Gaming smartphones are powered by the latest and greatest hardware, flashy designs, active cooling, extra buttons, and more, but they also cost a fortune. But what if we told you that you can turn your old phone into a powerful gaming device for a little more than $100?
This was just proved by YouTuber Geekerwan, who turned his Xiaomi Mi 9, a device from 2019, into a gaming beast. The three-year-old flagship device proved to be more powerful than modern phones after a bit of software and hardware tinkering.
As a quick summary, the YouTuber added more battery to the phone, overclocked the CPU and GPU, dialed up the screen’s refresh rate, added custom thermals, and created a custom case for better cooling. These upgrades cost no more than $150. You can watch the details in the video below.
The results were nothing short of impressive. The phone which originally outputs 39 frames per second in Genshin Impact was able to hit 50 fps with the highest settings. This is a remarkable 20% improvement in performance.
This is even better than some modern flagship phones powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, which struggle with thermal throttling issues due to the overheating chip.