Best Mobile Phones for Gaming in India (September 2023)

iQOO 11 is the best phone you can buy in India for gaming right now. It is as powerful as they come and offers some key gaming first features to enhance your experience when you decide to game on the device. At the heart of these experiences is the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC Qualcomm that can power anything and everything you throw at it. The chipset is generally power efficient, but the iQOO 11’s impressive handling of thermals ensures the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 remains very stable on the device even when the SoC is pushed to handle CPU and GPU intensive tasks. But as mentioned above, it is the gaming first features, some of which are even baked into the phone’s hardware that set it apart from the competition. It also gets a dedicated Game Space which acts as the hub for all things gaming and can display the games you have installed, device’s CPU, GPU, and temperature performance, among other gaming statistics, for example number of hours you've games in the the week and which games you play the most.

While the Galaxy S23 Ultra isn’t marketed as a standalone gaming phone, and is a device that offers good performance in all aspects of interest for a flagship phone buyer, what cannot be ignored is just how good at gaming this new phone from Samsung is. Again, at the core of such experiences is the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC, which is going to remain a regular fixture through this list of best gaming phones in India. But if the 8 Gen 2 is good for gaming, what makes the S23 Ultra better than most other devices with this chip is the fact that it uses a slightly more powerful version of this chip under the hood. Yes, on the device you get a custom Snapdragon 8 Gen for Galaxy SoC, that offers higher base clocks for performance cores than what you’d find on other devices in the list. Plus, because of its new and improved vapour cooling chamber, that’s significantly bigger than the one found on its predecessor, the Galaxy S23 Ultra emerged as one of top-ranked phones for gaming in India.

While Apple is also not the one to market their phones explicitly as gaming phones, it cannot be ignored just how good some of their phones are for gaming. Especially, the flagship devices, which year after year, impress with their performance in games. Majority of the credit for this should go to its high-performance chipsets that often set the benchmark for performance. Similar is the case this year, with the A16 Bionic SoC totting iPhone 14 Pro Max running circles around graphically demanding games with the sheer muscle it hides under the hood. The phone has enough juice to power any game you throw at it – rather available on the App Store. It also has a big battery and an equally big, fast refresh rate display paired to this chipset to bring to life some really immersive gaming experiences on screen. So be rest assured, if you end up buying the iPhone 14 for gaming, you’d not be left disappointed.

The Vivo X90 Pro is amongst the first batch of MediaTek Dimensity 9200 SoC phones in the country, that automatically makes it a worthwhile investment if you’re looking to game on your next phone. This chipset on the device has been paired with 12GB of RAM to ensure users don’t face any issues while gaming on the device. On top of that, Vivo has also added a big vapour cooling chamber on the phone to keep the thermals in check, and ensure that the phone remains stable while gaming and resource intensive tasks. But that’s not it, Vivo’s also shipping the phone with the latest and super-fast UFS 4.0 storage, that helps improve app load times and in certain cases in-game performance as well.

OnePlus 11 is another phone that utilises the power of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC for powering games. While the chipset is obviously at the heart of everything good the OnePlus 11 does in the gaming department, what also makes gaming on the device an enjoyable experience is the presence of a fast refresh rate display that’s also one of the most colour accurate AMOLED panels on a phone at the moment. This essentially means that when you game on the OnePlus 11, the visuals generated by the core hardware of the device, look as real, and as vibrant as they can on a phone right now. So buy this phone if you want a device that can make games look alive and feel immersive thanks to the big, colour accurate display on the device.

Powered by the custom Tensor G2 chip that’s been developed especially for the Pixel 7 series of phones, this latest flagship from Google is a beast for gaming. While the phone’s not as powerful as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chips on the list, or for that matter, the A16 Bionic SoC chip device, the iPhone 14 Pro Max, we can still get very good gaming performance on the Pixel 7 Pro. It’s big display, and battery ensure that games not only run on the device, but also look great and run longer on the Pixel 7 Pro compared to many of its competitors.

This is another phone that does not feature the most powerful chipset that’s available on a phone right now, but, it still packs enough to run the most demanding of titles at highest of settings without a hitch. The A15 Bionic SoC inside the device may pale in comparison to the A16 Bionic found inside the iPhone 14 Pro Max, but you do get a similar sized display and battery as the flagship iPhone for this year to make the iPhone 14 Plus a very good phone for playing games on it.

If you’re not exactly in the mood for breaking the bank, but still want a phone that can run games at the highest settings and that too in a stable manner, then your best bet is the OnePlus 11R. It’s powered by the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 which sits just below the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC, and brings to the table good thermal efficiency and stable peaks to run any game you throw at without much trouble. Depending on your variant of choice, OnePlus has paired this chip with up to 16GB of RAM on the device, for smooth, lag free experiences. Plus, you also get a big 6.74-inch fast refresh rate panel and a big battery that can charge at a superfast speed of 100W to ensure there’s very little that comes between you and the games you want to play on the device.

One of the best performing Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 devices we’ve tested to date, the Realme GT 2 Pro is a beast when it comes to gaming. During our tests it performed extremely well in games and did even better in benchmark tests where it even beat some higher priced phones with its performance in synthetic benchmarks. The GT 2 Pro is also among the rare breed of phones that come with flat screen displays. So if you’re looking for a device that’s good for games and benchmarks and also has a flat screen panel that doesn’t interfere with your long gaming sessions, then this is the device for you.