Resident Evil 4 Remake on iPhone 15 Pro: Can Mobile Truly Handle AAA Gaming? 

Personally, playing a game like RE4 on my phone isn't very appealing, but it's interesting to see it's possible.

I’m interested to know how a heavy game like this affects the system in terms it getting hot and a huge decrease in the battery. For example how long it takes for the phone to go from 100 percent battery to 50 percent while the game being played none stop for hours…. Interesting stuff

It should be noted that while peak performance of an iPhone is substantially greater, cooling and power consumption necessitates relatively tight limits for sustained gaming loads.

Another thing to mention, it's crazy how good newer phones are at being able to run games from the 360/PS3 era. The hardware is there, we just need the software development. I think that's an area where phones could gain momentum in gaming, while also making people happy to see titles finally respawn. If they won't do it for the big boxes, why not the little ones?

I’ll play it on my PS5, sure, but it’s very impressive when keeping in mind this is a phone. Great to see the in-depth analysis, thanks Oliver.

The really impressive is the difference between this and the original resident evil 4 on iOS wow

The fact it runs at all is actually pretty wild. This is super cool

Is it possible for future games reviewed on Apple devices to add information on the MacOS versions too? Since they are released in conjunction and they scale up accordingly due to hardware and ecosystem similarities, would be very interesting for the bigger picture.

Despite the cut backs this is pretty impressive. I wonder what the battery life is on one gaming session

Amazing work these few developers have done so far with porting some really recent AAA games with acceptable performance for a phone, like come on playable/enjoyable RE4: remake and RE: Village in our hands on a phone we put in our pockets?!?! Dope stuff for sure, I think with a couple small updates re4 could most likely get a more consistent 30fps lock from where it’s at now which isn’t bad for the majority of the time like mentioned in this video, but I’m sure some updates and it’ll be the perfect port of a modern game well optimized and ported over with care, I think this could maybe maybe set the standard of what our premium iPhone 15 pros/ high end iPads can do from here on out, all I know is if they can pull some magic tricks with the damn Nintendo switch with all the ports it has, and at least half of those switch 3rd party ports like Darksiders, borderlands 3, Witcher 3, crysis 1-3, the list can go on etc, but imagine if Apple puts more stock into different devs willing to bring their AA-AAA games over, even older game classics like fallout new Vegas, fallout 4, dishonored 1-3, bioshock games, rage, MGS 5, like games from those time frame eras and up would be dope.

For a second-ever (modern AAA) release to iOS, Capcom is smashing it. Keen to see these apps see post-release support moving forward with a bit of luck too.

I like that you can use the same save file on your iPhone iPad and/or Mac. I love the idea of being able to buy the game once and play it a bunch of different ways on the same save.

This is nuts. While I know for a lot of people playing a triple A game on an iPhone screen isn't ideal. Imagine apple taking it's M or A series of chips and putting them in a dedicated console similar to a steam deck or ROG ally. Stellar battery life and triple A game performance on the go. A future I'm looking forward too.

Now a number of titles have been released, I think MetalFX is actually closer to FSR 2 than DLSS super resolution, despite the initial good showing on RE: Village for MacOS. Even with these low input resolutions DLSS would do better with alpha, hair, grass etc. Also with Stray for instance, there's not much in it, but I find the built-in TAA more pleasant than MetalFX. I hope they refine the upscaling tech further, but I'm hoping more for it to enable cooler temps and longer battery life on games with simpler graphics more than Switch-beating visual experiences. Apple has an interest in the medium term in performant 3D rendering in any case due to their headset.

Got it for the Ipad pro today (after having beaten it a few times on PC) and it looks and plays great. It seems like there is a 1/10th second input delay but i got used to it quickly and its a AAA experience with the controller on bluetooth.

The new USB-C Gamesir G8 controller works great if your worried about input lag over Bluetooth

I'm blown away by the progress being made both here as well as in the Box64 space on Android. I can play Fallout 3 on my phone! Looking forward to seeing where things will be in a few years.

When I was growing up and we started seeing cellphones in the early 2000s we never imagined it would ever be this good even the idea of a cellphone taking on a PS2 or Game Cube graphics was unthinkable.

I'm playing RE4 on the PSVR2 and every time I play it I can't believe how good it is and that more people aren't experiencing the game in this way. I might skip the phone version.

It's kind of mind blowing to have just watched John's Road Rash DF Retro and think about the speed of technological growth. Old arcade cabinets being orders of magnitudes less powerful than a modern smartphone's graphics capabilities is truly something

How does the iphone's heat distribution and battery hold up? Does it get way too hot to run longer than like an hour or 2 and will it damage the battery in a short amount of time of you run these higher end games?

Other than the dithering and sparkling, I never could've imagined that 300p could look that good!!

I have really liked Village on iPhone so far, but it does feel distinctly “not ready for prime time”. I’m still amazed that these games are even possible on something this size, but I’m more excited about what the future will bring. It seems likely that the next mid-generation and then full generation updates for consoles will not be enormous leaps for Sony and Microsoft, but we’re seeing mobile/handheld platforms really come into their own. This makes me really excited about Nintendo’s new hardware. Hopefully they are ready to show it off soon. Edit: Even though it’s not perfect yet, it’s still incredible to me that gaming hardware has consistently surprised me every year for decades.

They should focus on promoting how well it can run less demanding games. The frame rate and image quality is poor enough to make you feel sick while playing if you're sensitive to that stuff. It's like the marketing machine for integrated graphics is back. Interesting vid

I'm very excited for mobile phones to be able to handle AAA console gaming as I love handhelds. With that said, I think making high production value games around smartphone's hardware and touch controls would be for the best. It is like how the Gameboy, DS, PSP/Vita and 3DS all had games developed for the hardware in mind. I think all of those details get lost and something slightly more stylized may be better suited like the new Sonic game on Apple Arcade. I think AA level games would work really well. I could see most Devolver Digital games going nicely with mobile phones. I wish mobile games broke out of the MTX, gacha hellscape they currently are in and made some unique games, but they would only make 1/1000 as much. No one wanted to pay even $5 for a high-quality mobile game back in the day. I'm hoping Apple Arcade, Netflix gaming, and now Apple's AAA gaming on iPhone will get more developers willing to have their games on phones.

I'm not at all up to date on tech or a big stickler for graphics so the fact that this can even be done at all as stable as it is is really impressive to me

I have a thing for on the go gaming as seeing a console level game on the go is really special to me even if the game has it hiccups it is cool to experience those games outside and even on the bed. While I may not play this version daily I think I’ll be launching it every now and than when I want to have some cool Re4 remake on the go

I’ve tried the game on my Ipad Pro M2 and it runs pretty good but the only thing that prevent me to pay the full version is the input lag, it’s playable but it’s a bit frustrating experience missing the timings here and there. Thankfully they allow us to play the demo section as many times as we wants, hopefully capcom fix the input lag issue in the future

I would like to see if using a USB-C mobile controller (like the Kishi or the G8 Galileo) makes a difference on the input latency

The RE engine is really impressive scales really well at high and low end.

NIce summary. Do you have any plans to look at the Mac port of this game? After playing it on my M1 Max 32GB (now over 2 years old) it seems on par with current gen consoles, but it would be great to get some objective analysis on this. It's kind of interesting seeing the huge spread of performance capability from a single architecture, given the sheer number of Apple devices that can play this game, from the base M1 Air (or iPad) to the M3 Max which is a monster.

I don't game on my phone but I can't wait for games to truly catch up to pc and consoles on phones. Steam on my phone would be a game changer for sure. This looks like a leap in the right direction flawed as it may be.

I still find this to be incredible. You can play a full, non-watered down version of RE4 Remake... ON A PHONE. Regardless of the cutbacks they needed to make, this is still extremely impressive for a phone that fits neatly into your pocket. If you ask me, all things considered... This still looks fantastic. I really hope Apple keeps pushing their Metal API to the limit, as it's quite impressive. I truly believe that Apple is going to start moving into more powerful hardware for gamers. It may take a while, but they now have an entire platform (with their A-Series mobile processors and M-series processors) that are so similar that they can run these applications with little to no changes in code. And with their Game Porting Toolkit they're touting, and bringing Ray-Tracing to M3 processors... I honestly don't see how they aren't trying to capture that audience.

Watching this video while playing Resident Evil HD Remake and imagining how good it would look with the third person camera and graphics of Resident Evil 4 Remake.

MetalFX's best looking implementation in my experience, has been with Genshin Impact on an M1 iPad Pro. It looks great for the most part (with some sharpening artifacts), and massively helps with battery life, and device warmth.

It would’ve been good to note the temperature and battery life. I wouldn’t get this for the iPhone but I’m guessing it runs better on a M1 iPad. At least RE4 is a universal purchase this time around. Will you review RE4 on Mac?

Yeah, it is pretty impressive to see this game run on a smartphone but 200 ms and more of latency and the sluggish framerate make it a bad experience overall.

Awesome detailed video.. Keep it up 👏

Depending on how much resources they put into it, iPhone 16 (mostly Pro) and later could be the best to run these type of games in the future, or at least at a more standard quality and performance

Its just amazing to see a triple a game like this can be run on a phone

Really curious how this compares to the Steam Deck. FYI the macOS version running on a brand new M3 Pro is actually very good. Noticeably improved visual quality, proper visual settings, and ran buttery smooth with the default settings.

I appreciate the ending statement. I see a lot of media; just unfairly dismiss these ports. It’s £25, in the U.K. and it is a portable version. I’ve played it a lot on steam, and deck; and I would happily play it again on my iPhone. Resi 8 does run better, and I’m sure the silicon could do better, but it’s a good first step for gaming on these devices.

Though almost any current dedicated handheld could outperform the iPhone. It’s not about being the best, it’s about being the best experience you can get on the phone you already have. I think the target is someone who wouldn’t even think about getting a dedicated handheld for whatever reason, but wouldn’t mind playing a good game on the go in a pinch. More of a bonus than a selling point. Like I have an iPhone 14 promax, but because I have this phone, I don’t have any money left in my budget to buy a handheld. So the idea that I could play a high-end game with the Bluetooth controller I already have is incredibly appealing and cool despite knowing I’ll probably only use it a few times like on a long road trip

real issue is battery life. If you play heavy games like these and charge your phone 3-4 times a day, you will quickly hit the dreaded 500 charge cycle count and loose half of battery. Till apple removes the draconian repair policy, I would stick with dedicated gaming devices.

Ps4 200$ > iPhone 1500$ lmao

Nice review thank you ! 2 more generations iPhone 17 will run this one at 60fps ? what do you think ?

I'm curious what the theory for performance and graphical issues is from DF. If I had to guess though, I would say it's likely RAM. While the iPhone 15 has a fast CPU and an above competent (for mobile) GPU, the 15 Pro/Pro Max have equivalent RAM to the PS4 but the OS takes up a larger chunk of that than a console OS. I'm sure some further optimization could help minimize this issue, but I'd imagine better given the overall performance profile of modern Apple silicon.

We need to see them on android natively! SD Gen2 and 3 have better gpu, performance per watt.

I play it on a screen that size but it's strapped onto my head (PSVR2 baby!) 💟🌌☮️

Thanks for testing this mobile version. Could you cover Mac-ports of games as well? Since Apple is pushing gaming on Mac and it slowly (very) progresses, this might be very interesting for your audience as well.

How about other iOS models such as the M1 iPad Air? Would be interested to know any differences.

I could buy a Google Pixel 8 ($550 at 20% off, which I recently bought) and a Steam Deck OLED($550) for about $100 more than the iPhone 15 Pro all by itself... iPhone definitely not worth the price imo.

If apple makes a handheld with active cooling and their m3 chip it would go crazy

My favorite game 😍 Clearly the iPhone 15 Pro is choking hard while trying to run this beautiful monster of a game but the fact that it can actually run it is impressive. Textures and frame rate are very low but that is to be expected in this mobile format. I'm impressed by how well the base PS4 runs the game all things considered. I'm used to playing it on high/max settings at 4k with high frame rates on my PC since day 1 so this is the first time I've seen the PS4 version. Capcom

It could be interesting how this affects the overall temperature of the phone, and what it does to battery life...

Ever since GTA 3 released on mobile I’ve been a rabid mobile gamer (iOS, 3DS, Vita, PSP, SteamDeck, Switch & Powkiddy etc…) There have been incredible lows & I mean lows thats strain all credibility lows. Yet this decade seems to be moving into the right direction & truly hope to see much more of this!

The way it looks and runs... I realy wonder if this couldn't be achieved on switch with some concessions to bandwidth-heavy post-processing.

By the time Capcom release MH:Wilds on the iPhone, those latest Apple SoC might be strong to deliver the expected performance.

Oh damn the hair on the I-Phone! Reminds me of my RX 460 days.

I’d never play a game on my phone it’s just not appealing to me. But the fact that we can get this stuff running on a device that’ll fit in our pocket? That’s insane to me. Looks well enough.

The software engineers at Capcom are killing it. the way that the RE engine can scale to every single device is insane. I truly hope they release this engine to the masses in 2024.

Thanks for the review. Very impressive what apple has done but your comparison reaffirmed my decision to buy it on PC or Xbox. Thank you!

I think it is impressive. If the eventual I don't know iPhone 17 (not pro, base model) can run AAA games, that will be pretty nice. The pro's are too expensive for me and my 12 is not nearly close to be needed to change

Great work. I'd expected the game to run and look better than on a PS4 to be honest. I think it'd be interesting to see how well it performs on M1, M2 iPads, or a high-end Macbook Pro as well.

Woooo. 300p sub 30fps and 200ms latency? What a marvelous achievement apple. I swear apple gets more praise for taking a turd than a potty training toddler.

Your content is always so interesting and informative.

Best experience I ever had on a phone. 30fps didn’t bother me I get the full RE4 MERCENARIES Experience with Backbone One

There are so many old 8th gen console games that could work so well on mobile. Idk why we are only getting new games like this. How is Skyrim not on mobile for instance, it could definitely run it.

Put it on 1.5 speed,this guy talks way too slow

"RE4's first mobile port" Objection! There was a port of the original RE4 for iOS about 10 years ago that was Japan exclusive. Stop Skeletons From Fighting has a video covering it extensively

As someone who grew up playing the original Battlefront II at about 800x600 20fps on an old beater, I don’t exactly hate what I’m looking at here. I do think that post-processing, geometry, lighting, and textures needed a hands-on overhaul to buy a jump in resolution. For instance, making Leon’s hair more like the original game. I’ve played Switch games like Mario V Rabbids that look fine at 500p (540p?) on that little screen. But this gives me Wolfenstein 2 on Switch (240p lows). It’s an admirable effort and I’m glad it exists, but it falls just short of my personal floor for visuals. Could it be that the iPhone lacks a discrete GPU? The processor seems more than capable. But I also don’t know what I’m talking about.

I think the cool aspect about this is that you can play it on ALL your Apple devices. You purchase a single copy and you get it on your Mac, on your iPad, on your iPhone, and hopefully on your Apple TV eventually too. That would be quite a killer feature to have. It’s kinda like what Steam is doing, but better integrated.

Now we just need ps3/xbox 360 games at 60 FPS. Imagine call of duty black ops, fallout 3, Bioshock, mirrors edge, mass effect, etc… just WOW!

I always thought Apple had very powerful hardware in those iPhones. But it seems that a steamdeck with zen2 and rdna2 is much faster. What am I missing?

I'm not expecting AAA releases to become norm on phones, so Android still holds the gaming crown for me just because of vast emulating landscape. It's amazing, that flagship can let you play GameCube, PSP and even some Wii and PS2 games

So, in essence, mobile graphics have caught up to an 11 year old console.

I just don't understand why anyone would want to play a game especially like this on a phone.. straight foreign to me

Over heating guaranteed. The hair aliasing is bad.

pretty crazy that in 2-3 years we'll play AAA games on an iPhone. But we can already play on a 15w Steam Deck, so I don't see why not on a 10w Bionic A18 or something.

I hope to see m1/2 iPad gaming performance analysis soon!❤

Considering how much more powerful and efficient the gpu is in the snapdragon gen3, it would be interesting to see some of these game ports come to android.

As long as you don't compare it with the PC or PS5/PS4, it looks quite good graphically

iKnow that my iPad Pro M4 run this game without one single drop of sweat at high settings. Crazy!

It sometimes looks great sometimes looks shit.

Better off streaming it

Wreckfest is available for Android too. I wish more people were aware of this. It's actual AA gaming on Android and nobody seems to ever mention it.

How hot does it get? Does it thermal throttle at all?

It's nice to see Leon getting into the holiday spirit with his tinsel hair on the iPhone 😂 Honestly, I'm struggling to even give this a "it's impressive that this is running on a phone" pass, because it looks absolutely awful. This is a perfect example of a game compromised so much that they probably shouldn't have bothered.

Happy New Year to everyone in Digital Foundry and its community!

Short burst gaming might be possible by now but depending on current smartphone battery size and that small cpu chip in phones to carry people through long term gaming on them is unrealistic.

Is it better to play this with remote play for ps4? Ive played the free part of the game and I'm not really loving the way the game plays even with the backbone controller. There is no option to prioritize framerate over resolution.

Imagine paying from thrice to five times the price of a PS4 and getting an experience slightly worse than that of a Switch.

Leon's hair looks pretty rough

I'd like to see a comparison between cloud, native and something like Playstation's remote play in best case scenarios. To see which offers the best experience.

Interesting. I didn't know there was a mobile version of RE4make. It's interesting to see.

Impressive to say it's running on a phone. Ouch at the hair quality though. I'll stick to the PC version. :)

I just can't believe how these phones still can't keep up with a 10-year-old console.

Cool showcase. You can play the original, superior version since years ago though.

Excellent video Oliver! I'm impressed with what the iPhone can do. Hope we get more games like this in the future. However, when you showed yourself playing this game with touch controls it looked like a nightmare. Touch just doesn't work as an input for games like this.

nobody cares about playing games on horrible overpriced devices like M-Macs and iPhones. Why should anybody want this?