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The rise of the Android gaming phone
Episode 25 • 30th August 2022 • Android Bytes (powered by Esper) • Esper.io
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On this episode of Android Bytes: mobile gaming. People play into it. There's money to be made in it. And a lot of it gets done on Android. So, how do you build an Android device catering to that market? We talk with Chih-hao Kung, Global Technical PR Director for ASUS, a company known for its PCs that's had a hand in advancing Android gaming devices with its ROG Phone series.

  • 01:37 - Why does ASUS invest in mobile gaming hardware?
  • 05:30 - What does the mobile gaming market look like?
  • 15:41 - Why did early gaming phones fail? What kicked off the recent boom in gaming phones?
  • 21:44 - How big is the mobile gaming market?
  • 26:29 - What are some gaming phones innovations that have trickled down to regular devices?
  • 30:49 - How does smartphone cooling work? What are some of the recent improvements in cooling a smartphone?
  • 39:32 - What challenges did ASUS face in getting developers to support the ROG Phone accessories?
  • 47:50 - Why are refresh rate options in games so inconsistent between devices?
  • 54:35 - What's the deal with game controller support on Android?
  • 56:25 - How is Google addressing fragmentation when it comes to Android game development? How will these measures affect OEMs?

Android Bytes is hosted by Mishaal Rahman, Senior Technical Editor, and David Ruddock, Editor in Chief, of Esper.

Esper enables next-gen device management for company-owned and managed tablets, kiosks, smart phones, IoT edge devices, and more.

For more about Esper:

New from the Esper blog:

Our music is "19" by HOME and is licensed under CC BY 3.0.

Transcripts

David:

Hello, and welcome to Android bites powered by Esper I'm David Ruddick.

David:

And each week I'm joined by my co-host Michelle ramen.

David:

As we dive deep into the world of Android.

David:

And this week we're touching on the intersection of two industries that I

David:

think I, I think everybody in the Android world, like gaming a little bit, at least.

David:

So we're gonna talk about Android and gaming hardware and Michelle.

David:

Yeah, we have very special guest.

David:

I.

David:

Thanks,

Mishaal:

David.

Mishaal:

I think, you know, the guest, the company that he works for,

Mishaal:

I think needs no introduction.

Mishaal:

You know, Asus has been around for literally decades and unless you're

Mishaal:

totally unfamiliar with computing hardware, in which case, I'm kind of

Mishaal:

curious how you even ended up listening to this podcast in the first place, this tech

Mishaal:

brand, you know, they have their hands in all sorts of PC and PC adjacent spaces and

Mishaal:

their Republic gamers or Rog subbrand is particularly well known among PC gamers.

Mishaal:

You may not know, or probably have heard if you're an were enthusiast

Mishaal:

that Asus, they also make smartphones.

Mishaal:

They have been doing so for quite some time, actually they weren't

Mishaal:

smartphones before Android came to the market, but they were making

Mishaal:

phones before Android was the thing.

Mishaal:

But today their two most prominent Android smartphone lines, the Zen

Mishaal:

phone, which is like a regulator for the average everyday user and the Rog phone.

Mishaal:

The Zen phone started in 2014.

Mishaal:

The Rog lineup started in 2018 respectively.

Mishaal:

So today on the show, as David mentioned, we invited a guest

Mishaal:

to talk about gaming hardware.

Mishaal:

So we've invited Chiha Kong.

Mishaal:

Who's the global technical PR for smartphones.

Mishaal:

ATUs to talk to us about this intersection between mobile

Mishaal:

gaming, hardware and Android.

Mishaal:

So thank you for joining us, Joe.

Chih-hao:

Yeah.

Chih-hao:

Thank you very much.

Chih-hao:

Happy to be.

Mishaal:

So it's been over four years since the first RRG phone was released

Mishaal:

and there have been four successes to it.

Mishaal:

The most recent one being the RRG phone six series, which was announced last

Mishaal:

month, I believe so for those wondering why there's been four successors in

Mishaal:

four years, even though we're now at the RRG phone, six series, look up

Mishaal:

the superstition around the number four, and then you'll understand

Mishaal:

why there's a lot of brands that just skip the number four entirely.

Mishaal:

So anyway, back to the topic at hand, clearly Asus believes in and is

Mishaal:

invested in its gaming phone lineup.

Mishaal:

Considering there are now four successors to the original Rog phone yet, from

Mishaal:

what I've read online, you know, seeing the earnings reports, this belief

Mishaal:

hasn't converted into profitability.

Mishaal:

So I wanted to ask you chiia what about the mobile gaming market

Mishaal:

drives Aus to continue its in.

Chih-hao:

Right.

Chih-hao:

I, I think it's a good question.

Chih-hao:

I, I won't comment so much about the profitability or the financial aspects of

Chih-hao:

it, but rather if we look at the gaming aspect or the Rog phone lineup, you know,

Chih-hao:

our Rog Republic of gamers brand, it's been around for, for quite some time.

Chih-hao:

So why do we do the Rog phone?

Chih-hao:

Right.

Chih-hao:

Why, why do we invest into this category?

Chih-hao:

It really boils down to what the brand is, what the brand Rog Republic of gamers,

Chih-hao:

what do we want to do with that brand?

Chih-hao:

And what does that brand want to provide for, uh, let's say our, our users

Chih-hao:

throughout the ages, you know, categories.

Chih-hao:

So R G originally started as making motherboards, right?

Chih-hao:

So it was, uh, the, the first product we put the Rog label on.

Chih-hao:

It was, uh, one of our more high end motherboards.

Chih-hao:

And that was designed with more enthusiast features.

Chih-hao:

So over the years, the Rog brand.

Chih-hao:

If you follow Asus closely, which I assume most people don't, but you

Chih-hao:

know, in the industry, you will find that we kind of branch out into almost

Chih-hao:

every aspect of gaming in terms of gaming, peripherals, gaming hardware.

Chih-hao:

If it's with gaming, there's going to be a product or most

Chih-hao:

likely with the IG logo on it.

Chih-hao:

Right.

Chih-hao:

Gaming phones is not an exception, but what took us so long in a way,

Chih-hao:

Rob, I think one is, is the hardware.

Chih-hao:

Ready for it.

Chih-hao:

And is the timing correct?

Chih-hao:

Do we see that segment of gamers become significant enough and are the existing

Chih-hao:

solutions good enough to address that niche or that need in a way?

Chih-hao:

So we might not always go head on at the beginning, I should say, but, uh,

Chih-hao:

if gamers are moving somewhere or adding in, let's say a way to play games,

Chih-hao:

we strive to meet them in that area.

Chih-hao:

Right?

Chih-hao:

Be it, the DIY PC traditional PC builds all the components inside

Chih-hao:

or be it laptops, you know, gaming peripherals, headsets, game keyboards,

Chih-hao:

mice monitors, and of course gaming phones the topic of today.

Chih-hao:

So I think that kind of gives a good explanation.

Chih-hao:

Why we continue to invest into this.

Chih-hao:

The smartphone is maybe arguably the most personal smart device that we own.

Chih-hao:

Right.

Chih-hao:

Most of us own tons of different devices, but the smartphone is the

Chih-hao:

one that's closest to us or that we touch on most of during the day.

Chih-hao:

So it also keeps us connected to people, to users or to gamers

Chih-hao:

in this specific, you know, how people interact with devices.

Chih-hao:

I think that's an important aspect of product design.

Chih-hao:

So in that sense, it, it, it makes a lot of sense for us to

Chih-hao:

engage into this category and, and develop it and see what we can do.

Mishaal:

So I don't think anyone would argue that

Mishaal:

smartphones aren't a big market.

Mishaal:

They're absolutely massive.

Mishaal:

Literally like everyone who's connected to the internet in some

Mishaal:

way, probably owns a smartphone.

Mishaal:

But a couple of weeks ago we talked about different segments

Mishaal:

of the smartphone market.

Mishaal:

We talked about small phones, for example, you know, is there actually a market

Mishaal:

for people to invest in and what people actually buy a small phone and that's

Mishaal:

actually up for debate considering not many companies are making small phones,

Mishaal:

Asus being one of the rare examples, but that's gonna be thinking, you know,

Mishaal:

just because there are gamers who have a smartphone and there's a lot of gamers

Mishaal:

and there's a lot of smartphone users.

Mishaal:

How big is that intersection?

Mishaal:

Are there actually a lot of people who game on smartphones, how

Mishaal:

big is the mobile gaming market?

Mishaal:

Is there actually a huge market for you to tap into?

Mishaal:

Can you talk to us a bit about that?

Chih-hao:

Sure.

Chih-hao:

I, I think in, in terms of absolute size, I would say most smartphone

Chih-hao:

users are not gaming smartphone users.

Chih-hao:

Right.

Chih-hao:

And they are most likely not going to be.

Chih-hao:

So that's on the, let's say the more pessimistic end of the

Chih-hao:

spectrum, I have to look at it.

Chih-hao:

And then on the more positive look or optimistic end is almost

Chih-hao:

everyone who uses a smartphone has played games on their smartphone.

Chih-hao:

Of course, this generally speaking will be a casual game, some easy form of game

Chih-hao:

to just kill some time simply because that's the device you have with you.

Chih-hao:

So, but that gives the potential of growth, right.

Chih-hao:

But also we see several years and I think it's, you know, four

Chih-hao:

years for us, five years, but.

Chih-hao:

Very rapidly, a slow start, but increasing very fast.

Chih-hao:

We see a huge chunk of users where gaming on their smartphone

Chih-hao:

is their primary platform.

Chih-hao:

Now that might seem a bit odd perhaps to most of us.

Chih-hao:

I, I generalize by saying us, you know, the three of us coming, let's

Chih-hao:

say from the more westernized, the immature markets in that sense, maybe

Mishaal:

if

David:

I could just jump in with an analogy here, it's sort of

David:

like, imagine if in 1992 you had a game boy, but not an NES.

David:

Like that would be super weird.

Chih-hao:

right.

Chih-hao:

But also we see that if I just look at myself, how many gaming

Chih-hao:

platforms have I owned over the years?

Chih-hao:

Not all of them, but you know, most of them.

Chih-hao:

And how many do I use at the same time?

Chih-hao:

It's a game on a PC.

Chih-hao:

I obviously game on a smartphone.

Chih-hao:

I have portables.

Chih-hao:

I actually don't have a.

Chih-hao:

Like traditional, you know, Xbox or PlayStation at home, but I could have,

Chih-hao:

so it's not mutually exclusive for, let's say us, or let's say Europe.

Chih-hao:

And we see of course markets like north America where the

Chih-hao:

console is very, very strong.

Chih-hao:

But if we kind of pivot that perspective a bit and look at markets

Chih-hao:

in to the east, such as China, where game consoles have not been

Chih-hao:

a thing for various reasons, right?

Chih-hao:

And you see markets developing countries where the cost of ownership in a way

Chih-hao:

is prohibitive, disposable income.

Chih-hao:

What you choose to put your disposable income on is vastly different.

Chih-hao:

So we do see, you know, nowadays everybody grows up with a smartphone, not just,

Chih-hao:

you know, us here with that privilege, but also in a lot of countries with huge

Chih-hao:

populations of obviously China, you know, markets like Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam,

Chih-hao:

Latin America, Everybody has a smartphone, but not everyone has a gaming piece.

Chih-hao:

You know, the, the entry for me, I've been gaming for 30 something years.

Chih-hao:

So it's very natural for me to game on those.

Chih-hao:

Let's say legacy systems, right.

Chih-hao:

But it's very easy to forget also that a, a PC is quite a large investment,

Chih-hao:

especially if you are going to game on it, console is obviously cheaper,

Chih-hao:

but there's also a lot of games, cost money, and these type of things.

Chih-hao:

So smartphone is something that we naturally, or a lot of

Chih-hao:

people invest money on, and then they are capable to play games.

Chih-hao:

I say capable, uh, not all smartphones, obviously play games.

Chih-hao:

Well, uh, so we do see a large population, especially markets in, in

Chih-hao:

Asia who have only a smartphone started there, let's say gaming career, right.

Chih-hao:

Playing games on a smartphone.

Chih-hao:

If we look at, you know, just my kids, even, you know, in, in our part of the

Chih-hao:

world, They grew up playing games on a smartphone before they play games

Chih-hao:

on a, a PlayStation or an Xbox or an Nintendo, whatever that may be, right.

Chih-hao:

That's their perspective.

Chih-hao:

They're very, very used to, it's not foreign to play

Chih-hao:

games on a smartphone for us.

Chih-hao:

It's more like an addition because we didn't start off

Chih-hao:

playing games on a smartphone.

Chih-hao:

That was not how we used the smartphone, but that's not the

Chih-hao:

same as kids today, or people who don't have access to anything else.

Chih-hao:

Right.

Chih-hao:

And then when you started gaming on a smartphone and, and you know, it's,

Chih-hao:

it's just a form of entertainment.

Chih-hao:

And then you like that, that is your frame of reference.

Chih-hao:

And you want to do it more where you want it to perform better and

Chih-hao:

you may get into competitive games.

Chih-hao:

It's the same lineage as PC gamers, you know, playing counter

Chih-hao:

strike 20 something right.

Chih-hao:

Years ago, it's, it's the same.

Chih-hao:

You kind of start upgrading.

Chih-hao:

So once that momentum gets going, we do see that there are a lot of, uh,

Chih-hao:

or let's say more and more people.

Chih-hao:

Playing games on a smartphone and not because lack of choice, right?

Chih-hao:

Because the preference and wanting to have better performing hardware,

Chih-hao:

because gaming on our smartphone, it occupies more and more of their usage

Chih-hao:

scenario in that sense of a smartphone.

Chih-hao:

So that becomes a, a dominating thing.

Chih-hao:

Uh, if we look at the tech world, from our perspective, we see a lot of people

Chih-hao:

or the industry in general, putting a lot of emphasis on cameras, right?

Chih-hao:

Cameras and photography on a smartphone as if we assume that is the one thing.

Chih-hao:

That's the single one thing that everybody who buys a smartphone,

Chih-hao:

that's what they're gonna do.

Chih-hao:

They're going to spend all of their time taking photos and shooting video.

Chih-hao:

So that becomes, you know, we, we, you just need the best, definitely that that's

Chih-hao:

true for some and in the same vein, right?

Chih-hao:

It's this gaming performance.

Chih-hao:

For those extremes.

Chih-hao:

There are these people who spend a lot of time, uh, playing games and they

Chih-hao:

want the best smartphone for that.

Chih-hao:

And so that's kind of where we go in and I think that market grows

Chih-hao:

more and more larger every year.

Chih-hao:

Definitely.

Chih-hao:

So is there a sizable market?

Chih-hao:

I believe so.

Chih-hao:

Yes.

Chih-hao:

And is it growing?

Chih-hao:

Yes, it is.

Chih-hao:

Uh, we do see that is, you know, as the population grows,

Chih-hao:

I think it's a good analogy.

Chih-hao:

We, we talk about it, uh, internally for many, many years, the number

Chih-hao:

of gamers do not decrease, right.

Chih-hao:

It, the, the, the pool of people who are, who become gamers just keeps increasing

Chih-hao:

because you, you don't stop being a gamer.

Chih-hao:

Right.

Chih-hao:

It's just a form of entertainment, you know, it's not like.

Chih-hao:

Started watching movies.

Chih-hao:

And then suddenly you don't watch movies or you suddenly hate watching movies.

Chih-hao:

It's a choice of what you do, but it's just an additional thing.

Chih-hao:

And now playing games, it's not stigmatized at all.

Chih-hao:

Right?

Chih-hao:

Growing up, maybe 20 something 30 years ago, it could be, you

Chih-hao:

know, it was a bit niche nowadays.

Chih-hao:

It is just, nobody's going to look at you differently.

Chih-hao:

You know, strangely, if you say you like playing sports or you want to

Chih-hao:

go to the movies or you, you know, you play games, it's very normal.

Chih-hao:

So that pool just increases.

Chih-hao:

And then the way we play, how we do it, where we do it on what

Chih-hao:

platform it's just diverging.

Chih-hao:

Right.

Chih-hao:

And, and smartphone is a big part of that.

Mishaal:

The data I agree with you.

David:

Yeah.

David:

Totally on all this uh, because the thing that really resonated to me when

David:

you're talking about when a person first games, more commonly that's on

David:

a tablet or a smartphone now, and more specifically, it's a touch experience.

David:

They expect to be able to interact with the display.

David:

Um, I've had people tell me, like, you know, oh, I've got kids and they

David:

will literally walk up and try to touch any screen, like a giant TV.

David:

Yeah.

David:

Just because they expect that interaction model.

David:

The analog that I bring up is there are all these people out there who say, oh, I.

David:

Talking to my computer.

David:

I don't want to talk to Google or Alexa or whoever.

David:

And my response is, guess what you're going to, because

David:

your kids are doing that.

David:

And that's their first interaction with a computer.

David:

A lot of the time growing up, they come to expect that interaction model.

David:

So I think that totally tracks, obviously, kids who get into

David:

gaming and get into gaming on a phone are gonna wanna have a good

Mishaal:

gaming

Chih-hao:

phone.

Chih-hao:

Right?

Chih-hao:

Exactly.

Chih-hao:

And you know, it it's, it's not always close to our hearts in the way,

Chih-hao:

because we grew up in different times.

Chih-hao:

I mean, every generation has their own way of entertainment

Chih-hao:

or interacting with devices.

Chih-hao:

Just as you say, you know, the first kids now touching a device touch

Chih-hao:

interaction is just second nature.

Chih-hao:

Right.

Chih-hao:

They don't need to learn it.

Chih-hao:

It's just there, but we had to learn it because that wasn't necessarily

Chih-hao:

the first, you know, oh, touch is so bad, but then you, you know, you kind.

Chih-hao:

Realize that no, it's pretty smart.

Chih-hao:

Right.

Chih-hao:

And, you know, gaming, we, we grew up gaming on joysticks, you know, one

Chih-hao:

stick, two buttons or D cross DPAD.

Chih-hao:

But is that really, I tend to think about my own behavior.

Chih-hao:

Is that really the best way to play games, you know, going on, you know,

Chih-hao:

I, I, it's a fair point, right?

Chih-hao:

It's a bit of a tension.

Chih-hao:

I think the, the comment I'm I'm about to make, but one of the things

Chih-hao:

I really thought about recently this year was the steam controller.

Chih-hao:

The control that they made, uh, a few years ago, right.

Chih-hao:

Was very polarizing because it prominently featured.

Chih-hao:

That capacitive touch pad, right?

Chih-hao:

Yes.

Chih-hao:

And people hated it.

Chih-hao:

But if you think about, you know, if you're playing mobile games, mobile

Chih-hao:

games, they do play best with touch.

Chih-hao:

And it makes sense because you can have a much finer grain control with a touch

Chih-hao:

pad, especially on a smaller surface than with the, you know, a digital deep

Chih-hao:

pad or even sometimes with the joystick.

Chih-hao:

So they really had something smart going on there.

Chih-hao:

I think maybe the kind of the adoption rate.

Chih-hao:

Wasn't very good, probably because that's not what, how we are used or

Chih-hao:

the target demographic we're used to controlling games, but yeah.

Chih-hao:

Uh, times change, I think that's the takeaway.

Mishaal:

Yeah.

Mishaal:

And there are certainly, I guess, ahead of their time, which brings me to the

Mishaal:

next thing I wanted to talk about, which is gaming phones themselves.

Mishaal:

The recent wave of gaming phones pretty much started around four, four and a half

Mishaal:

years ago, but they've actually existed well before that there have been gaming

Mishaal:

phones going back more than a decade with the Nokia end gauge, which was like, I

Mishaal:

was literally a child and nothing was out.

Mishaal:

So I have zero experience using that thing, but apparently

Mishaal:

people really loved it.

Mishaal:

And there are still some efforts to get like, uh, Java games poured to it.

Mishaal:

Keep it.

Mishaal:

And then, uh, I do remember the Sony Xperia play because

Mishaal:

like that thing was so cool.

Mishaal:

It was around the time when Sony was really trying to get PlayStation

Mishaal:

gamers to actually buy the Sony Xperia phones that didn't really pan out.

Mishaal:

Then there were a couple of other interim gaming devices released, you

Mishaal:

know, of them also really panned out.

Mishaal:

Cause they also were kind of clunky kind of GBA style form factors.

Mishaal:

And then that brings us to late 2017 with the razor phone one

Mishaal:

with the first razor phone.

Mishaal:

And then just a few months later, the Rog phone to show me black shark,

Mishaal:

the new beer, red magic, you just, all of a sudden had four different

Mishaal:

brands released four different.

Mishaal:

Dedicated gaming smartphones.

Mishaal:

And this wave, I'm actually wondering like what led this wave to kick off,

Mishaal:

cuz surely, you know, a lot of these devices had to have been in development

Mishaal:

behind the scenes for at least a year.

Mishaal:

And so for all of these to suddenly be released in 20 17, 20 18, there

Mishaal:

had to have been something that drove the market to say, we gotta do this.

Mishaal:

Now we can't wait.

Mishaal:

It wasn't just like one company released it.

Mishaal:

Then everyone said, oh, we gotta do this ourselves.

David:

I mean, obviously you wouldn't be able to talk about it, but blink

David:

twice if it's a Qualcomm partner program that started around that time.

Chih-hao:

I mean, I.

Chih-hao:

Can't comment on that part.

Chih-hao:

But I think if we look back on the mobile space devices, like the engage or the

Chih-hao:

experi play, they're good examples.

Chih-hao:

I wouldn't call them.

Chih-hao:

I wouldn't say that they've failed or they didn't pan out in Sofar.

Chih-hao:

It's really difficult to say why we don't see an engage 16 or

Chih-hao:

whatever iteration it will be on.

Chih-hao:

Right.

Chih-hao:

I could be many reasons obviously, but I would say if you look back at two

Chih-hao:

decades or something like that, right.

Chih-hao:

Of smartphones that we've had now you can find almost every form or every form

Chih-hao:

factor, not just for gaming that we're talking about here, but you, you saw some

Chih-hao:

really wild designs of smartphones in the past, so really, really crazy stuff.

Chih-hao:

And you still kind of do, I guess, I guess it's more homogenous now,

Chih-hao:

but that's kind of smartphones was a frontier of technology.

Chih-hao:

And, and still is in a way today where you try different

Chih-hao:

things, you play around with it.

Chih-hao:

The market is huge and because the market is huge, there is also

Chih-hao:

room to do things differently.

Chih-hao:

Right.

Chih-hao:

And we look at the current crop, or, you know, as you said, around, uh, twenty

Chih-hao:

seventeen, twenty eighteen, lots of different gaming smartphones, I think

Chih-hao:

it's why do we see a lot of gaming?

Chih-hao:

I think that time, the mobile gaming market really started booming as

Chih-hao:

well, maybe a few years prior to that.

Chih-hao:

And then it's more of, uh, of course, uh, the Chinese market being

Chih-hao:

a, a big driving factor of that.

Chih-hao:

You know, we have huge gaming publishers there, uh, first party,

Chih-hao:

uh, game producers for mobile.

Chih-hao:

So that kind of started getting a lot of traction and we started seeing games.

Chih-hao:

More and more games, I should say, kind of that critical mass of good

Chih-hao:

games or great games that required more from your hardware from your device.

Chih-hao:

I should say, kind of pushing entry into that segment.

Chih-hao:

And of course, gaming phones have changed a bit from the first ones,

Chih-hao:

especially, you know, the ones that we made, but overall they've been

Chih-hao:

following similar formulas, I think, which is slightly different from the, uh,

Chih-hao:

let's say original gaming smartphones.

Chih-hao:

Like if we mentioned the engage or even the experi play, right.

Chih-hao:

They were trying to be gaming handheld first.

Chih-hao:

Or primarily they weren't being gaming smartphones.

Chih-hao:

Right.

Chih-hao:

They were kind of being PSPS or GBAS, but with phone capability

Chih-hao:

you could kind of call 'em.

Chih-hao:

So, so maybe that's kind of what went wrong in a way, because they

Chih-hao:

were trying to be something that could then easily be replaced by a

Chih-hao:

dedicated handheld gaming device.

Chih-hao:

So right.

Chih-hao:

If you,

David:

and they also, the confluence of like the internet and connectivity

David:

really was the big one, you know, where everybody was online and suddenly that

David:

mattered so much more than like the gaming

Chih-hao:

functionality.

Chih-hao:

Yeah.

Chih-hao:

I mean, they were.

Chih-hao:

In a way they designed themselves to be a secondary device, which is perfectly fine.

Chih-hao:

There's nothing wrong with that.

Chih-hao:

But if you're making a first primary device, but you're making it, so it

Chih-hao:

becomes a secondary device, then people are going to treat it a secondary

Chih-hao:

device and by another device as your first device, but then it becomes when

Chih-hao:

you're a secondary device, then you're competing with the other secondary

Chih-hao:

devices for whatever niches that may be.

Chih-hao:

It can be a lot of different niches.

Chih-hao:

And if we take gaming as a niche, if you are gaming smartphone or your

Chih-hao:

smartphone, that's gaming, capable as a secondary device, then suddenly competes

Chih-hao:

with game boys PSPS or what have you.

Chih-hao:

Right.

Chih-hao:

And as a secondary device, you're going to.

Chih-hao:

Against those devices.

Chih-hao:

So when we looked at Rog phone, it's a primary device, it's a primary

Chih-hao:

device that's designed around gaming.

Chih-hao:

It's not a gaming console, right?

Chih-hao:

It's still a smartphone.

Chih-hao:

So you need to have, or we strive to obviously, uh, to make

Chih-hao:

a good smartphone experience.

Chih-hao:

It doesn't mean that it has to be the absolute best at everything that a

Chih-hao:

smartphone can do, but it has to have that fundamental smartphone experience

Chih-hao:

because we don't expect you to use, or the people who buy the RG phone or use the RG.

Chih-hao:

We don't expect them to use another smartphone.

Chih-hao:

Surely some people do, you know, they carry on two devices, but that's not the

Chih-hao:

fundamental design logic of that device.

Chih-hao:

And maybe that's where this current crop of phones.

Chih-hao:

Got it more correct in a way, perhaps?

Mishaal:

Well, I mean, I'd say there's clear evidence of it succeeding

Mishaal:

and considering the absolute size of the mobile gaming market.

Mishaal:

I think.

Mishaal:

There's no going back, like this is going to continue to be a product niche.

Mishaal:

Like I read a recent report from protocol that cited an analyst

Mishaal:

from NewU the mobile gaming market.

Mishaal:

Is projected to reach a hundred billion this year, just an unfathomable number.

Mishaal:

And that's out of a total of projected 200 billion overall for the gaming market.

Mishaal:

So just half of the entire gaming industry, which is already bigger

Mishaal:

than Hollywood, like way bigger than Hollywood is just mobile gaming.

Mishaal:

And that's just, just, it's just insane.

Mishaal:

Like just so much money there.

Mishaal:

It's, it's, it's really hard for us in the west, you know, who grew up with

Mishaal:

console gaming and PC gaming to wrap our heads around just how big mobile gaming

Mishaal:

is and how much money can be made from it.

Mishaal:

Oh yeah.

Mishaal:

Yeah.

Mishaal:

And I'm sure, you know,

David:

you can speak to this as well, but what I always noticed early on covering

David:

Android, for example, Android market carrier billing was such a huge deal

David:

globally when it rolled out, people were so excited and I couldn't understand at

David:

the time, but what I came to understand was micro transactions are so immensely

David:

popular, especially in the se Asia.

David:

And at the time carrier billing was the way most people process

David:

their micro transactions.

David:

They would bill through their carrier.

David:

Now, obviously we've moved on to lots of direct to consumer banks

David:

and debit situations, online banks, et cetera in Asia, but.

David:

I think you still have that cultural trend.

David:

Whereas in the west micro transactions are a new thing and consumers in the

David:

west generally react quite poorly to them because we are, I think just, I

David:

would say maybe we expect ownership of software and things like that.

David:

We've been trained by that model.

David:

I think they're just like buying video games.

David:

You go to the story, you buy a video game, you get it in the box, you take it home.

David:

There's that cultural expectation.

David:

Whereas probably in Southeast Asia, online gaming for gambling and things like

David:

that have been popular for decades there spending money online and then not really

David:

getting anything back aside from the joy of the experience of playing the game.

David:

That's so much more rooted there and we have it in America.

David:

We have online gambling, of course.

David:

When I look at like, okay, yeah, mobile gaming is poised to be this huge thing.

David:

Well, of course people have been spending money in small quantities with the hope of

David:

winning something or otherwise like, you know, just having a good time for ages.

David:

And this is another proliferation of that, you know, it's, it's not a slot machine.

David:

It's a lot better than the slot machine if you ask me, but people like this stuff.

David:

And I think they get a lot out of it.

David:

And it was hard for people in the west to understand that

David:

you could get that out of a.

David:

People could not relate to that idea.

David:

Meanwhile, they're playing candy crush for like six hours a day on their iPhone.

Chih-hao:

Going back to kind of the, the way of, I I'm saying we are, as you

Chih-hao:

know, from our perspective here is we're used to, as, as Michelle mentioned,

Chih-hao:

you know, we're paying or maybe was, was you, uh, David, we we're pay for

Chih-hao:

a game and then it's done, you know, I've, I've, I've made my transaction

Chih-hao:

and there will be no more transactions, you know, that's how it's gonna be.

Chih-hao:

And, you know, you said that we, we're not so used to micro

Chih-hao:

transactions in games here.

Chih-hao:

That's correct.

Chih-hao:

But also in a way, I would say, if we look at micro transactions in

Chih-hao:

entertainment, it's not that alien to us.

Chih-hao:

Right.

Chih-hao:

You know, let's not talk about gambling, video rental.

Chih-hao:

That's a micro transaction.

Chih-hao:

You could buy the BI movie, but you could also rent it and then you could rent

Chih-hao:

it again and, and, and over and over.

Chih-hao:

Right.

Chih-hao:

But you never got, got to keep it.

Chih-hao:

And then you had these, uh, maybe even closer, you had these,

Chih-hao:

uh, arcades every five minutes, there was a micro transaction.

Chih-hao:

That's a great analogy.

Chih-hao:

Yeah.

Chih-hao:

And then you just kept putting money in and then you play the games or

Chih-hao:

you got these tickets and then you could turn the tickets in and you

Chih-hao:

got the, you know, a plus you or something right now without going into.

Chih-hao:

Good and bad of that type of, uh, let's say business model, I should suppose

Chih-hao:

it's been around, even in, let's say, you know, quote unquote Western

Chih-hao:

cultures for, for a lot of time, not specifically in the mobile games or

Chih-hao:

the gaming or the games, I should say.

Chih-hao:

I shouldn't say gaming, but games, video games.

Chih-hao:

Right.

Chih-hao:

But it's been part of our society as well for quite some time in

Chih-hao:

other forms, you know, if I'm sure you can think of many, many other

Chih-hao:

examples where this phenomenon exists.

Chih-hao:

So this is just another payphone definitely pay as you go, you know,

Chih-hao:

pay, you know, these type of things.

Chih-hao:

It's is it good?

Chih-hao:

Is it bad?

Chih-hao:

Well, I think everybody has an opinion on that.

Chih-hao:

Definitely it's time has changed.

Mishaal:

micro transactions are a hot topic and, you know, since this is not

Mishaal:

a gaming podcast, I'd like to circle back and get back to gaming phones in

Mishaal:

particular, because I'm sure we have a lot more to discuss on gaming phones, Android.

Mishaal:

One of the things that I've noted while watching the rise of gaming phones is

Mishaal:

a lot of the hardware innovations that they first brought to market take.

Mishaal:

For example, razor, one of the first ones to ship a one 20 year display

Mishaal:

on a smartphone they're widely credited with being the first.

Mishaal:

Although I believe sharp did it first with a smartphone in Japan, but Jesus

Mishaal:

was the first to ship a 90 Hertz OLET panel in the first R G phone and the

Mishaal:

first to ship a one 20 Hertz OLET R G phone two you're breaking barriers

Mishaal:

again with the 1 65 Hertz OLET display.

Mishaal:

I don't believe is the first in the rogue phone, six RRG phone six,

Mishaal:

but, um, you know, there aren't many phones that can refresh that quickly.

Mishaal:

Gaming phones have ultimate pushing the boundaries when it comes to memory

Mishaal:

with devices like the RG phone, five ultimate having a whopping 18 gigabytes

Mishaal:

of memory, which is more than a lot of people's laptops or even desktop ECS.

Mishaal:

So why all in this subject, I wanted to ask you to you, how, what are some of

Mishaal:

the other ways that gaming phones have driven innovation in the smartphone?

Mishaal:

So like what other features have you seen trickled down

Mishaal:

from gaming phones to regular

Chih-hao:

devices?

Chih-hao:

Right.

Chih-hao:

I think in terms of hardware, we of course see, as you mentioned, you

Chih-hao:

know, panel animations or pushing the boundaries in panel technology, refresh

Chih-hao:

rates, these up things, the amount of memory, obviously that you put in that

Chih-hao:

starts tricking down, you always quite frequently still get debate or comments

Chih-hao:

or, or questions, you know, do I need 16 gigs around, do I need 18 gigs?

Chih-hao:

Do I need 20?

Chih-hao:

You know, we had the same discussion back when it was 12.

Chih-hao:

Do I need 12 gigs around?

Chih-hao:

I think, I don't think anyone questions that nowadays, but.

Chih-hao:

12, we had questions on eight and so on.

Chih-hao:

Right?

Chih-hao:

So gaming smartphones by virtue of being a high performance platform in a way

Chih-hao:

where we push the boundaries, enjoys the benefit of trying new things on it.

Chih-hao:

So a lot of trickling down, you know, how cooling, I think most of the things that

Chih-hao:

we're talked about, cooling innovations, what are the things that we can do with

Chih-hao:

cooling in that form factor, battery, technology, size of battery, charging

Chih-hao:

speeds and these type of things, but also on the software end, we see, you

Chih-hao:

know, we're trying our things and stuff trickles down, or they get implemented

Chih-hao:

in, let's say regular smartphone errors.

Chih-hao:

But of course, I, I would also agree that the biggest innovation in a way that has

Chih-hao:

impacted almost every flagship out there, regular smart is the fast refresh rate.

Chih-hao:

I remember still the discussions we had back with RG fund one with

Chih-hao:

the 90 Hertz people asking us, why do you need a 90 Hertz display?

Chih-hao:

I can't see a difference.

Chih-hao:

And that was not just a one off comment.

Chih-hao:

We heard that so, so much, you know, I can't see a difference.

Chih-hao:

It's just going to eat up your battery.

Chih-hao:

And now I don't think, you know, nobody claims that anymore.

Chih-hao:

I think it's kind of by being first or, or pushing boundaries or doing things

Chih-hao:

a bit differently, you get questioners.

Chih-hao:

Do you really need that?

Chih-hao:

And do you really need a fast refresh display?

Chih-hao:

No, I guess the answer is no, but is it nice?

Chih-hao:

Is it nicer?

Chih-hao:

Yes.

Chih-hao:

And cooling.

Chih-hao:

As I mentioned, I think a lot of these.

Chih-hao:

It's the experimentation.

Chih-hao:

We see gaming phones equipped with RGB lights, lots of flashy stuff.

Chih-hao:

They're just aesthetics.

Chih-hao:

Just recently we see another phone, right?

Chih-hao:

Following the same vein, but leaning very heavily into that part instead.

Chih-hao:

So we do see a lot of inspiration coming from a lot of different aspects of

Chih-hao:

gaming phones and, and gaming phones obviously take inspiration from a lot

Chih-hao:

of other industries and areas, you know, not just from smart phones, but

Chih-hao:

you know, we're looking at what we're doing on PC, on the larger platforms.

Chih-hao:

And, and, you know, there, there's just a lot of, I think the biggest trickling in

Chih-hao:

a way is that to have that open mind, to allow us to try things play around with.

Chih-hao:

To put a 6,000 milliamp hour battery inside a phone and then

Chih-hao:

see what we can do with it.

Chih-hao:

And that, that starts coming down.

Chih-hao:

And, you know, we will wonder the first to really, really push

Chih-hao:

5,000 million hours in our phones.

Chih-hao:

And now it's really, really common.

Chih-hao:

So these things, uh, yeah, I think that's the best part of gaming phones.

Chih-hao:

We just get to play around with them and, and do lots of fun stuff.

Chih-hao:

And some work obviously very well, and some might stay on gaming smartphones

Chih-hao:

only, or maybe they don't pan out and, and, you know, start going away.

Chih-hao:

So yeah,

Mishaal:

one of the things that you brought up a couple of times, and

Mishaal:

which actually has trickled down to other devices, you know, just, you

Mishaal:

know, the cooling technologies from what we've seen from most of you

Mishaal:

don't know, most arm devices are fan because arm chips are intended to be

Mishaal:

placed inside a very low power devices, generally running low power workloads.

Mishaal:

But as we're seeing with arm expanding into the realm of high performance

Mishaal:

computing, and we're seeing devices that.

Mishaal:

To be able to run high power workloads, especially gaming is one such very

Mishaal:

high demanding sustained workload.

Mishaal:

You need these devices to be able to run at their maximum or near their maximum

Mishaal:

clock speeds for both the CPU and the GPU, but doing that draws more power.

Mishaal:

It generates more heat and it drains the battery.

Mishaal:

So you want to be able to sustain the performance while also reducing

Mishaal:

the heat generated so that you're actually able to hold the device

Mishaal:

in your hand while you're gaming.

Mishaal:

There's so many different things you can do to sustain that performance.

Mishaal:

You know, you can tweak the kernel to decide how to ramp up.

Mishaal:

The clock speeds went to rent them up, like went to move tasks between

Mishaal:

the clusters in the, in the CPU.

Mishaal:

But then on the hardware side, you also have cooling solutions that are

Mishaal:

integrated into the design of the phone.

Mishaal:

We've heard of like graphite sheets or like copper vapor chambers.

Mishaal:

And these have been seen first since the innovations have

Mishaal:

been led by gaming hardware.

Mishaal:

And now a lot of, or at least most flagships, at least have one

Mishaal:

form of internal cooling solution.

Mishaal:

They might not be as large or as robust as puts on gaming phones, but

Mishaal:

flagships disease tend to have them.

Mishaal:

So I wanted to ask you to how OEMs have to play this delicate balancing act

Mishaal:

between designing a flagship to your device with a flagship to your chip set.

Mishaal:

Considering this onward, this upward trend of these chips becoming more and more

Mishaal:

power on green, more and more powerful.

Mishaal:

You have to keep up these cooling advancements have to keep up

Mishaal:

with these more powerful chips.

Mishaal:

So what are some of the recent innovations that have come out in cooling that

Mishaal:

enable OEMs like Acus tame, these SOCs?

Chih-hao:

Right.

Chih-hao:

I think cooling in a smartphone as a topic that is very easily misunderstood.

Chih-hao:

If I try to phrase myself even experience people or, or people experience tech

Chih-hao:

often get it wrong, or, or there are misconceptions of, of cooling, right.

Chih-hao:

The innovations or how should I say the way we begin with, you know, the first

Chih-hao:

thing, if we talk, you know, I could talk about cooling on smartphones forever,

Chih-hao:

but one of the main things of cooling on our smartphone passively cool, right?

Chih-hao:

Is the size limitation.

Chih-hao:

You don't have a lot of physical size.

Chih-hao:

It's not like a laptop.

Chih-hao:

It's not like a big PC.

Chih-hao:

And then the second thing is that heat.

Chih-hao:

We tend to think about heat.

Chih-hao:

As in, if my phone doesn't feel hot, then the cooling is doing

Chih-hao:

its job, but that's not correct.

Chih-hao:

That's the opposite.

Chih-hao:

It's the, it's the opposite.

Chih-hao:

Exactly.

Chih-hao:

If your phone is cool to the touch and you know, it's performing work and you know,

Chih-hao:

it, you know, it's, it's a powerful chip.

Chih-hao:

It means simply or generalizing.

Chih-hao:

It means.

Chih-hao:

We're masking the heat.

Chih-hao:

We're hiding the heat from you, but it means the heat stays inside the device.

Chih-hao:

But what does that mean?

Chih-hao:

Then when the heat stays inside or close the chip, the chip gets hot, obviously,

Chih-hao:

and then it will start throbbing.

Chih-hao:

It will start throbbing down and, and lower its performance really, really fast.

Chih-hao:

So that leads to of course, lower performance gaming phones, kinda

Chih-hao:

exposed that a lot in the way that we prioritized sustained performance.

Chih-hao:

I, I should say we as an ACEs.

Chih-hao:

Meaning the heat has to go somewhere.

Chih-hao:

It has to go somewhere.

Chih-hao:

So a lot of the cooling innovations that you mentioned are vapor, chambers, heat

Chih-hao:

pipes, graphite sheets, different thermal compounds, and these type of things.

Chih-hao:

They work with transferring the heat away from the, the system or the chip that's

Chih-hao:

producing it and moving it outwards.

Chih-hao:

No.

Chih-hao:

However you would like to do it.

Chih-hao:

And, and there are a lot of different ways and moving it away

Chih-hao:

and Mo and spreading it around.

Chih-hao:

So you see ever larger VCs and larger graphic sheets,

Chih-hao:

and these type of things is.

Chih-hao:

It's in a way it's a thermal soak.

Chih-hao:

So you can envision it as a bathtub and then you have the

Chih-hao:

heat is the faucet, right?

Chih-hao:

So you have, you can have a small trickle of heat and you know, very

Chih-hao:

little water and then you don't need a lot of cooling at all.

Chih-hao:

Or you could, you need a type of cooling, you need a bathtub, and that

Chih-hao:

can just soak that water and a small, small drain, but it can keep up.

Chih-hao:

But if your drain pipe in that way, your or your outlet is too small.

Chih-hao:

Your bathtub is also too small, but the incoming flow of heat is too hot.

Chih-hao:

What ha or too much, you know, your bathtub will overflow.

Chih-hao:

So gaming phones have taken different routes.

Chih-hao:

Some, you know, uh, you can have active cooling, you, you know, in

Chih-hao:

our case, we don't so much believe in built in cooling, but we have

Chih-hao:

active cooling in the form of the fan.

Chih-hao:

They are active cooler.

Chih-hao:

And in the latest iteration we do, uh, with the thermal electro chip,

Chih-hao:

even more powerful cooler in that way.

Chih-hao:

So that's basically one part of many of enlarging the tub, right?

Chih-hao:

So if you think about the VCs that we do, gaming phones are big and

Chih-hao:

they're big for many, many reasons.

Chih-hao:

One of the reasons of course is we add mass.

Chih-hao:

We have a physical size that can eat that heat.

Chih-hao:

In a way, right?

Chih-hao:

It will soak up the heat and we can use graphite sheets,

Chih-hao:

different compounds with Rog.

Chih-hao:

From six, we use a very, uh, unique and the first time, you know, a BN

Chih-hao:

compound, a boron nitro, thermal pace compound that we kind of sandwich

Chih-hao:

in between the motherboards to draw heat from all angles and out into

Chih-hao:

the mid frame, to, towards the front, towards the back and spread them out.

Chih-hao:

So that becomes the intermediary place for the heat to go,

Chih-hao:

you know, out to the phone.

Chih-hao:

And then the fan then can extract that, you know, last bit, if, if you want that

Chih-hao:

ultimate, uh, performance, there's no magic in the way that if a smartphone

Chih-hao:

is performing really, really fast and given the performance of the flagship

Chih-hao:

chips today, they are going to become hot and that heat just has to go somewhere.

Chih-hao:

It doesn't disappear.

Chih-hao:

So if your phone is hot, then it's doing something right.

Chih-hao:

It's doing something correct.

Chih-hao:

But also in a way.

Chih-hao:

It's not nice.

Chih-hao:

It's not that good because you don't want to feel, you know, a hot phone.

Chih-hao:

So yeah, I think that's kind of what we're trying to work on.

Chih-hao:

How do we right.

Chih-hao:

Move the heat, avoid hotspots, spread them around and then make sure we

Chih-hao:

have a system to kind of extract that final bit, but it all depends on the

Chih-hao:

performance, target your setting, schedulers and the way we tune for games

Chih-hao:

that that plays a big role as well.

David:

Quick question, just because this has always interested me, and

David:

I've never talked to somebody who's actually like worked on a product

David:

like a gaming phone in this way.

David:

So one of my suspicions about gaming phones on the thermal side has long

David:

been that many users play while charging and that this creates like

David:

heat soak situations with the battery.

David:

And that is a big part of the increased thermal workload.

David:

You're much more likely to throttle when you soak the battery because that's the

David:

biggest heat sink in the whole damn phone.

David:

And once it gets warm, like what do you do?

David:

So is that something that like, you know, you'all have

Mishaal:

designed

Chih-hao:

around.

Chih-hao:

Yeah, there, there are a few ways that we can do it.

Chih-hao:

O obviously I, you know, how do we cool the batteries?

Chih-hao:

And when we have a feature called the bypass charging, that allows

Chih-hao:

you to basically turn off charging the batteries at will generally it's

Chih-hao:

inside our kind of gaming software.

Chih-hao:

So you turn that on.

Chih-hao:

If you want to, uh, while playing, uh, your game and the charger will

Chih-hao:

provide power to the system, but not additionally charge the, the battery.

Chih-hao:

So that's one part, I would say, charging the phone while gaming is

Chih-hao:

one part that adds stress to the system obviously, or adds heat.

Chih-hao:

Another one, which people might not think about is having mobile data on the radios.

Chih-hao:

And then now when we go to 5g, they can produce quite a lot of heat.

Chih-hao:

I dunno if you, you know, you can try it, put your phone, set it to download big.

Chih-hao:

And just download a five gigabyte file.

Chih-hao:

I

Mishaal:

have a pixel six pro I, I know what that's like.

Chih-hao:

yeah.

Chih-hao:

It's, you know, it's gonna get hot and, and, you know, CPU's not doing

Chih-hao:

a lot of things, but the modem is, and that adds a lot of heat.

Chih-hao:

Hey, now you have people playing games and then they're downloading

Chih-hao:

stuff in the background or a specific game keeps loading, and then you're

Chih-hao:

adding the charger, this and that just there's so many variables.

Chih-hao:

And of course we try to kind of work around that, uh, to the best

Chih-hao:

of our ability, but that's just what makes a gaming smartphone, I guess.

Chih-hao:

Right.

Chih-hao:

You know, it, there are different ways to, we need to approach it.

Chih-hao:

You know,

Mishaal:

everything you just described with how to actually educate the user.

Mishaal:

It's an evergreen problem.

Mishaal:

I wish you the best of luck in getting every user to understand

Mishaal:

this conundrum that you have.

Mishaal:

But while speaking of problems that gaming phone manufacturers have had to

Mishaal:

overcome, you know, I wanted to talk a bit about the unique hardware accessories

Mishaal:

that were available for the various Rog phones in the lineup, because there

Mishaal:

were several quite innovative ones that I was really interested in using.

Mishaal:

But over time, they became semi discontinued because they were not

Mishaal:

made to be compatible with newer devices and why that happened.

Mishaal:

There's many different reasons, but I wanna talk about a few of them.

Mishaal:

So there's the Y gig display doc.

Mishaal:

For those of you don't know, uses 60 gig Hertz wifi to enable extremely fast

Mishaal:

ultra low latency display mirroring.

Mishaal:

So like you could have your phone and instantly see and connect and

Mishaal:

control whatever's happening on screen by display streaming your

Mishaal:

game from your phone to your TV.

Mishaal:

And then you have the mobile desktop doc, which enables you connecting a

Mishaal:

4k display plus a keyboard and a mouse to the RG phone, these compatible

Mishaal:

with the one, two and three models.

Mishaal:

And then you have the twin view doc, which literally turns your RRG phone

Mishaal:

into Nintendo DS with a second screen on top with also has a high refresh rate.

Mishaal:

So I love these really niche products.

Mishaal:

They were a bit pricey, but they were very unique.

Mishaal:

Innovative products.

Mishaal:

But I think the story of a lot of these kind of niche hardware, accessory

Mishaal:

products, especially these products not really taking off is I think probably

Mishaal:

the lack of software compatibility in particular with the mobile desktop

Mishaal:

doc and the twin view, doc, both were kind of released before Android really

Mishaal:

gained robust support for secondary displays or foldable displays.

Mishaal:

So with the twin view doc, you had so a tiny collection of apps

Mishaal:

that were actually able to split their views between two displays.

Mishaal:

Nowadays, that's something Google is pushing heavily with the mobile desktop

Mishaal:

doc back then, Google didn't really make a big push to optimize apps on desktop.

Mishaal:

But now with 12 L and 13, you have Google saying, make your apps compatible

Mishaal:

with all large screens, whether that be Chromebooks, whether that be windows,

Mishaal:

PCs, and whether that be tablets.

Mishaal:

So I wanted to ask you, like, can you talk a bit about the

Mishaal:

challenges you faced in getting developer buy-in on these products?

Mishaal:

Do you think if you were to re-release these products, hypothetically

Mishaal:

today, it would be easier to convince game developers to

Chih-hao:

support.

Chih-hao:

I'll start by answering the second question.

Chih-hao:

Do we have an easier time today than we had in the first generation?

Chih-hao:

And the answer is yes, it's easier.

Chih-hao:

I wouldn't say it's easy, but it's easier also it, it just ties in, you know, is

Chih-hao:

it easier to, for us to get people to understand, you know, any type of people

Chih-hao:

to understand what is a gaming smartphone?

Chih-hao:

You know, people are gaming on their smartphone.

Chih-hao:

That is something we tend to not need to explain so much anymore.

Chih-hao:

So in the same vein, as in, you know, oh, here's a gaming

Chih-hao:

smartphone and it makes sense.

Chih-hao:

Let's do things together, you know, to optimize for gaming smartphones.

Chih-hao:

It's easier.

Chih-hao:

And then going back to the first question, It's still difficult, I should say.

Chih-hao:

And I assume it is down to the nature of the market as it is right

Chih-hao:

now, or the way game developers spend a lot of time, uh, obviously,

Chih-hao:

uh, writing, creating their games.

Chih-hao:

And as we mentioned earlier on, you know, the mobile gaming market is huge.

Chih-hao:

It's a, what was it?

Chih-hao:

A hundred billion dollar market.

Chih-hao:

But that market is obviously not comprised of, you know, people on

Chih-hao:

gaming, smartphone, people using gaming smartphones within that market

Chih-hao:

is a very small amount still, right?

Chih-hao:

And even flagship phones is not the dominant category

Chih-hao:

within that slice of cake.

Chih-hao:

So without speaking for game developers, but I can really understand,

Chih-hao:

you know, game devs for mobile.

Chih-hao:

You have such a huge variety of hardware, probably a, a larger

Chih-hao:

spectrum of performance than on PC.

Chih-hao:

Obviously console console, you just have, you know, one or

Chih-hao:

maybe two right now, nowadays you get, you get two per generation.

Chih-hao:

So they optimize most of the stuff for the majority, or they kind of draw a

Chih-hao:

line and then say it has to be this good.

Chih-hao:

And then they put their effort on that.

Chih-hao:

I would assume as well, but with gaming smartphones and flagships becoming more

Chih-hao:

and more popular, more people use it.

Chih-hao:

It makes more sense to offer kind of that extra tier.

Chih-hao:

Right now we see more and more games, almost every top tier mobile game offers.

Chih-hao:

Now, uh, you know, a 30 or a 60 FPS mill.

Chih-hao:

I think that's the, the first thing you'll see that game developers will

Chih-hao:

add a faster F break mode and some games will, uh, add even further on twin view.

Chih-hao:

I, I loved twin view.

Chih-hao:

I really liked it, but as you mentioned, Android, wasn't really

Chih-hao:

ready for it, but we tried it.

Chih-hao:

I loved that.

Chih-hao:

We did that thing, right.

Chih-hao:

That product.

Chih-hao:

Game developers.

Chih-hao:

It was challenging for them to add, you know, because it

Chih-hao:

was only on one device, right?

Chih-hao:

So you have your game and maybe it's played by 20, 30 million people.

Chih-hao:

But you would do something that would only work for the players

Chih-hao:

on one specific device, which weren't obviously the majority.

Chih-hao:

So that was quite difficult to do with a lot of things.

Chih-hao:

Y gig as a thing that was pretty fun, but also it didn't pan out.

Chih-hao:

I think a lot of these things was just, we wanted to try lot things.

Chih-hao:

You know, we it's just a blue ocean don't we don't want to say no to

Chih-hao:

anything, but then over time we see, you know, some things obviously work

Chih-hao:

better than others, mobile desktop doc.

Chih-hao:

We don't have that, but you could use a Dongo that will still work today.

Chih-hao:

Right?

Chih-hao:

It doesn't have to be ours.

Chih-hao:

It's just a USB type C Dongo with, uh, display port out and USB ports,

Chih-hao:

and it's going to work all the same.

Chih-hao:

So there's some aspects that we kind of transform into other parts

Chih-hao:

and some things, it will be great, really fun to revisit them one day.

Chih-hao:

Uh, let's hope for that.

Chih-hao:

And, uh, yeah, it's not so easy, but.

Chih-hao:

I think we've come the furthest out of our, our competitors in,

Chih-hao:

in doing these type of things.

Chih-hao:

And, and we will continue to do a lot of crazy things, uh, I believe,

Mishaal:

and

David:

just to put it out there, Asus rightly deserves a reputation as being

David:

the most, let's say exploratory, when it comes to Android hardware concepts,

David:

I will never forget seeing the original transformer unveiling at MWC, but

David:

Johnny up there in the magician and oh, and then they had it in, you know,

David:

the glass pedestal at the actual booth and we called it, uh, and this was not

David:

meant derogatory because we thought it was hilarious, uh, the turducken phone,

David:

because, you know, you would essentially just keep stacking computing devices on

David:

top of it until you got what you wanted.

David:

So stuff like that obviously was that was so innovative and

David:

totally ahead of the curve.

David:

And Asus has always been doing stuff like

Chih-hao:

that.

Chih-hao:

Yeah, I think it it's really part of our.

Chih-hao:

DNA in a way, right?

Chih-hao:

In product design, not just for smartphone or Android, you know,

Chih-hao:

transformers, the tablets, the pad phone.

Chih-hao:

If you remember it, the phone that slotted into a larger tablet accessory

Chih-hao:

than you got two in one already there we

Mishaal:

started.

David:

That is what I meant.

David:

The pad phone.

David:

Sorry.

David:

Yes.

Mishaal:

So,

Chih-hao:

so that, you know, that kind of lived for three generations, I believe.

Chih-hao:

And, and we, we also had that wild concept, a phone in a tablet in a doc.

Chih-hao:

If you remember, I think it was a transformer.

Chih-hao:

Pad five or something like that

Mishaal:

as the concept?

Mishaal:

Yes.

Mishaal:

The transformer pad,

David:

the original one.

David:

Okay.

David:

That's what I was talking about.

David:

The original transformer pad, because that was a blow everybody's mind moment.

David:

Yeah.

David:

When the phone slotted into the

Chih-hao:

tablet, a lot of crazy stuff and, and RRG phone kind of continues

Chih-hao:

that in a way we just do a lot of, it might seem weird to some, but I think for

Chih-hao:

us, it's, we've been talking about it a lot in, in that it's fun to not always

Chih-hao:

do the same things as everybody else.

Chih-hao:

Right.

Chih-hao:

There are lots of good options out there, but there's no option like the

Chih-hao:

RRG fund or, you know, so that's kind of also what we try to do and hopefully

Chih-hao:

we can keep doing these fun things.

Chih-hao:

It's really fun to do them and some work out and some, unfortunately

Chih-hao:

they don't work out very well.

Chih-hao:

And, and, and then, yeah,

Mishaal:

I think if you look at a lot of these, these, uh, unique.

Mishaal:

I'd say interesting hardware developments.

Mishaal:

The reason a lot of them don't work out that well is because software is

Mishaal:

such a major challenge when you don't have first class support within the

Mishaal:

operating system for these desktop.

Mishaal:

Like, uh, for example, the twin view doc Android didn't really have great support

Mishaal:

for spanning across dual displays at the time, or with the mobile desktop doc

Mishaal:

Android at the time, didn't really have great support for secondary displays,

Mishaal:

which it now is working towards.

Mishaal:

So these are the biggest challenges I'd say for these actual these products.

Mishaal:

And it's something that really only Google as like the gatekeeper of Android.

Mishaal:

Can solve by buying in.

Mishaal:

And it seems like they're finally doing some things on that front

Mishaal:

with Android 12 and their game API game dashboard, et cetera.

Mishaal:

But you did bring up one thing GI about refresh rates that I I'm sure

Mishaal:

many people really want to know.

Mishaal:

So refresh rates we've had phones with over 60 years refresh rates for

Mishaal:

a long time now, and I can tell, like I I've looked at the Android developer

Mishaal:

documentation and there are APIs to determine whether or not a device supports

Mishaal:

certain refresh rates above 60 Hertz.

Mishaal:

But despite how common this is from what I've see most game developers,

Mishaal:

they use like a white list system to decide which devices they want

Mishaal:

to expose their higher refresh rate or higher graphics options on.

Mishaal:

And this is particularly frustrating for users of less popular devices.

Mishaal:

If you have the Samsung link galaxies.

Mishaal:

Sure.

Mishaal:

Your device is probably supported cuz it's very popular Android device, but if

Mishaal:

you have another device with a 98 or one 20 inch display, there's no guarantee

Mishaal:

that your favorite game will expose that option for you even though, you know,

Mishaal:

Your device should be capable of it.

Mishaal:

So can you talk a bit about this inconsistency?

Mishaal:

Why does this happen?

Chih-hao:

I, I don't know exactly.

Chih-hao:

why these things happen.

Chih-hao:

I have my guesses, obviously.

Chih-hao:

I think one of the root causes is specifications do

Chih-hao:

not match the performance.

Chih-hao:

Right?

Chih-hao:

That's number one, a game developer can know, does this

Chih-hao:

phone have a 90 Hertz display?

Chih-hao:

Yes, but this doesn't mean that it has a powerful CP, right?

Chih-hao:

So it could be a really mid range or even quite entry level device

Chih-hao:

nowadays, but they won't run PUBG, let's say at 90 F FP as well.

Chih-hao:

They, they just won't.

Chih-hao:

So should you give the user the option?

Chih-hao:

Anyway, I think on the one hand you could say just enable everything for every.

Chih-hao:

And let the user decide.

Chih-hao:

Right?

Chih-hao:

And in a way, you, you could take that stance.

Chih-hao:

But I also know from kind of, from our experience that a lot of

Chih-hao:

users struggle with that, right?

Chih-hao:

So they will just say, oh, the game runs really bad.

Chih-hao:

There's something wrong.

Chih-hao:

And immediately think that there's something wrong as in it's broken

Chih-hao:

or we've done something wrong or the game developer done something wrong.

Chih-hao:

And I think the only let's say wrong would be that we allowed you to choose.

Chih-hao:

And then there's a lot of this back and forth so I can understand them that they

Chih-hao:

take a more cautionary approach in that we want to make sure that the modes.

Chih-hao:

Turn on for those devices that can handle it above a, let's say an arbitrary line

Chih-hao:

that they draw, whatever that may be.

Chih-hao:

Because as far as I know, there's not a lot of dynamic graphic switching

Chih-hao:

right now in, in Android, you know, it could just scale down automatically

Chih-hao:

and hit a certain target frame rate.

Chih-hao:

That could be a good, maybe, hopefully a solution.

Chih-hao:

Uh, if that would be a good API, that just, it would just switch

Chih-hao:

graphics automatically a lot.

Chih-hao:

And based on that, but yeah, it's a bother in a way.

Chih-hao:

And I understand why it's there.

Chih-hao:

And it's some developers do it on a per device basis and some

Chih-hao:

do it on like a per platform.

Chih-hao:

So they will detect certain platforms and then they will, those settings will appear

Chih-hao:

one of the downside of that or, or, or of anything I would say is that usually

Chih-hao:

it, it takes some time to validate and to make, let's say to have these settings

Chih-hao:

go through the entire flow right process.

Chih-hao:

So you have the latest processors coming out.

Chih-hao:

They're not whitelisted because they're the newest one, so they haven't

Chih-hao:

finished, but we kind of released them.

Chih-hao:

They they're released to the market, uh, before.

Chih-hao:

So this is a common issue every year, generally speak.

Chih-hao:

Eight gen ones, a plus gen one.

Chih-hao:

And then obviously the new ones

David:

coming on.

David:

No, you can even like in that sort of situation with GPU drivers on

David:

desktop PCs, you always have day one patches because there's always

David:

something being shipped before it's

Chih-hao:

actually ready.

Chih-hao:

exactly.

Chih-hao:

And there's also this thing in not just gaming, right?

Chih-hao:

You have, uh, I remember, um, Photoshop, I think it was Photoshop

Chih-hao:

for Android or some type of, no, the camera Photoshop camera from Adobe.

Chih-hao:

That was also on a white list base, like six devices at first.

Chih-hao:

Yeah.

Chih-hao:

And then eight and then 10 and maybe everything.

Chih-hao:

And maybe not it it's just.

Chih-hao:

I assume it's for compatibility.

Chih-hao:

They get a lot of complaints if they just open it things don't

Mishaal:

yeah.

Mishaal:

Yeah.

Mishaal:

We talked about this a lot.

Mishaal:

My favorite F word fragmentation, and we spent a whole episode

Mishaal:

talking about Androids camera problems a couple of weeks ago.

Mishaal:

And you know, this Al problem also is very prevalent in Android game development.

Mishaal:

As a, I was

David:

just gonna say it's because you have like, you know, you have

David:

different versions of Qualcomms, adrenal drivers across devices.

David:

You probably have actual differences in the Android OS distro, like

David:

which Android are you running?

David:

Exactly.

David:

All these things that could affect performance.

David:

And from a developer's perspective, a game dev, if your option is to make the

David:

game available as the minimum viable experience to users of a new device

David:

versus enable all the things and see what happens and your livelihood depends

David:

on that Google play store rating.

David:

What are you gonna do?

David:

Like it's not even a choice,

Chih-hao:

right?

Chih-hao:

Oh, definitely.

Chih-hao:

And, and it's not Android, but I think something that I have learned

Chih-hao:

or experienced over the years is I know, I, I don't know if it's blessed

Chih-hao:

me on a, on an Android blog, but how much effort Microsoft puts in for

Chih-hao:

windows compatibility on hardware.

Chih-hao:

It's quite amazing, right?

Chih-hao:

The, the backend of things, because all of the different choices, all of the

Chih-hao:

different things, it just plays in a way, but then it's, it's that platform,

Chih-hao:

the X 86 platform and EV everything just over the years, it just works.

Chih-hao:

Kind of, yeah.

Chih-hao:

I mean,

Mishaal:

you

David:

know, Microsoft's driver signing model has like enabled windows

David:

to live far longer than I think it otherwise would have, because

David:

literally, like you say, it just works.

David:

You get, you submit your driver to Microsoft as a vendor, you get it signed.

David:

And Microsoft says, yep.

David:

It will work on every version of windows that this signature is valid for.

David:

And with Android, it's just not modular in that way.

David:

You know, the OS wasn't designed

Chih-hao:

that way, you know, touching on this it's the game pad or the game

Chih-hao:

controller situation on Android is also, it can be really frustrating.

Chih-hao:

You, you have the kind of the basic, I, I think there's this Android

Chih-hao:

hardware extraction layer, right.

Chih-hao:

For game pads or game controllers, but then you have

Chih-hao:

games actually not using that.

Chih-hao:

Then they, they will whitelist.

Chih-hao:

Game controllers instead, because then they can ensure

Chih-hao:

that game controllers work.

Chih-hao:

So we kind of run into that every now and then with the kuai, which is, you

Chih-hao:

know, it supports the Android layer.

Chih-hao:

That's perfectly fine.

Chih-hao:

But then you have games that supports, let's say only the Xbox controller.

Chih-hao:

That it doesn't support the other controllers, but they could, and

Chih-hao:

then we need to kind of work around that and add support for that as well

Chih-hao:

and work with developers and so on.

Chih-hao:

So that's, yeah, it's a lot of work

Mishaal:

I think I'm and, and Ben quote me this, cause I'm not an expert on

Mishaal:

input in Android, but I believe prior to Google's development of the Android

Mishaal:

games, SDK, there wasn't really a simple solution for developers to enumerate what

Mishaal:

game controllers are connected to the device and then map those inputs into

Mishaal:

like a, like a game like you can do that.

Mishaal:

You can detect button presses and then map those.

Mishaal:

And like Android has predetermined pre laid out key layout files, that map

Mishaal:

button presses to Linux input presses, but most ski developers, you know, they

Mishaal:

want like a, you would want like a simple solution that tries, okay, we have these.

Mishaal:

Game controller supported.

Mishaal:

And you can just simply add this library into your game and map these buttons to

Mishaal:

certain inputs within the games context.

Mishaal:

And I think that's part of what Google is doing with the Android

Mishaal:

games, SDK and all these various APIs that they're working on.

Mishaal:

And so, you know, a lot of the blamed is not really, can't really be placed

Mishaal:

at the, at the hands of game developers cuz Android, as you mentioned, wasn't

Mishaal:

really built for gaming from the get go.

Mishaal:

Google is playing catch pretty late.

Mishaal:

I'd say considering we're an Android 12 and we're finally seeing all these

Mishaal:

efforts after considering how popular mobile gaming has been and Google

Mishaal:

knows how popular it's been considering how much money they make off of it.

Mishaal:

And like, even with things as like simple, how do you determine if a device

Mishaal:

is performing enough to handle my game running at the highest quality settings?

Mishaal:

There's just no good way to tell the best way is literally just buy a phone

Mishaal:

or add the newest CPU model that, you know, reading a press release from

Mishaal:

Qualcomm saying here's our flagship model.

Mishaal:

Okay.

Mishaal:

Well add that SSC model to our white list.

Mishaal:

Or, you know, just going out and buying devices, like there's no

Mishaal:

real way to tell whether or not a device is performed enough.

Mishaal:

And there are some efforts like the performance class API, but that's

Mishaal:

particularly just for media tasks.

Mishaal:

Then there's no a game mode API, which is kind of like user slash app opt in.

Mishaal:

There are predefined game modes that a developer can say, I want these

Mishaal:

settings applied for this game mode.

Mishaal:

And then the user can select that game mode.

Mishaal:

But because the feature that it's tied to the game dashboard is currently a

Mishaal:

pixel exclusive and hasn't yet rolled out to other devices, which I believe

Mishaal:

is expected to happen with Android 13 through Google play services.

Mishaal:

There's not much of an incentive to support this new game mode API because

Mishaal:

it's only available on a single device that pixel six, but there are things

Mishaal:

that Google is doing to improve the situation and whether or not they'll

Mishaal:

succeed in making it less of a pain for game developers to support

Mishaal:

thousands of different device models.

Mishaal:

Remains to be seen, but considering the absolute size of mobile

Mishaal:

gaming market, I think there's no question that they have to succeed.

Mishaal:

Otherwise they're shooting themselves in the foot.

Chih-hao:

well, I think, uh, yeah, I mean, they're doing a lot of things they're

Chih-hao:

playing catch up, obviously, but it's just because there's so many things to be done.

Chih-hao:

Right.

Chih-hao:

And, and what do you do first, even, even for a company, uh, the size of Google.

Chih-hao:

I think they just have their work cut out for them.

Chih-hao:

Right.

Chih-hao:

They will never be done in, in that sense.

Chih-hao:

And in terms of like the game dashboard and that become, you know, that's

Chih-hao:

part of well, pixel Android, a lot of those things are, are things that

Chih-hao:

we've already done for years, right.

Chih-hao:

On gaming, smart phones on RRG phone.

Chih-hao:

And it's great to see that these things are added to Google's Android.

Chih-hao:

Uh, and hopefully they will kind of trickle down to everybody

Chih-hao:

and, uh, pick them up at will.

Chih-hao:

And depending on how they do, you know, do we need to change our

Chih-hao:

code to just redo the same things.

Chih-hao:

That's also a part of the struggle, right?

Chih-hao:

To, to kind of keep up with Android, but also Android keeping up with the OEMs

Chih-hao:

and, and we do stuff and we invest code and, and there certain ways to do things.

Chih-hao:

And then Android comes in and adds the same thing, but in a different way,

Chih-hao:

and then you need to redo everything or, or how, how do you kind of fit that

Chih-hao:

in, but it, why, you know, let's see, I think one of the big challenges is.

Chih-hao:

Also on how do you tune the performance for your different modes?

Chih-hao:

Right.

Chih-hao:

A very bursty instantaneous performance is very different from sustained

Chih-hao:

performance on a smartphone because you don't have that cooling dissipated

Chih-hao:

capability as larger game systems.

Chih-hao:

Uh, most phones don't have that.

Chih-hao:

So it's how do you work with the CPU course GPU and all the subsystems to

Chih-hao:

kind of get the most out of your device?

Chih-hao:

Having performance that's really, really fast and peak performance for five

Chih-hao:

minutes is vastly different than having it for 35 minutes or even 60 minutes.

Chih-hao:

Basically you cannot have the same performance that you have for

Chih-hao:

five minutes, but over 60 minutes.

Chih-hao:

Well, I mean, there are ways, but they're not very practical

Chih-hao:

for most devices, right?

Chih-hao:

So you have active cooling, you have these things, you have game

Chih-hao:

modes, and then how do our game modes, how do our tuning come in?

Chih-hao:

And is that going to be the same way that Google decides to do it with the API?

Chih-hao:

I, I don't know how that would work, but yeah, they, it's going to be a lot

Chih-hao:

of, uh, trial and error, I suppose, in, in how to make performance, uh,

Chih-hao:

work for short term and, and for long.

Chih-hao:

Because, you know, I would say the workload is so different playing

Chih-hao:

games versus web browsing, I guess, or Netflix or these type of things.

David:

Sure.

David:

You also have just kind of a different barrier for what constitutes

David:

acceptable performance in a video game.

David:

And if you drop below that the users' experience can basically

David:

go from passable to zero.

David:

I don't wanna play the game anymore.

David:

So for developers, obviously, they'd be concerned about that before.

David:

That's why they want to optimize.

David:

So, you know, a ship set does not tell you the whole story, which is,

David:

I think what you see when people talk about the stuff on Twitter,

David:

it's like, oh, well it's a snap drag.

David:

And so, and so, and they're all the same.

David:

They should all perform the same and well in a perfect world.

David:

Yeah, they should but they don't.

Mishaal:

And,

Chih-hao:

but they don't.

Chih-hao:

Yeah.

Chih-hao:

And the devices that they're in are vastly different.

Chih-hao:

Right.

Chih-hao:

We could just take a look at our two devices this year.

Chih-hao:

They both use snap drag and a plus gen one, one is the RG phone.

Chih-hao:

Six, it's a big phone.

Chih-hao:

240 odd grams.

Chih-hao:

And then on the other end, you have a Z 0.9, you know, the 5.9 inch

Chih-hao:

a hundred sixty sixty nine grams.

Chih-hao:

I think they're vastly different.

Chih-hao:

They have the same chip inside.

Chih-hao:

They're not going to perform the same.

Chih-hao:

They simply aren't because they're not built the same.

Chih-hao:

They're not the same size.

Chih-hao:

They, they don't have the same things, but they can offer the same burst performance.

Chih-hao:

Definitely.

Chih-hao:

That's not the same as, you know, we're going to run this and this,

Chih-hao:

or that's again, an impact, right.

Chih-hao:

Max setting and just run it for an hour, you know, you'll see those limitations

Chih-hao:

coming in much sooner on, on the Z phone line than you would on the Rog

Chih-hao:

phone and for a game developer, it it's.

Chih-hao:

How would they know between, out of all of the thousands of

Chih-hao:

phones out there every year?

Chih-hao:

There's hundreds of phones every year.

Chih-hao:

And then a game lives on for, uh, I don't know how long, many, many years.

Chih-hao:

Right.

Chih-hao:

So just so many tiers of performance that they need to keep track of.

Chih-hao:

And I think it's yeah, difficult for them as well.

Chih-hao:

And I don't know if the tools that are kind of offered or being offered, will

Chih-hao:

they be enough, you know, currently to, to kind of solve that problem.

Mishaal:

So GE this has been a very interesting discussion to say to Lisa.

Mishaal:

I know it's a very, very complicated topic and we could definitely talk for

Mishaal:

another hour on this, but, you know, we, we gotta end somewhere and I think now's

Mishaal:

a good time to start closing off and.

Mishaal:

Before I close off, though, I do wanna mention, you know, if this is one space,

Mishaal:

you have to keep an eye on mobile gaming.

Mishaal:

It's not going to stop.

Mishaal:

And with Microsoft moving into bringing Android app support on windows

Mishaal:

11 through the windows subsystem for Android, Google countering

Mishaal:

with the Google play games for PC.

Mishaal:

One of the primary use cases they're touting for both of these platforms is

Mishaal:

gaming and bringing Android games off.

Mishaal:

The PCs has already been the thing among like many, many different gamers

Mishaal:

who are using like simulators, like third party solutions to do this.

Mishaal:

And then, you know, with the, the size of the mobile gaming industry, as we've

Mishaal:

already mentioned, 2022 project to be a hundred billion dollars, like this

Mishaal:

is one industry you cannot ignore.

Mishaal:

It is too big to ignore.

Mishaal:

So learning and understanding, you know, where we stand and how OEMs like Jesus

Mishaal:

are addressing the needs of mobile gamers.

Mishaal:

I think it's a, it's a pretty good way to understand where the winds are flowing.

Mishaal:

Yeah.

David:

And it's an interesting space from the hardware perspective,

David:

because there are so many ways you can build an Android gaming device.

David:

A phone is one form factor for Android gaming, but if you were looking more

David:

into a dedicated gaming device kind of situation, something that is a

David:

home console or a portable console, or even an arcade cabinet machine.

David:

Ark cabinets, running Android.

David:

They already sell them.

David:

They exist and you are in the business of selling these things,

David:

distributing them or supporting them.

David:

You need a way to manage them and that's not always straightforward.

David:

So if you want a partner that's gonna help you end to end from

David:

finding the right hardware.

David:

Picking the right software and then making sure that you can scale that product.

David:

Come talk to us at Esper, we help companies build Android devices,

David:

everything from a climbing machine that weighs hundreds of pounds and has a

David:

giant touchscreen attached to it, to a walkie talkie that first responders

David:

use firefighters and police officers that doesn't even have a touchscreen.

David:

We help so many companies with such a variety of Android products.

David:

And that's why we wanna talk about gaming devices today because it is you.

David:

Smartphones aside, gaming phones, being their own thing, dedicated

David:

gaming devices for Android have been around for a long time.

David:

I mean, really, as long as Android has been around, there's at

David:

least a somebody trying to do a dedicated Android gaming device.

David:

Some of them did not do so well, but I think it's a market

David:

that's right for exploration.

David:

And as we've seen advances in cooling advances in processor performance and

David:

reduce fragmentation at the platform level are helping make this possible.

David:

So again, if that's interesting to you, if you're in that space, come talk to us

David:

at SPER, we can help you scale your device

Mishaal:

business.

Mishaal:

Thanks, David and GE.

Mishaal:

How, where can people find you online if you, you know, are

Mishaal:

on social media or anywhere

Chih-hao:

else?

Chih-hao:

Actually, actually I'm, I'm not, uh, very active on social media.

Chih-hao:

So unfortunately there's no good way to tag me, but, uh, every now and

Chih-hao:

then I will appear somewhere and, uh, yeah, on this podcast, for example,

Mishaal:

Well, thank you for joining us.

Mishaal:

It, it was very nice to have this Frank discussion with you about gaming

Mishaal:

phones and you've been working on this for so long, so I'm sure you

Mishaal:

have a lot of insights that, you know, you've built up over the years.

Chih-hao:

Yeah.

Chih-hao:

Thank you.

Chih-hao:

No, it's been, it's been good.

Chih-hao:

Fun.

Chih-hao:

It's always nice to get an opportunity to talk about the things that we obviously

Chih-hao:

we talk about internally a lot every day, over and over, and, uh, it's been good.

Chih-hao:

Fun.

Chih-hao:

Thank you for inviting

Mishaal:

me and thank you everyone for listening to

Mishaal:

another episode of Android bites.

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