How we test games on old phones (and why)

Not everyone upgrades their phone every year, so neither do all of our test devices. We keep a small drawer of older hardware specifically to see how games hold up on modest specs.

A game can feel great on a flagship and stutter badly on a three-year-old model. Since we want our recommendations to be useful to everyone, we always run a title on something slower before we finalize a rating.

We check load times, framerate during busy moments, and how much storage the game eats. Offline games tend to be lighter, which is one more reason we like them, but that's not guaranteed, so we measure it.

When a game runs poorly on older hardware, we say so in the review. It's not a dealbreaker on its own, but you deserve to know before you download.