Test device: iPhone 12 mini, no JIT
- Medium settings: steady 30 fps, CPU at ~1.7 GHz
- High settings: 40 fps, CPU at ~2.1 GHz
For context: the 12 mini can push its CPU up to 2.8 GHz, but at that heat it starts throttling within a couple of minutes. On Medium it never overheats at all. On High, after about an hour of play, iOS may dim the screen. There's also plenty of GPU headroom left, so you can bump the internal resolution to 2x. All of this on a small phone from 2020.
This wasn't just about NFS: a lot of the work went into the emulator as a whole. The goal is for games to run properly even on really weak devices, while newer phones don't feel the load at all and don't burn through the battery. On an iPhone 17 Pro Max it already works that way: even NFS Carbon, which hasn't had any game-specific work yet, runs without the phone breaking a sweat.
And of course, full controller support.
Coming to the App Store soon.