Today's technology has brought about significant advances to the mobile phone arena. One of those advancements come in the form of gaming performance, where smartphones designed for everyday communication are now capable of playing demanding games. One such phone that does that very well is the Xiaomi Mi 9.
The Mi 9 is the Chinese tech giant's latest flagship and is fitted with the latest and most powerful of chipsets in a smartphone today, which is Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855. GSM Arena reports that the Xiaomi Mi 9 is now the fastest Android smartphone in the monthly AnTuTu ranking, dethroning the Lenovo Z5 Pro GT which also uses the same processor.
With a powerful chipset and fast performance, users will likely wonder how the new AnTuTu champ fares when it comes to playing video games. Thankfully, the nice guys at XDA Developers have an answer: the new Mi 9 "can emulate GameCube and Wii games like a champ"
Using the Dolphin emulator app, XDA Developers played legendary GameCube titles such as "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess" and "Super Mario Sunshine," as well as Wii titles "Mario Kart Wii" and "Super Mario Galaxy" on two Xiaomi handsets -- the older Mi Mix 2S and the newer and more powerful Mi 9.
The results, they said, are "incredible." The Xiaomi Mi 9 handles all the games with relative and noticeable ease compared to the Mi Mix 2S.
It is able to load the Super Mario Sunshine maps faster, has better audio, and though some differences are quite subtle, they are noticeable and matter a lot when playing the game.
The Mi Mix 2S suffers from a lot of lags, crackling audio, and long loading times when running The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. The Mi 9, on the other hand, does it effortlessly. This will prove beneficial in the later parts of the game when more things are happening in-game.
XDA Developers also ran the PlayStation 2 title "The Simpsons: Hit & Run," and found a significant difference in performance between the two phones. The Mi Mix 2S is having a hard time running the game and is suffering from a lot of lags. The Mi 9, on the other hand, is "near flawless." It has better audio, faster loading times, and a lot less lag.
They said the Snapdragon 855 does pretty well when it comes to running Wii and GameCube titles using the Dolphin Emulator. It's interesting to see, though, how other Snapdragon 855-powered smartphones do in gaming when they're made available to the public.
