Huawei makes play for mobile gamers with ‘turbocharged’ technology that beats all Android competitors, as well as Apple
GPU Turbo claims to improve graphics processing efficiency by 60 per cent while reducing energy consumption by one third, putting it ahead of other smartphones when it comes to gaming applications
China’s Huawei Technologies, which owns the Huawei and Honor smartphone brands, has unveiled what it claims to be turbocharged graphics processing technology that will put it ahead of other Android-based phones when it comes to mobile gaming.
The so-called GPU Turbo technology is able to improve graphics processing efficiency by 60 per cent while reducing energy consumption by 30 per cent, beating other smartphones on the market including Apple’s iPhone X when playing games like Honour of Kings and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, according to Zhao Ming, the president of Honor.
The technology has first been used in Honor Play, a budget phone launched in Beijing on Wednesday targeting young, price sensitive gamers. The technology will be used in other Honor and Huawei phones, effectively making its global debut, in the third quarter of this year, Zhao said in an interview the day before the official product launch in Beijing on Wednesday.
China is the world’s largest mobile gaming market with more than 600 million players generating 25 per cent of global gaming revenues in 2017, according to research agency Niko Partners.
Graphics processing units (GPUs) for mobile platforms have faced technical constraints like storage, heat dissipation and energy consumption, providing a challenge for smartphone developers when it came to meeting surging demand for mobile graphics processing. The GPU Turbo technology, co-developed by the Huawei and Honor brands, also supports advanced technologies and applications that require high-end graphics processing such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), according to Zhao.
Huawei Technologies, the world’s third-largest smartphone maker, shipped 153.1 million smartphones last year equipped with its EMUI operating system (OS), based on Google’s Android. In China it is the market leader, shipping 21 million units, including the Honor brand, in the first quarter of this year, according to Canalys research.