I swapped my iPhone 16 for a gaming phone. Here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly

In the wake of the iOS 26 announcement, I decided to do something stupid. Instead of hopping on the iOS Beta program train to try the new Liquid Glass design, I gave up on my iPhone 16 altogether.

Why? To test if a gaming phone was good enough to be my daily driver. Here’s what I found.

The good

Gaming phones look different

Duh! Of course they do! How else would every one of your friends know that you bought one and you’re gearing up to kick their behinds (no bad words, guys) at Fortnite?
The thing is, I don’t play Fortnite, and as a matter of fact, I haven’t played a mobile game since Fate/Grand Order back in 2023.

But gaming aside, several of my friends (and somewhat surprisingly, two female friends) have shown interest in my new gaming phone since the switch.

Somehow, the transparent back glass, the camera system flush with the body, and the spinning cooling fan intrigued pretty much anyone who has seen this thing (reveal of the model toward the end).

Bye-bye, battery anxiety

I was prepared with a solid battery life when I switched to the gaming phone, but it has exceeded my expectations.

Not that the iPhone 16 battery life is bad, not at all. It will get you through the day, but sometimes you’ll end up hitting that 20% mark when you’re still on the move, getting home, or away from a charger in general. And that’s just not a nice feeling.

With the gaming device, I easily get two days, and when I go to bed with 39% battery, I don’t even bother charging overnight. Why? Because charging is just better on this phone.

I’m not sure if the active fan actually helps with temperature control and subsequently charges the battery faster, but I can get from 20% to 80% while brushing my teeth every morning. It’s wonderful.

The iPhone 16, like most of the iPhone models of late, teaches you the habit of overnight charging. Or, I should say, cements that habit. It’s not a terrible thing or a major inconvenience, but using a gaming phone reveals that there are other ways to achieve this.

Fast and Furious, tuning edition

I know that bragging about speed might seem funny coming from an ex-iPhone 16 user, but hear me out. The raw benchmark scores might be close between the iPhone 16 and my new gaming phone, but the feeling is completely different.

Gamers are very sensitive toward things like response times, refresh rates and frames per second, so the phone tries to make sure all those boxes have been ticked. It just feels fast.

The tuning part is the ability to fine-tune the interface and also the hardware to your liking. You miss the mute switch? You can assign that function to the hardware slider button. Do you want rounder app icons? Done. No animation transitions? Done.

You can also use the RGB lights around the phone for notifications, Nothing-phone-style. Even if you’re not a fan of colorful lights, you can tone them down and use one color in a subtle way.

Boombox inside your pocket

I found that I can’t use it at max volume; it’s just too loud. I should also mention the presence of a 3.5 mm headphone jack. Even though most people won’t use it in 2025, it’s a ‘nice-to-have’ feature on any phone.

The bad

Is this a selfie photo or a painting?

The selfie camera is atrocious. There’s no way around this, as the company behind this phone has gone for an edge-to-edge screen and hidden the front camera under a miniature display. When you use the selfie camera, the pixels of this mini screen become transparent, as much as they can, to let light into the camera.

The same goes for the main camera system, to some extent. The wide camera is decent; you can get some nice shots using it, but the ultrawide is not good, and there’s no telephoto of any kind.

So, if you’re an Instagram fanatic or a mobile photography wannabe, this phone is just not the right one for you.

Mora is not (even) Siri

I’m a bit reluctant to talk about Mora, the mascot of this gaming phone, but I will say this. If you enjoy anime-style, scarcely dressed, schoolgirl-like characters, you might get something out of it.

Otherwise, Mora is extremely annoying and not very helpful. She’s not an AI per se; she’s just a digital companion (whatever that means).

But even on the more conventional AI front, this gaming phone can’t do much. There’s AI-powered translation and something called Smart AI Sidebar – a shortcut bar with the apps you’ve been using the most.

How do I carry this thing around?

This phone is big. It’s not huge, but the design makes it feel enormous. There’s almost no rounding or beveling of the sides or edges. It’s like a rectangular brick. This has its appeal (for those of you who have read Arthur Clarke’s Odyssey 2001, this IS the Monolith), but if you prefer something sleeker and more rounded, this is not it.

The ugly

Fragile or just moody?

Speaking of the transparent back and also the active cooling fan, here’s where things start to get a bit ugly.

It’s been quite hot here in the past couple of days, with temperatures hitting 88 degrees. It’s not unusual; we’ve had summers surpassing the 100 mark.

It was on one of these hot days that I noticed the adhesive under the back glass of this phone starting to show up and let go a bit.

To be fair, it returned to normal when I moved the phone to a cooler place, but it’s still a concern, nonetheless.

The other thing is that with active cooling, you need vents and a lot of air sucked in and blown out. The result is a phone that’s very sensitive to dust and dirt particles (which can go inside and block the fan or even damage it), and the water protection is, I would say, nonexistent. 

Technically, the phone is rated IP54, but I wouldn’t risk it. You shouldn’t get this phone near water and also be extra careful with dust, dirt, and excessive heat.

The big reveal and a conclusion

I decided to try living with this device for a while to help anyone considering switching permanently to a gaming phone as their daily driver.