If gaming is your bread and butter, your life and purpose, and your divine mission then you should avoid these five brands like the plague!
Welcome devices
What exactly is a “Welcome” device? To cut to chase, those phones bear the same boot-up/power-off screen with an extremely loud and obnoxious sound. All these phones ran Android Marshmallow or earlier, and has a MediaTek MTK6580 chipset that’s ultra slow and is a pain everytime even for opening simple apps. The battery? Mostly around 2,000mAh to 2,500mAh. The charging speed? Super slow. And everyone of these devices uses the slowest microUSB port around that takes a couple of hours to charge (if you’re lucky). Mostly they have poor audio, fake cameras, very cheap build, and a super dim display that’s either in 480p resolution or less which makes this a hard pass.
You may be tempted to buy these hideous phones that mimic flagship phones because they are offered at an astronomical low price, but instead of buying those, just settle for buying a brand new phone from a trusted manufacturer or if you’re a budget, choose an old flagship phone from two to three years behind, they are just as capable as most brand new phones today.
myPhone
Remember this brand? Yes, this is the phone with an entire map of the Philippines printed on the back of their phones, purely-“Filipino-made”? Yes, they’re still around, but it appears that they haven’t released any new devices yet as of 2021. And as a result, even their most expensive offering to date which is their myT10 tablet isn’t up to par with the bare minimum requirement for gaming so better to avoid all their products for now until they pull a “Cherry Mobile renaissance move” and decide to put actual competitive phones for a reasonable price point. And even their passable smartphone devices are all sold-out on their Shopee and Lazada stores.
Any rugged phones
Even though most rugged phones can withstand even the most toxic gamer manchild tantrum there is, the simple fact here is they aren’t designed for any gaming at all. Sure you can do that on some devices, but the chunky form factor and thick glass are a hindrance to your gaming and are heavy, causing spraining to your precious gaming hands, leaving you on the tail end of your performance. While the large battery capacity are tempting for long gaming durations– leave the rugged phones for outdoors men or people that actually needs phones like these and buy a proper phone with great gaming specs instead.
Entry level Cherry Mobile devices
We love Cherry Mobile from the bottom of our hearts, but man — their entry level phones aren’t simply designed for gaming purposes. Cherry’s Aqua S10 Pro 5G and the elegant Aqua SV are the picks you should choose when gaming comes to mind, but other than that… keep your expectation at bay because there’s a reason why those phones are so cheap in the first place. But it’s good to see Cherry Mobile stepping up their game for the better.
Gaming phones
But wait, what’s this? Why we are listing gaming phones as the one to avoid when you’re literally a gamer salivating for these kinds of phones? Well, let us ask you one question: “do you really need a fully-fledged gaming phone?” Most phones today, while not marketed as gaming phones, can play your favorite FPS, RPG, and emulator phones with minimal to no trouble at all. Besides that, a gaming phone treads between a beefed up phone designed for intense gaming sessions, and an excuse to charge more money for features that you will not use that regularly, and most gaming phones are super expensive because they are “gaming” ones. Just buy a flagship, a capable mid-ranger, or a solid entry-level phone that will handle your gaming habits. Or if you’re gaming 24/7, better buy a PC, tablet, or a SteamDeck instead.
So there you have it, our list for five phones to avoid if you’re a gamer, but keep in mind: you may disagree with some of our picks here, so let us know in the comments if we missed or wrong about something, your feedback is really helpful for our feature articles.
