Samsung just Unpacked its latest Samsung Galaxy S25 phones, and now I am going to repackage them for you with a gaming focus — Samsung states that the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset is equipped with Vulkan Engine and “improved Ray Tracing, which makes for smoother and more realistic mobile gaming.”
But what does that even mean? Well, ray tracing simulates realistic lighting, but the technology isn’t perfect. Just this year we’ve seen major improvements in the industry with technology like DLSS 4, so it makes sense that the Snapdragon 8 Elite is improving as well. However, there aren’t any details about what the upgrades actually are.
We do know that the GPU is 30% stronger than the previous generation Snapdragon. With that and the improvement to ray tracing, how long will we need to wait before we can play AAA games natively? Xbox Game Pass is a boon for smartphones, but I don’t think we’re far away from a smartphone competing with handheld gaming PCs (if developers put in the work).
The Galaxy is expanding
Listen, I love the focus on gaming, but Samsung didn’t dive into the gritty details of what the Snapdragon 8 Elite can do. Even Qualcomm didn’t go very far, only mentioning that the GPU is in fact Qualcomm Adreno. If it’s the same chip we’ve seen in laptops like the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7, then it’ll be decently powerful for a smartphone.
Unfortunately, mobile gaming is a different beast from handheld gaming PCs and gaming laptops. It’s not about performance, it’s about architecture. Specifically, ARM architecture. That’s why gaming on Snapdragon X Elite laptops is troublesome. A lot of cheat engines in modern PC games aren’t compatible with ARM, so multiplayer games get shot. And in the case of Xbox Game Pass, the Windows app, at the very least, is not compatible with ARM, either.
What does this mean for AAA gaming on mobile devices? If we’re going to play these games natively, then developers need to get on the ARM train. I think if smartphone manufacturers push this issue then we could see more movement. However, Samsung, and others, may be comfortable where they are, considering mobile gaming rakes in billions of dollars every year.
There's hope
But I’ll tell you what, if Samsung spearheaded the charge to get developers working on ARM compatibility, and we see Xbox Game Pass running natively on a Galaxy device, I would throw money at that phone so fast.
So while the Samsung Galaxy S25 phones may offer impressive gaming performance, we won’t see drastic changes to the games we can play until ARM gets a glow up in the industry. For now, check out our ongoing coverage of the Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2025 event.
