While mobile gaming has been enjoying consistent growth over the past years, the COVID-19 outbreak saw it achieve an exponential spike as people cope with lockdown measures around the world. Industry analysts have seen a 62% surge of time spent on mobile games in March 2020 and a 46% increase per month in the number of mobile gamers last year. This trend was also seen in the Philippines, which posted a 55% increase in consumer spending on mobile games and became the fastest-growing market in Southeast Asia for mobile game downloads in 2020.

As people spend more time playing mobile games, they are beginning to demand more from their smartphones when it comes to gameplay experiences. But how do we evaluate and benchmark gaming performance? While various gamers price different parameters such as stability, smoothness, and stunning visuals, they agree that two of the biggest challenges standing in the way of ideal gaming experiences are jitter and lag.

What causes jitter?

Jitters can be annoying as these lead to inaccurate visual displays, making it hard for gamers to react and respond appropriately. These happen when there are fluctuations or variations in the travel times of data packets from server to gamer and vice versa. Such issues are influenced by two frequently seen concepts – a game’s frames per second (FPS) and a screen/monitor’s Hz, which refers to the maximum FPS it can handle. When you have a game running at 60 FPS on a 60Hz screen, it is generating an image at 1Hz, meaning you have 60 images projected evenly per second to deliver a smooth experience.

However, because frame time is not always consistent for mobile games, gamers often experience shifting visuals that look neither stable nor smooth. This can be challenging most especially for games that involve shooting, as it is not easy to shoot precisely based on inaccurate visual cues.

Why do games lag?

Lagging is another key challenge in mobile gaming. Many of today’s popular games are power-draining and require strong CPU and GPU capabilities to process billions of instructions per second for their visual outputs. If the chipset is unable to support the intensity of the processing required, gamers will experience lag.

Other features like touch screen sampling and CPU processing can also contribute to lags. As games are often designed to perform best on certain screen sizes and resolution, playing them on a smartphone that does not have the right display puts pressure on its chipset’s processing power to adjust and accommodate the visuals. This results in lag, which contributes to a frustrating gaming experience.

Hardware and software solutions in the Infinix HOT 10S

Given its commitment to create powerful but affordable smartphones for today’s growing number of mobile gamers, Infinix equipped its latest budget gaming smartphone, the HOT 10S, with specs meant to address these pressing pain points. MediaTek’s Helio G85 gaming chipset drives the HOT 10S with a 64-bit octa-core processor, featuring two performance core ARM Cortex-A75 and six power-efficient core Cortex-A55 CPUs clocked at 2.0GHz and 1.8GHz and integrated with one of the fastest GPUs’s – the ARM Mali-G52 MC2 GPU, clocking at 1GHz. In addition, Infinix designed the HOT 10S with a 6.82HD+ display with a 90Hz refresh rate, providing fluid response when users swipe the screen and a smooth visual experience when playing high-speed moving footage. Its 180Hz capability improves finger touch recognition on the display, enabling the smartphone to detect fingerprints and rapid movements accurately.

However, Infinix does not just stop with hardware solutions, as their optimal performance can only be realized by working together with the appropriate software. This is why Infinix built its Dar-link Ultimate Game Booster technology into the operating system of the HOT 10S, improving graphic display and touchscreen sensitivity and enhancing the smartphone’s self-learning capabilities.

To solve jitter, Dar-link leverages its analytic and calculation capabilities to ensure the interval of the frames are displayed every second as evenly as possible. It also recognizes different screen scenes through intelligent calculations, so that the game image-processing rate matches the requirements of the relevant scenes, creating better visuals for users.

Meanwhile, to get rid of lag during game sessions, Dar-link generates predictive rendering in advance based on the various scenes in the game, making game scene switching much faster and easier. The core technology lies in its frame rate prediction algorithm – the real-time picture rendering which creates an immersive gaming space for players. With a stable switching of the scenes, users can quickly capture the target through a millisecond touch response rate, thereby increasing their chances of winning. A sensitive touch response also further enhances users-device interaction, giving gamers an edge, especially for moves like aiming and shooting.

Holistic enhancement of processing power

In addition, Dar-link is able to further enhance the handset performance in terms of energy consumption and temperature control. Chipset performance tends to deteriorate over usage and time due to heat generated especially during demanding games. However, Infinix intelligently adjusts the operating speed of the CPU/GPU, and manages and allocates according to different game scenarios. This maintains the efficient operation of the handset, avoiding mini-freezes while gaming, which allows the game to run more smoothly before subsequently reducing the temperature of the device to remove the vicious cycle of overheating.

Advanced mobile gaming experiences made accessible

In the Philippines, these advanced technologies in the Infinix HOT 10S have been made easily accessible. On Shopee and Infinix retail stores across the country, the 4GB+64GB version of the device is available for a regular retail price of Php5,990 while its 6GB+128GB is available for Php6,990.

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