Conventional wisdom states that tablets are superior to smartphones when it comes to gaming. However, various industry aficionados are eager to disprove this ‘tablet fallacy’ by examining the explosive growth in smartphone adoption, the associated technological advancements, and the decline in tablet popularity. Nowadays, smartphones are the most widely used tech appendages in our arsenal. They are utilized for all manner of purposes, including communication, navigation, and entertainment.
Smartphones bring the power of digital computing, interactive entertainment, and multimedia functionality straight to our fingertips. Gone are the days when people relied on their phones for calling purposes alone. Today, the processing capacity of iPhones and Androids is so advanced that these IoT devices can unlock digital locks, stream direct to smart TVs, and serve as the most sophisticated mobile gaming systems.
Gaming on the go is now the standard. Players no longer rely on their desktops or laptops for their online gaming activity. The switch to mobile has been years in the making, and it has now reached critical mass. The universal adoption of mobile gaming has been facilitated by the rapid and unprecedented progress in technological innovation. Over the years, tablets experienced rapid growth and decline. In that same time, smartphone use blossomed. Tablet growth was unprecedented for several years; however, it came to a grinding halt as smartphone technology improved.
It’s All About Screen Real Estate and GPUs
People may be wondering why tablets have languished while smartphones have prospered. It’s a no-brainer really – the screen sizes and functionality of smartphones have advanced to a degree where they offer significantly enhanced benefits for the user. For gaming purposes, bigger screen sizes, better GPUs, and crisper audio-visuals are the gold standards. That’s why tablets dominated the scene for so many years. As improved versions of iPhone and Android smartphones were released, they slowly gained an edge over tablets.
It is a mistaken belief that tablets are larger versions of smartphones and that smartphones are smaller versions of tablets. These devices are mutually exclusive. Tablets are used for basic gaming, video streaming, music videos, social media, and the like. Smartphones can pretty much do it all, including interactive communication, complete multimedia functionality, video, music, gaming, etc. In the old days, tablets featured 10-inch screens and smartphones were lagging with 3.5-inch screens. At the time, gamers had little tolerance for the minute screen sizes and preferred tablets for all manner of reasons.
The portability of smartphones was always going to be its saving grace. Over the years, the screen size of smartphones rapidly increased, along with the processing capacity and battery life to keep these devices running. Now, it’s possible to have screen sizes of 6.2 inches +, adding significantly more screen ‘real estate’ to a gamer’s range of options. When you’re playing on the go, you are far more likely to be accepting of a 6.2-inch screen size for the added convenience of mobile gaming entertainment.
Back in the day (1997), Nokia released a game known as Snake. This rudimentary video game pales in comparison to the mobile games that are now available to players such as Bubble Shooter. This game is light years ahead of the first games that came out on mobile devices. For starters, it’s a strategy-based puzzle game where players are required to match a minimum of 3 bubbles to pop them and remove them from the screen. As you meet your quota, you advance to higher levels of the game and unlock 800+ levels. Various features are available in this game including fireballs and bombs. This game has been rated 4.4/5 from 8,255 players, and it’s blazing a trail on mobile devices.
This classic arcade-style game has made a welcome return to the modern age where advanced smartphone technology has facilitated a seamless gaming experience. It’s a throwback-style attraction which players are lapping up in their droves. The game is also a quantum leap from the 1997 Nokia game Snake. Such is the multi-the pronged approach to mobile game development and smartphone functionality, that we can expect plenty of changes moving forward.
Take the Razor Phone as an example. It’s regarded as a front-runner in the mobile gaming arena. This Android is not an Apple or a Samsung, yet it’s locked and loaded with feature-rich entertainment as one of the premier multimedia smartphone devices. It comes at a hefty price tag of around $700 – much like the iPhone or the Samsung Galaxy phones, but it’s the graphics of the Razor that blow away the competition. It features a 120 Hz LGZO LCD display, and a 4,000-mA battery for extreme gaming action. Of course, there are many high-quality smartphones that offer the equivalent gaming experience – Samsung Galaxy S8 and Samsung Galaxy S9 are cases in point. Things are only getting better for smartphones, while the tablet market is declining. And that’s not opinion, it’s fact!