations or how should I say theway we begin with, you know, the first

(33:09):
thing, if we talk, you know, I could talkabout cooling on smartphones forever,
but one of the main things of coolingon our smartphone passively cool, right?
Is the size limitation.
You don't have a lot of physical size.
It's not like a laptop.
It's not like a big PC.
And then the second thing is that heat.

(33:29):
We tend to think about heat.
As in, if my phone doesn't feelhot, then the cooling is doing
its job, but that's not correct.
That's the opposite.
It's the, it's the opposite.
Exactly.
If your phone is cool to the touch and youknow, it's performing work and you know,
it, you know, it's, it's a powerful chip.

(33:51):
It means simply or generalizing.
It means.
We're masking the heat.
We're hiding the heat from you, but itmeans the heat stays inside the device.
But what does that mean?
Then when the heat stays inside or closethe chip, the chip gets hot, obviously,
and then it will start throbbing.
It will start throbbing down and, andlower its performance really, really fast.

(34:13):
So that leads to of course, lowerperformance gaming phones, kinda
exposed that a lot in the way thatwe prioritized sustained performance.
I, I should say we as an ACEs.
Meaning the heat has to go somewhere.
It has to go somewhere.
So a lot of the cooling innovations thatyou mentioned are vapor, chambers, heat

(34:34):
pipes, graphite sheets, different thermalcompounds, and these type of things.
They work with transferring the heat awayfrom the, the system or the chip that's
producing it and moving it outwards.
No.
However you would like to do it.
And, and there are a lot ofdifferent ways and moving it away
and Mo and spreading it around.

(34:55):
So you see ever larger VCsand larger graphic sheets,
and these type of things is.
It's in a way it's a thermal soak.
So you can envision it as abathtub and then you have the
heat is the faucet, right?
So you have, you can have a smalltrickle of heat and you know, very
little water and then you don'tneed a lot of cooling at all.

(35:17):
Or you could, you need a type ofcooling, you need a bathtub, and that
can just soak that water and a small,small drain, but it can keep up.
But if your drain pipe in that way,your or your outlet is too small.
Your bathtub is also too small, butthe incoming flow of heat is too hot.
What ha or too much, you know,your bathtub will overflow.

(35:38):
So gaming phones havetaken different routes.
Some, you know, uh, you can haveactive cooling, you, you know, in
our case, we don't so much believein built in cooling, but we have
active cooling in the form of the fan.
They are active cooler.
And in the latest iteration we do,uh, with the thermal electro chip,
even more powerful cooler in that way.
So that's basically one part ofmany of enlarging the tub, right?

(36:02):
So if you think about the VCs thatwe do, gaming phones are big and
they're big for many, many reasons.
One of the reasons ofcourse is we add mass.
We have a physical sizethat can eat that heat.
In a way, right?
It will soak up the heat andwe can use graphite sheets,
different compounds with Rog.
From six, we use a very, uh, uniqueand the first time, you know, a BN

(36:24):
compound, a boron nitro, thermal pacecompound that we kind of sandwich
in between the motherboards to drawheat from all angles and out into
the mid frame, to, towards the front,towards the back and spread them out.
So that becomes the intermediaryplace for the heat to go,
you know, out to the phone.
And then the fan then can extract that,you know, last bit, if, if you want that

(36:45):
ultimate, uh, performance, there's nomagic in the way that if a smartphone
is performing really, really fast andgiven the performance of the flagship
chips today, they are going to become hotand that heat just has to go somewhere.
It doesn't disappear.
So if your phone is hot, thenit's doing something right.

(37:06):
It's doing something correct.
But also in a way.
It's not nice.
It's not that good because you don'twant to feel, you know, a hot phone.
So yeah, I think that's kind ofwhat we're trying to work on.
How do we right.
Move the heat, avoid hotspots, spreadthem around and then make sure we
have a system to kind of extract thatfinal bit, but it all depends on the

(37:27):
performance, target your setting,schedulers and the way we tune for games
that that plays a big role as well.

David (37:34):
Quick question, just because this has always interested me, and
I've never talked to somebody who'sactually like worked on a product
like a gaming phone in this way.
So one of my suspicions about gamingphones on the thermal side has long
been that many users play whilecharging and that this creates like
heat soak situations with the battery.
And that is a big part of theincreased thermal workload.

(37:56):
You're much more likely to throttle whenyou soak the battery because that's the
biggest heat sink in the whole damn phone.
And once it gets warm,like what do you do?
So is that something thatlike, you know, you'all have

Mishaal (38:06):
designed

Chih-hao (38:06):
around.
Yeah, there, there are afew ways that we can do it.
O obviously I, you know, howdo we cool the batteries?
And when we have a feature calledthe bypass charging, that allows
you to basically turn off chargingthe batteries at will generally it's
inside our kind of gaming software.
So you turn that on.
If you want to, uh, while playing,uh, your game and the charger will

(38:28):
provide power to the system, but notadditionally charge the, the battery.
So that's one part, I would say,charging the phone while gaming is
one part that adds stress to thesystem obviously, or adds heat.
Another one, which people might not thinkabout is having mobile data on the radios.
And then now when we go to 5g, theycan produce quite a lot of heat.

(38:51):
I dunno if you, you know, you can try it,put your phone, set it to download big.
And just download a five gigabyte file.
I

Mishaal (38:59):
have a pixel six pro I, I know what that's like.

Chih-hao (39:02):
yeah.
It's, you know, it's gonna get hotand, and, you know, CPU's not doing
a lot of things, but the modemis, and that adds a lot of heat.
Hey, now you have people playinggames and then they're downloading
stuff in the background or a specificgame keeps loading, and then you're
adding the charger, this and thatjust there's so many variables.
And of course we try to kind ofwork around that, uh, to the best

(39:23):
of our ability, but that's just whatmakes a gaming smartphone, I guess.
Right.
You know, it, there are differentways to, we need to approach it.
You know,

Mishaal (39:32):
everything you just described with how to actually educate the user.
It's an evergreen problem.
I wish you the best of luck ingetting every user to understand
this conundrum that you have.
But while speaking of problems thatgaming phone manufacturers have had to
overcome, you know, I wanted to talk abit about the unique hardware accessories
that were available for the variousRog phones in the lineup, because there

(39:54):
were several quite innovative onesthat I was really interested in using.
But over time, they became semidiscontinued because they were not
made to be compatible with newerdevices and why that happened.
There's many different reasons, butI wanna talk about a few of them.
So there's the Y gig display doc.
For those of you don't know, uses 60gig Hertz wifi to enable extremely fast

(40:17):
ultra low latency display mirroring.
So like you could have your phoneand instantly see and connect and
control whatever's happening onscreen by display streaming your
game from your phone to your TV.
And then you have the mobile desktopdoc, which enables you connecting a
4k display plus a keyboard and a mouseto the RG phone, these compatible
with the one, two and three models.

(40:38):
And then you have the twin view doc,which literally turns your RRG phone
into Nintendo DS with a second screen ontop with also has a high refresh rate.
So I love these really niche products.
They were a bit pricey,but they were very unique.
Innovative products.
But I think the story of a lot ofthese kind of niche hardware, accessory
products, especially these products notreally taking off is I think probably

(41:01):
the lack of software compatibilityin particular with the mobile desktop
doc and the twin view, doc, both werekind of released before Android really
gained robust support for secondarydisplays or foldable displays.
So with the twin view doc, youhad so a tiny collection of apps
that were actually able to splittheir views between two displays.

(41:22):
Nowadays, that's something Google ispushing heavily with the mobile desktop
doc back then, Google didn't really makea big push to optimize apps on desktop.
But now with 12 L and 13, you haveGoogle saying, make your apps compatible
with all large screens, whether that beChromebooks, whether that be windows,
PCs, and whether that be tablets.
So I wanted to ask you, like,can you talk a bit about the

(41:42):
challenges you faced in gettingdeveloper buy-in on these products?
Do you think if you were to re-releasethese products, hypothetically
today, it would be easier toconvince game developers to

Chih-hao (41:52):
support.
I'll start by answeringthe second question.
Do we have an easier time todaythan we had in the first generation?
And the answer is yes, it's easier.
I wouldn't say it's easy, but it's easieralso it, it just ties in, you know, is
it easier to, for us to get people tounderstand, you know, any type of people
to understand what is a gaming smartphone?

(42:13):
You know, people aregaming on their smartphone.
That is something we tend to notneed to explain so much anymore.
So in the same vein, as in,you know, oh, here's a gaming
smartphone and it makes sense.
Let's do things together, you know,to optimize for gaming smartphones.
It's easier.
And then going back to the first question,It's still difficult, I should say.

(42:37):
And I assume it is down to thenature of the market as it is right
now, or the way game developersspend a lot of time, uh, obviously,
uh, writing, creating their games.
And as we mentioned earlier on, youknow, the mobile gaming market is huge.
It's a, what was it?
A hundred billion dollar market.
But that market is obviously notcomprised of, you know, people on

(43:01):
gaming, smartphone, people usinggaming smartphones within that market
is a very small amount still, right?
And even flagship phones isnot the dominant category
within that slice of cake.
So without speaking for gamedevelopers, but I can really understand,
you know, game devs for mobile.

(43:21):
You have such a huge variety ofhardware, probably a, a larger
spectrum of performance than on PC.
Obviously console console, youjust have, you know, one or
maybe two right now, nowadays youget, you get two per generation.
So they optimize most of the stuff forthe majority, or they kind of draw a

(43:42):
line and then say it has to be this good.
And then they put their effort on that.
I would assume as well, but with gamingsmartphones and flagships becoming more
and more popular, more people use it.
It makes more sense to offerkind of that extra tier.
Right now we see more and more games,almost every top tier mobile game offers.

(44:05):
Now, uh, you know, a 30 or a 60 FPS mill.
I think that's the, the first thingyou'll see that game developers will
add a faster F break mode and some gameswill, uh, add even further on twin view.
I, I loved twin view.
I really liked it, but as youmentioned, Android, wasn't really
ready for it, but we tried it.

(44:26):
I loved that.
We did that thing, right.
That product.
Game developers.
It was challenging for themto add, you know, because it
was only on one device, right?
So you have your game and maybe it'splayed by 20, 30 million people.
But you would do something thatwould only work for the players
on one specific device, whichweren't obviously the majority.

(44:49):
So that was quite difficultto do with a lot of things.
Y gig as a thing that was prettyfun, but also it didn't pan out.
I think a lot of these things wasjust, we wanted to try lot things.
You know, we it's just a blue oceandon't we don't want to say no to
anything, but then over time we see,you know, some things obviously work
better than others, mobile desktop doc.

(45:11):
We don't have that, but you could usea Dongo that will still work today.
Right?
It doesn't have to be ours.
It's just a USB type C Dongo with,uh, display port out and USB ports,
and it's going to work all the same.
So there's some aspects that wekind of transform into other parts
and some things, it will be great,really fun to revisit them one day.

(45:32):
Uh, let's hope for that.
And, uh, yeah, it's not so easy, but.
I think we've come the furthestout of our, our competitors in,
in doing these type of things.
And, and we will continue to do alot of crazy things, uh, I believe,

Mishaal (45:46):
and

David (45:47):
just to put it out there, Asus rightly deserves a reputation as being
the most, let's say exploratory, whenit comes to Android hardware concepts,
I will never forget seeing the originaltransformer unveiling at MWC, but
Johnny up there in the magician andoh, and then they had it in, you know,

(46:07):
the glass pedestal at the actual boothand we called it, uh, and this was not
meant derogatory because we thought itwas hilarious, uh, the turducken phone,
because, you know, you would essentiallyjust keep stacking computing devices on
top of it until you got what you wanted.
So stuff like that obviouslywas that was so innovative and
totally ahead of the curve.

(46:28):
And Asus has always been doing stuff like

Chih-hao (46:30):
that.
Yeah, I think it it's really part of our.
DNA in a way, right?
In product design, not just forsmartphone or Android, you know,
transformers, the tablets, the pad phone.
If you remember it, the phone thatslotted into a larger tablet accessory
than you got two in one already there we

Mishaal (46:48):
started.

David (46:48):
That is what I meant.
The pad phone.
Sorry.
Yes.

Mishaal (46:51):
So,

Chih-hao (46:51):
so that, you know, that kind of lived for three generations, I believe.
And, and we, we also had that wildconcept, a phone in a tablet in a doc.
If you remember, I thinkit was a transformer.
Pad five or something like that

Mishaal (47:05):
as the concept?
Yes.
The transformer pad,

David (47:06):
the original one.
Okay.
That's what I was talking about.
The original transformer pad, becausethat was a blow everybody's mind moment.
Yeah.
When the phone slotted into the

Chih-hao (47:14):
tablet, a lot of crazy stuff and, and RRG phone kind of continues
that in a way we just do a lot of, itmight seem weird to some, but I think for
us, it's, we've been talking about it alot in, in that it's fun to not always
do the same things as everybody else.
Right.
There are lots of good options outthere, but there's no option like the

(47:36):
RRG fund or, you know, so that's kindof also what we try to do and hopefully
we can keep doing these fun things.
It's really fun to do them and somework out and some, unfortunately
they don't work out very well.
And, and, and then, yeah,

Mishaal (47:50):
I think if you look at a lot of these, these, uh, unique.
I'd say interesting hardware developments.
The reason a lot of them don't workout that well is because software is
such a major challenge when you don'thave first class support within the
operating system for these desktop.
Like, uh, for example, the twin view docAndroid didn't really have great support

(48:11):
for spanning across dual displays atthe time, or with the mobile desktop doc
Android at the time, didn't really havegreat support for secondary displays,
which it now is working towards.
So these are the biggest challenges I'dsay for these actual these products.
And it's something that really onlyGoogle as like the gatekeeper of Android.
Can solve by buying in.

(48:32):
And it seems like they're finallydoing some things on that front
with Android 12 and their gameAPI game dashboard, et cetera.
But you did bring up one thing GIabout refresh rates that I I'm sure
many people really want to know.
So refresh rates we've had phoneswith over 60 years refresh rates for
a long time now, and I can tell, likeI I've looked at the Android developer

(48:54):
documentation and there are APIs todetermine whether or not a device supports
certain refresh rates above 60 Hertz.
But despite how common this is fromwhat I've see most game developers,
they use like a white list systemto decide which devices they want
to expose their higher refreshrate or higher graphics options on.
And this is particularly frustratingfor users of less popular devices.

(49:17):
If you have the Samsung link galaxies.
Sure.
Your device is probably supported cuzit's very popular Android device, but if
you have another device with a 98 or one20 inch display, there's no guarantee
that your favorite game will expose thatoption for you even though, you know,
Your device should be capable of it.
So can you talk a bitabout this inconsistency?
Why does this happen?

Chih-hao (49:37):
I, I don't know exactly.
why these things happen.
I have my guesses, obviously.
I think one of the rootcauses is specifications do
not match the performance.
Right?
That's number one, a gamedeveloper can know, does this
phone have a 90 Hertz display?
Yes, but this doesn't mean thatit has a powerful CP, right?

(49:58):
So it could be a really mid rangeor even quite entry level device
nowadays, but they won't run PUBG,let's say at 90 F FP as well.
They, they just won't.
So should you give the user the option?
Anyway, I think on the one hand you couldsay just enable everything for every.
And let the user decide.

(50:19):
Right?
And in a way, you, youcould take that stance.
But I also know from kind of,from our experience that a lot of
users struggle with that, right?
So they will just say, oh,the game runs really bad.
There's something wrong.
And immediately think that there'ssomething wrong as in it's broken
or we've done something wrong or thegame developer done something wrong.
And I think the only let's say wrongwould be that we allowed you to choose.

(50:44):
And then there's a lot of this back andforth so I can understand them that they
take a more cautionary approach in thatwe want to make sure that the modes.
Turn on for those devices that can handleit above a, let's say an arbitrary line
that they draw, whatever that may be.
Because as far as I know, there's nota lot of dynamic graphic switching
right now in, in Android, you know,it could just scale down automatically

(51:07):
and hit a certain target frame rate.
That could be a good,maybe, hopefully a solution.
Uh, if that would be a good API,that just, it would just switch
graphics automatically a lot.
And based on that, but yeah,it's a bother in a way.
And I understand why it's there.
And it's some developers do iton a per device basis and some

(51:28):
do it on like a per platform.
So they will detect certain platforms andthen they will, those settings will appear
one of the downside of that or, or, orof anything I would say is that usually
it, it takes some time to validate andto make, let's say to have these settings
go through the entire flow right process.

(51:48):
So you have the latestprocessors coming out.
They're not whitelisted becausethey're the newest one, so they haven't
finished, but we kind of released them.
They they're released tothe market, uh, before.
So this is a common issueevery year, generally speak.
Eight gen ones, a plus gen one.
And then obviously the new ones

David (52:06):
coming on.
No, you can even like in that sortof situation with GPU drivers on
desktop PCs, you always have dayone patches because there's always
something being shipped before it's

Chih-hao (52:14):
actually ready.
exactly.
And there's also this thingin not just gaming, right?
You have, uh, I remember, um,Photoshop, I think it was Photoshop
for Android or some type of, no, thecamera Photoshop camera from Adobe.
That was also on a white listbase, like six devices at first.
Yeah.
And then eight and then10 and maybe everything.
And maybe not it it's just.

(52:36):
I assume it's for compatibility.
They get a lot of complaints ifthey just open it things don't

Mishaal (52:41):
yeah.
Yeah.
We talked about this a lot.
My favorite F word fragmentation,and we spent a whole episode
talking about Androids cameraproblems a couple of weeks ago.
And you know, this Al problem also is veryprevalent in Android game development.
As a, I was

David (52:57):
just gonna say it's because you have like, you know, you have
different versions of Qualcomms,adrenal drivers across devices.
You probably have actual differencesin the Android OS distro, like
which Android are you running?
Exactly.
All these things thatcould affect performance.
And from a developer's perspective, agame dev, if your option is to make the
game available as the minimum viableexperience to users of a new device

(53:21):
versus enable all the things and seewhat happens and your livelihood depends
on that Google play store rating.
What are you gonna do?
Like it's not even a choice,

Chih-hao (53:30):
right?
Oh, definitely.
And, and it's not Android, but Ithink something that I have learned
or experienced over the years is Iknow, I, I don't know if it's blessed
me on a, on an Android blog, but howmuch effort Microsoft puts in for
windows compatibility on hardware.
It's quite amazing, right?

(53:52):
The, the backend of things, because allof the different choices, all of the
different things, it just plays in away, but then it's, it's that platform,
the X 86 platform and EV everythingjust over the years, it just works.
Kind of, yeah.
I mean,

Mishaal (54:06):
you

David (54:06):
know, Microsoft's driver signing model has like enabled windows
to live far longer than I thinkit otherwise would have, because
literally, like you say, it just works.
You get, you submit your driver toMicrosoft as a vendor, you get it signed.
And Microsoft says, yep.
It will work on every version of windowsthat this signature is valid for.
And with Android, it's justnot modular in that way.

(54:27):
You know, the OS wasn't designed

Chih-hao (54:28):
that way, you know, touching on this it's the game pad or the game
controller situation on Android isalso, it can be really frustrating.
You, you have the kind of the basic,I, I think there's this Android
hardware extraction layer, right.
For game pads or gamecontrollers, but then you have
games actually not using that.
Then they, they will whitelist.

(54:50):
Game controllers instead,because then they can ensure
that game controllers work.
So we kind of run into that every nowand then with the kuai, which is, you
know, it supports the Android layer.
That's perfectly fine.
But then you have games that supports,let's say only the Xbox controller.
That it doesn't support the othercontrollers, but they could, and
then we need to kind of work aroundthat and add support for that as well

(55:13):
and work with developers and so on.
So that's, yeah, it's a lot of work

Mishaal (55:18):
I think I'm and, and Ben quote me this, cause I'm not an expert on
input in Android, but I believe priorto Google's development of the Android
games, SDK, there wasn't really a simplesolution for developers to enumerate what
game controllers are connected to thedevice and then map those inputs into
like a, like a game like you can do that.

(55:39):
You can detect buttonpresses and then map those.
And like Android has predetermined prelaid out key layout files, that map
button presses to Linux input presses,but most ski developers, you know, they
want like a, you would want like a simplesolution that tries, okay, we have these.
Game controller supported.
And you can just simply add this libraryinto your game and map these buttons to

(56:01):
certain inputs within the games context.
And I think that's part of whatGoogle is doing with the Android
games, SDK and all these variousAPIs that they're working on.
And so, you know, a lot of the blamedis not really, can't really be placed
at the, at the hands of game developerscuz Android, as you mentioned, wasn't
really built for gaming from the get go.
Google is playing catch pretty late.

(56:23):
I'd say considering we're an Android12 and we're finally seeing all these
efforts after considering how popularmobile gaming has been and Google
knows how popular it's been consideringhow much money they make off of it.
And like, even with things as likesimple, how do you determine if a device
is performing enough to handle my gamerunning at the highest quality settings?
There's just no good way to tell thebest way is literally just buy a phone

(56:44):
or add the newest CPU model that, youknow, reading a press release from
Qualcomm saying here's our flagship model.
Okay.
Well add that SSC model to our white list.
Or, you know, just going out andbuying devices, like there's no
real way to tell whether or nota device is performed enough.
And there are some efforts like theperformance class API, but that's
particularly just for media tasks.

(57:05):
Then there's no a game mode API, whichis kind of like user slash app opt in.
There are predefined game modes thata developer can say, I want these
settings applied for this game mode.
And then the user canselect that game mode.
But because the feature that it's tiedto the game dashboard is currently a
pixel exclusive and hasn't yet rolledout to other devices, which I believe

(57:28):
is expected to happen with Android13 through Google play services.
There's not much of an incentive tosupport this new game mode API because
it's only available on a single devicethat pixel six, but there are things
that Google is doing to improve thesituation and whether or not they'll
succeed in making it less of apain for game developers to support

(57:49):
thousands of different device models.
Remains to be seen, but consideringthe absolute size of mobile
gaming market, I think there's noquestion that they have to succeed.
Otherwise they're shootingthemselves in the foot.

Chih-hao (58:02):
well, I think, uh, yeah, I mean, they're doing a lot of things they're
playing catch up, obviously, but it's justbecause there's so many things to be done.
Right.
And, and what do you do first, even, evenfor a company, uh, the size of Google.
I think they just havetheir work cut out for them.
Right.
They will never be done in, in that sense.
And in terms of like the game dashboardand that become, you know, that's

(58:26):
part of well, pixel Android, a lotof those things are, are things that
we've already done for years, right.
On gaming, smart phones on RRG phone.
And it's great to see that thesethings are added to Google's Android.
Uh, and hopefully they will kindof trickle down to everybody
and, uh, pick them up at will.
And depending on how they do, youknow, do we need to change our

(58:47):
code to just redo the same things.
That's also a part of the struggle, right?
To, to kind of keep up with Android, butalso Android keeping up with the OEMs
and, and we do stuff and we invest codeand, and there certain ways to do things.
And then Android comes in and adds thesame thing, but in a different way,
and then you need to redo everythingor, or how, how do you kind of fit that
in, but it, why, you know, let's see,I think one of the big challenges is.

(59:13):
Also on how do you tune theperformance for your different modes?
Right.
A very bursty instantaneous performanceis very different from sustained
performance on a smartphone becauseyou don't have that cooling dissipated
capability as larger game systems.
Uh, most phones don't have that.
So it's how do you work with the CPUcourse GPU and all the subsystems to

(59:39):
kind of get the most out of your device?
Having performance that's really, reallyfast and peak performance for five
minutes is vastly different than havingit for 35 minutes or even 60 minutes.
Basically you cannot have thesame performance that you have for
five minutes, but over 60 minutes.
Well, I mean, there are ways,but they're not very practical

(01:00:00):
for most devices, right?
So you have active cooling, youhave these things, you have game
modes, and then how do our gamemodes, how do our tuning come in?
And is that going to be the same way thatGoogle decides to do it with the API?
I, I don't know how that would work,but yeah, they, it's going to be a lot
of, uh, trial and error, I suppose,in, in how to make performance, uh,

(01:00:22):
work for short term and, and for long.
Because, you know, I would say theworkload is so different playing
games versus web browsing, I guess,or Netflix or these type of things.

David (01:00:34):
Sure.
You also have just kind of adifferent barrier for what constitutes
acceptable performance in a video game.
And if you drop below that theusers' experience can basically
go from passable to zero.
I don't wanna play the game anymore.
So for developers, obviously, they'dbe concerned about that before.
That's why they want to optimize.
So, you know, a ship set does nottell you the whole story, which is,

(01:00:56):
I think what you see when peopletalk about the stuff on Twitter,
it's like, oh, well it's a snap drag.
And so, and so, and they're all the same.
They should all perform the sameand well in a perfect world.
Yeah, they should but they don't.

Mishaal (01:01:07):
And,

Chih-hao (01:01:07):
but they don't.
Yeah.
And the devices that they'rein are vastly different.
Right.
We could just take a look atour two devices this year.
They both use snap drag and aplus gen one, one is the RG phone.
Six, it's a big phone.
240 odd grams.
And then on the other end, you havea Z 0.9, you know, the 5.9 inch

(01:01:28):
a hundred sixty sixty nine grams.
I think they're vastly different.
They have the same chip inside.
They're not going to perform the same.
They simply aren't becausethey're not built the same.
They're not the same size.
They, they don't have the same things, butthey can offer the same burst performance.
Definitely.
That's not the same as, you know,we're going to run this and this,

(01:01:48):
or that's again, an impact, right.
Max setting and just run it for an hour,you know, you'll see those limitations
coming in much sooner on, on the Zphone line than you would on the Rog
phone and for a game developer, it it's.
How would they know between,out of all of the thousands of
phones out there every year?
There's hundreds of phones every year.
And then a game lives on for, uh, Idon't know how long, many, many years.

(01:02:12):
Right.
So just so many tiers of performancethat they need to keep track of.
And I think it's yeah,difficult for them as well.
And I don't know if the tools that arekind of offered or being offered, will
they be enough, you know, currentlyto, to kind of solve that problem.

Mishaal (01:02:28):
So GE this has been a very interesting discussion to say to Lisa.
I know it's a very, very complicatedtopic and we could definitely talk for
another hour on this, but, you know, we,we gotta end somewhere and I think now's
a good time to start closing off and.
Before I close off, though, I do wannamention, you know, if this is one space,
you have to keep an eye on mobile gaming.

(01:02:48):
It's not going to stop.
And with Microsoft moving intobringing Android app support on windows
11 through the windows subsystemfor Android, Google countering
with the Google play games for PC.
One of the primary use cases they'retouting for both of these platforms is
gaming and bringing Android games off.
The PCs has already been the thingamong like many, many different gamers

(01:03:09):
who are using like simulators, likethird party solutions to do this.
And then, you know, with the, the sizeof the mobile gaming industry, as we've
already mentioned, 2022 project to bea hundred billion dollars, like this
is one industry you cannot ignore.
It is too big to ignore.
So learning and understanding, you know,where we stand and how OEMs like Jesus
are addressing the needs of mobile gamers.

(01:03:31):
I think it's a, it's a pretty good way tounderstand where the winds are flowing.
Yeah.

David (01:03:36):
And it's an interesting space from the hardware perspective,
because there are so many ways youcan build an Android gaming device.
A phone is one form factor for Androidgaming, but if you were looking more
into a dedicated gaming device kindof situation, something that is a
home console or a portable console,or even an arcade cabinet machine.
Ark cabinets, running Android.

(01:03:56):
They already sell them.
They exist and you are in thebusiness of selling these things,
distributing them or supporting them.
You need a way to manage them andthat's not always straightforward.
So if you want a partner that'sgonna help you end to end from
finding the right hardware.
Picking the right software and then makingsure that you can scale that product.

(01:04:17):
Come talk to us at Esper, we helpcompanies build Android devices,
everything from a climbing machine thatweighs hundreds of pounds and has a
giant touchscreen attached to it, toa walkie talkie that first responders
use firefighters and police officersthat doesn't even have a touchscreen.
We help so many companies withsuch a variety of Android products.
And that's why we wanna talk aboutgaming devices today because it is you.

(01:04:39):
Smartphones aside, gaming phones,being their own thing, dedicated
gaming devices for Android havebeen around for a long time.
I mean, really, as long as Androidhas been around, there's at
least a somebody trying to do adedicated Android gaming device.
Some of them did not do sowell, but I think it's a market
that's right for exploration.
And as we've seen advances in coolingadvances in processor performance and

(01:05:02):
reduce fragmentation at the platformlevel are helping make this possible.
So again, if that's interesting to you,if you're in that space, come talk to us
at SPER, we can help you scale your device

Mishaal (01:05:11):
business.
Thanks, David and GE.
How, where can people find youonline if you, you know, are
on social media or anywhere

Chih-hao (01:05:18):
else?
Actually, actually I'm, I'm not,uh, very active on social media.
So unfortunately there's no good wayto tag me, but, uh, every now and
then I will appear somewhere and, uh,yeah, on this podcast, for example,

Mishaal (01:05:33):
Well, thank you for joining us.
It, it was very nice to have thisFrank discussion with you about gaming
phones and you've been working onthis for so long, so I'm sure you
have a lot of insights that, youknow, you've built up over the years.

Chih-hao (01:05:44):
Yeah.
Thank you.
No, it's been, it's been good.
Fun.
It's always nice to get an opportunity totalk about the things that we obviously
we talk about internally a lot every day,over and over, and, uh, it's been good.
Fun.
Thank you for inviting

Mishaal (01:05:58):
me and thank you everyone for listening to
another episode of Android bites.
We'll see you next time.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The rise of the Android gaming phone