Hardware & Retro /
Last-Generation Android Flagship Beats Steam Deck in PS3 Emulation Test
A new comparison shows an iQOO 15 powered by Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 outperforming Valve's Steam Deck in God of War III and Gran Turismo 5 emulation.
Key facts
- Topic:
- Hardware & Retro
- Published:
- 2026-09-26
- Reported by:
- Gameforce Mobile News Desk
Key takeaways
- An iQOO 15 running ARMSX3 0.9.8.2 and Turnip Gen8 v36 drivers beat Valve's Steam Deck across multiple PS3 titles.
- God of War III ran at ~43fps on the Android phone compared to ~29fps on Steam Deck, while Gran Turismo 5 hit ~52fps vs ~26fps.
- The test highlights dramatic efficiency advances in modern ARM silicon and mobile Vulkan drivers for complex console emulation.
Android emulation has produced one of today's more eyebrow-raising hardware stories. A comparison using an iQOO 15 powered by Qualcomm's previous-generation Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 has shown the phone substantially outperforming Valve's Steam Deck in several PlayStation 3 games. The phone ran ARMSX3 0.9.8.2 with a Turnip Gen8 v36 driver, while the Steam Deck used RPCS3 under SteamOS 3.8.16.
In God of War III at a 720p, 100-percent resolution scale, the Android device averaged roughly 43fps against the Deck's 29fps. Gran Turismo 5 produced an even larger gap at approximately 52fps versus 26fps, while God of War: Ascension averaged about 40fps on the phone and 21fps on Valve's handheld. Infamous 2 struggled on both systems, so nobody should interpret this as proof that Android has suddenly perfected PS3 emulation. It is also one specific test rather than a universal benchmark.
Nevertheless, the result illustrates how rapidly ARM emulation and flagship smartphone GPUs are progressing. A device designed primarily for WhatsApp, cameras and occasionally ignoring phone calls is now capable of running selected PlayStation 3 software faster than one of the defining PC handhelds. Phones have apparently decided that merely replacing cameras, MP3 players and sat-navs was insufficient.
