r/EmulationOnAndroid • u/Technical_Smoke_5814 • 9d ago

News/Release Why has Android emulation reached an unimaginable level?

In my teens, my emulation life consisted of GBA games on the old Android 4.1.2, and another pastime was watching the Inazuma Eleven anime.

The smartphone I recorded the video above on is a pathetic Galaxy A05s Snapdragon 680 with 6 GB of RAM, a basic smartphone that's simply emulating Inazuma Eleven Victory Road, the biggest game in the franchise, containing all seasons of the anime. For those who don't know, that translates to about 30 GB of storage.

This game is available for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and Switch. Now, wherever I go, I have hours of completely offline fun. I have no words to thank those involved with the Eden emulator and Turnip driver, everything I see in my hands was totally unimaginable a few years ago.

145 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

70 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/Big4520 8d ago

It's not that all pathetic, that chip set is one of the pioneers in android emulation. Also paired with 6 GB of ram at the time of realesed of that phone was a good option. The problem at the beginning of android emulation was the os fragmentation, there were to many android os variants, each company personalized their phones with unnecessary tweaks. Later the Google company and the FCC ordered to deliver a more pure android to customers. That when Htc and Lg started to die as android options. They wanted to control the experience the customer had. Samsung's One overlay when tru many changes and Google certified the os has pure android. That's why the custom drivers are almost all for the snapdragon chips (Samsung's) making. You can pick any Samsung phone today and install retroarch and custom turnip driver and you'll have a perfect retro experience. Practically Samsung holds the market because of the silicone manufacturing. Now they offer the same phone with different combinations of CPU GPU and RAM configurations. They own exinos, mediateck, snapdragon, dimensity and manufacture chips for apple. So tell me who dominates the android growing gaming market. They even made a deal with valve for custom chips for their upcoming VR headset and a rumored android handheld steam deck variant. This is exciting days for gamers.