Why we test every game on an old phone too

We keep a small collection of older devices in the office specifically for testing. It sounds excessive, but it catches problems that a shiny new phone hides completely.

Plenty of games look great in a trailer and then chug the moment you play them on a three-year-old handset. Load times balloon, animations stutter, and the whole thing feels worse than the reviews suggested.

So every review here notes how a game runs on modest hardware. If something only works smoothly on the latest chip, that goes in the write-up, because most people aren't playing on the newest phone.

This also shapes our scores. A brilliant game that's unplayable for half our readers can't get top marks in good conscience.

It's a small habit, but it's the difference between a review that matches your experience and one that only matches the developer's demo unit.