The lack of native AAA games on Android remains a disappointment, especially when considering the impressive power of the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset. This new hardware is more than capable of delivering a premium gaming experience on mobile devices, but the challenge lies in convincing developers to optimize their titles for the platform.
Take Cyberpunk 2077, for instance — running this visually demanding game on even low settings is no small feat. Yet, a new video demonstrates that, with the right optimizations, the Snapdragon 8 Elite can maintain a stable 60FPS, even for a game as resource-intensive as this one.
Snapdragon 8 Elite Achieves 60FPS in Cyberpunk 2077 at 720p
In a gameplay video shared by @cozy_OSS, Cyberpunk 2077 is shown running at a consistent 60FPS on a Snapdragon 8 Elite-powered device. The video clearly shows the framerate counter, and what stands out is the stable performance with no dropped frames during a combat-heavy sequence — one of the most demanding parts of the game.
This smooth performance is particularly impressive given that the Snapdragon 8 Elite has previously outperformed the AMD Radeon 780M in 3DMark benchmarks, setting high expectations for its ability to handle AAA games.
However, to achieve that 60FPS target, the game had to be set to low graphical settings, with the resolution reduced to 720p. While this might seem like a trade-off, smaller mobile screens mitigate some of the visual degradation seen at lower resolutions. The pixel density of smaller screens means that users are less likely to notice the drop in visual fidelity, making the gaming experience still enjoyable for most players.
Emulation Makes Cyberpunk 2077 Playable on Snapdragon 8 Elite
It’s worth noting that Cyberpunk 2077 isn’t running natively on Android — instead, it’s being emulated through GameFusion software. This same emulation tool also allowed the Snapdragon 8 Elite to run A Plague Tale: Innocence, delivering over double the framerate of the previous-gen Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.
While this is a promising sign of the chipset’s capabilities, the lack of native Android support for such AAA titles remains a gap in the mobile gaming ecosystem.
Another important takeaway is that the Snapdragon 8 Elite does not have ray tracing enabled in Cyberpunk 2077 — a feature that would demand even more processing power. While the chip supports hardware-accelerated ray tracing, enabling this feature would likely result in significant performance drops.
For ray-traced graphics, CD Projekt RED and NVIDIA recommend using an RTX 4000 series GPU, highlighting the challenges of running such “eye candy” features on mobile hardware.
The Need for Developers to Embrace Mobile Gaming Power
A few years ago, running an AAA game like Cyberpunk 2077 on a smartphone would have seemed impossible. Today, the Snapdragon 8 Elite shows that it’s more than capable of handling demanding titles with impressive performance, even if sacrifices in visual settings are necessary.
If mobile gaming is to reach its full potential, it’s time for developers — including CD Projekt RED — to take Android platforms like the Snapdragon 8 Elite seriously and bring their games to mobile. With hardware like this, the future of AAA gaming on smartphones looks promising, but only if developers step up and deliver.
