The most advanced gaming smartphone

The countdown has begun! 6 days left until you can have one of the MOST ADVANCED GAMING SMARTPHONES in your hands!

They are holding an event tonight in London where they will unveil what this device is going to be. If rumours are to be believed it will be the ZTE Grand X which we looked at here.

It isn’t really what I had in mind when thinking of a new gaming smartphone. Although ZTE may show us a totally new device. At this point in time we just do not know.

We briefly discussed on podcast episode 5 about mobile gaming. I was talking about what I thought would make an ideal gaming smartphone. Especially as the Xperia Play only really took off when the carriers and retailers massively dropped the prices. The Xperia Play suffered from several things that lead to it’s demise. The initial price was too high to appeal to the casual gamer, the screen was not of the best quality and the storage arrangement was a little odd in the way it stored Playstation games and normal Play Store games. I never used one myself, mainly because the various reviews I read echoed these slight problems.

As the ZTE event is tonight I thought I would sum up what I feel would make the “MOST ADVANCED GAMING SMARTPHONE” and see how it compares to what gets announced tonight.

My gaming smartphone checklist.

Screen at least 5”
Tegra 3
Large internal memory
Micro SD slot
Slide out qwerty keyboard with gaming controls & dpad
Decent developer backing, to take advantage of gaming controls
Manufacturer committed to support device
Bluetooth, gps, nfc etc
Decent price to attract casual gamers
Once again my ideal device seems to be along the lines of a Samsung Galaxy Note but with a keyboard and gaming controls.

Personally I think the most important factor is the price. At £400-£500 not many people are going to buy it as a second device. At £200-£300 people would certainly buy it as a second device. But one issue still remains. What would need to be cut from the device to meet the price point? I think they should just do away with the phone element. This would bring cost savings and also would help with battery life. Maybe one day we will see a device like this, maybe tonight. Then again maybe we won’t.

So if you could make the ideal gaming smartphone what elements would you combine? Size, style, colour, memory, manufacturer, form factor. You decide, let us know below what you would make and also what you want to see tonight from ZTE.