The Evolution of Dolphin Emulator on Android: A Review of Performance and Capabilities

Within the last two years, I'd say that the dolphin emulator has come a long way on Android, allowing us to play a wide range of GameCube and Wii games on the go. However, even with the older flagship chipsets such as the 855, 855 Plus, and 865, there were some games that wouldn't quite run at 60 frames per second. This is why I throw this game in every video – Auto Modalista is one of my favorite racing games, and it's a harder one to run with the dolphin emulator on Android.

In the past, there have been some chips that came close to running certain games at full speed, such as the Snapdragon 865 Plus. However, I was never able to upscale them to 720p like I am with this device, which runs flawlessly and features FPS in the top right-hand corner of the screen. Despite occasional dips down, I believe that this is the best performance that I've seen out of this game on an Android device so far.

Another game that's always given me issues on Android is F-Zero GX. However, with the dolphin emulator, I'm able to upscale it to 720p and run it at full speed, even if I see it dip down every once in a while. I think that shader cache going on in the background either way, this is the best performance that I've seen out of this game on an Android device so far.

I also wanted to go through a couple of Wii games using the same emulator, and I'm happy to report that Dolphin has performed well on these titles as well. Back in Haven hasn't had any issues with either of them.

Finally, PS2 using Daemon PS2 Pro is an area where we still don't have a great PS2 emulator for Android. It's not about the power – the way this game is running it has nothing to do with this chip not being powerful enough to play this game. It comes down to the emulator itself. What we really need is a scratch-built PS2 emulator for Android, and in my opinion, I think it's way off. There is another one out there called "Play" that looks pretty promising, but even right now on these higher-end devices, we can't get much to run with this emulator. There are hacks going on in the background of Daemon PS2 Pro – even if you don't enable them, you can get into the debug section and set it to Auto Fast or Recommended, but there's still hacks going on like frame skip that makes it seem like the game is running at full speed or at least will show 60FPS on the FPS counter.

However, when it comes to PS2, we don't have a great emulator for Android yet. There isn't much that can be done with Daemon PS2 Pro – even if you use it to play Geow2, which seems like they've done some back-end configuration to get this game to run well, but I see the same performance on the 888 as I do on the 855 or 865.

Before I wrap up this video, I just wanted to give you a quick reminder about these flagship Samsung phones. They do support HDMI over USB Type-C and have Samsung Dex built-in. If you're not familiar with Dex, all you need is a USB Type-C to HDMI adapter or a USB Type-C monitor – you plug it right in, and it brings up the Dex UI. It's essentially an Android-based desktop operating system, and if you want to do emulation on this or play your favorite games, you can easily do it on the big screen with no lag whatsoever because we're actually running over HDMI instead of casting to another device.

Personally, I use Samsung Dex a lot – my main Android phone was the Samsung Galaxy S10 but I traded that in for a little bit off of this S21 Plus and now this is going to be my main Android device hands down. This is the best Android device that I've ever tested for emulation. Yes, it beats the NVIDIA Shield by miles. The X1 is getting really dated now, but I'm not coming out and saying that specifically – the Galaxy S21, the S21 Plus or the S21 Ultra are the best – it really comes down to the Snapdragon 888 chipset which will be in a ton of phones in the US very soon. They've already released some with the 888 in China, and personally I can't wait till we get a tablet with this same chipset.

When it comes to emulation using an Android device with an ARM CPU, this is the best of the best right now. But that's gonna wrap it up for this one – I really appreciate you watching. I will have a couple more videos coming out using the S21 in different ways – I definitely want to take a deep dive into Decks and just see how that performs on the Snapdragon 888 if you have any questions or you want to see anything else running, feel free to let me know in the comments below.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey what's going on guys cta prime back here again today we're going to check out the emulation performance of the all new samsung galaxy s 21 plus now when it comes down to it i actually thought about getting the ultra version but i do not like that camera bump i went with the s20 ultra last year and and the camera bump on the back was just a little too bulky for me so this year i went with the plus model but just keep in mind that all three us variants as long as they have that snapdragon 888 will perform exactly the same when it comes to emulation basically the only internal difference between the ultra and the plus is the ultra has 12 gigs of ram this one has eight and we're not limited by ram whatsoever we have plenty in this unit so yeah i'm super excited about this and it mainly comes down to that new snapdragon 888 chip that they're using in this phone and this was really the only phone that i could pick up in the us with that cpu right now but keep in mind there's more flagships coming so if you're not into samsung just wait a little while and you can get your hands on another 888 powered phone but straight off the bat i'm gonna go ahead and tell you right now that this is the best emulation that i've seen out of any android device and it comes down to that snapdragon 88 and next year when they release the 890 or whatever they're gonna call it it's gonna get even better and so on and so on that's how technology works but right now in 2021 this is the best chip for emulation on android hands down so in this video we're going to test out some dreamcast some n64 some sega saturn we're gonna go with some gamecube some wii some ps2 some psp some 3ds and see what this thing can really do but before we jump right into it i just want to give you a quick rundown on the basic specs here plus i ran some benchmarks and i just wanted you to take a look at some of these scores so for the cpu we have the all-new qualcomm snapdragon 888 this is an octa-core cpu we have one big cortex x1 core running at 2.9 gigahertz three smaller cores running at 2.8 and 4 running at 2.2 the gpu is the new arduino 660 and they're claiming up to a 35 performance gain over the snapdragon 865. eight gigabytes of lp ddr5 ram a 6.7 inch hertz dynamic amoled display at 1080 by 2400 and a 4800 milliamp hour battery so taking a look at the specs on paper really doesn't do it justice what we need to do is get into some performance testing so the first thing i did was run a couple benchmarks first up we have geekbench 5 with a single core score of 1095 and a multi-core score of 32.81 next up we have 3d mark slingshot which tests the opengl performance of the gpu we came in with a score of 8862 and finally 3dmark wildlife which tests the vulcan performance of the gpu we came in with a 5810 so i'm pretty impressed with the scores but now it's time to see how this thing really handles emulation we're going to jump right into it first up we have some dreamcast so here we are with dreamcast using the redream emulator and i was able to upscale this all the way i mean this is the maximum that redream can do on android 3840 by 2880 this will run any dreamcast game at this resolution as long as it's compatible with the redream emulator which is quite a lot of dreamcast games next up we have n64 using the standalone version of moo pin 64 plus fz from the google play store we have goldeneye 007 running at an upscaled resolution of 1920x1440 and as you can see i mean it's running at full speed and it's performing amazingly sega saturn using yobasi and shiro at 3x resolution inside a retro arch this is one of the harder games to emulate here we have virtua fighter 2 and it's running it at 60fps i haven't seen any dips at all initially i went to 2x and then i figured maybe we could go up a bit more so i just took it up to 3. definitely looks better and it plays just fine psp using ppsspp i'm using the vulcan back in and i'm at 10x resolution now i do have to admit that going to 10x on a screen like this really isn't going to increase visual quality but i did want to see if it could handle it and the snapdragon 888 paired with this new arduino gpu is just powering through all of this at 10x now when it comes to the more problematic games like chains of olympus or ghost of sparta we got killzone and i think midnight club we can't quite do 10x but we can go to seven and you'll see that by the end of this psp test but i wanted to test one more at 10x and on screen we will have the name of the emulator the name of the game if i'm upscaled and what back end i'm if you need more using try purchasing it at a gadgetron vendor so here's chains of olympus i'm going to go into the settings real quick and just show you that i am at 7x so we're at 7x here and i also have filtering set to 16x and it runs this game beautifully by the way i'm using the vulcan back in here but i also tested opengl and it was just as good moving over to 3ds using cetra now i personally haven't run into an arm device that can run this emulator as well as i'm seeing it run here we're at 2x resolution and i know it doesn't sound like a lot but it definitely ups the visual quality on this emulator here and it looks great on this screen now the citra team has put a lot of work into the android port here and it's working really well on the a88 even on the 855 and the 865 there's some games that do run pretty well at 1x but i've never really been able to upscale any of this stuff to 2x like you're seeing in this video here now as i'm making this video this chip hasn't been out long and i'm sure that more optimizations will come down the road for citra and the snapdragon 88 but yeah this is definitely the best performance that i've seen out of this emulator on any android device so far uh let's go ahead and check out some gamecube and wii emulation using the dolphin emulator within the last two years i'd say the dolphin emulator has come a long way on android allowing us to play a lot of these gamecube and wii games on the go but even with the older flagship chipsets the 855 855 plus 865 there were some games that wouldn't quite run at 60fps like this one here auto modalista this is one of my favorite racing games and it's a harder one to run with the dolphin emulator on android that's why i throw it in every video and in the past there have been some chips that come really close to running this at full speed like the snapdragon 865 plus but i was never able to upscale it to 720p like i am with the 888 here fps is in the top right hand corner and this is running flawlessly on this device another one that's always given me issues on android is f-zero gx but here we are we're even upscaled to 720p and it's running it at full speed now every once in a while you'll see it dipped down but i think that shader cache going on in the background either way i look at it this is the best performance that i've seen out of this game on an android device so far i also wanted to go through a couple wii games using the same emulator so we're still on dolphin 720p vulcan back in haven't had any issues with this either uh uh and finally ps2 using daemon ps2 pro now when it comes down to it we just don't have a great ps2 emulator for android this is not about the power here the way this game is running it has nothing to do with this chip not being powerful enough to play this game it comes down to the emulator itself what we really need is a scratch built ps2 emulator for android and in my opinion i think it's way off there's another one out there called play that looks pretty promising but even right now on these higher end devices we can't get much to run with that emulator there's lots of hacks going on in the background of daemon ps2 pro even if you don't enable them you can get into the debug section set it to auto fast or recommended but there's still hacks going on like frame skip that makes it seem like the game's running at full speed or at least it'll show 60fps on the fps counter but in all actuality it's skipping a ton of frames in between now the final game here for daemon ps2 pro is geow2 and it seems like they've done a lot of back-end configuration to get this game to run well but uh it runs exactly the same on the 888 as it does on the 855 or the 865. so right now when it comes to ps2 basically we don't have a great emulator for it on android yet okay so before i wrap this video up i just wanted to give you a quick reminder about these flagship samsung phones they do support hdmi over usb type c and they have samsung dex built-in if you're not familiar with dex all you need is a usb type-c to hdmi adapter or a usb type-c monitor you plug it right in it'll bring dexop it's basically an android-based desktop operating system and if you want to do emulation on this or play your favorite games you can easily do it on the big screen with no lag whatsoever because we're actually running over hdmi instead of casting to another device i personally use samsung dex a lot my main android phone was the samsung galaxy s10 but i traded that in to get a little bit off of this s21 plus and now this is going to be my main android device hands down this is the best android device that i've ever tested for emulation yes it does beat the nvidia shield by miles i mean this chipset will overpower that x1 every single day the x1 is getting really dated now but i'm not coming out and saying that specifically the galaxy s21 the s21 plus or the s21 ultra is the best it really comes down to the snapdragon 888 chipset which will be in a ton of phones in the us very soon they've already released some in china with the 888 and personally i can't wait till we get a tablet with this same chipset but yeah i mean when it comes to emulation using an android device with an arm cpu this is the best of the best right now but that's gonna wrap it up for this one i really appreciate you watching i will have a couple more videos coming out using the s21 in different ways i definitely want to take a deep dive into decks and just see how that performs on the snapdragon 888 if you have any questions or you want to see anything else running on this device just let me know in the comments below and like always thanks for watchinghey what's going on guys cta prime back here again today we're going to check out the emulation performance of the all new samsung galaxy s 21 plus now when it comes down to it i actually thought about getting the ultra version but i do not like that camera bump i went with the s20 ultra last year and and the camera bump on the back was just a little too bulky for me so this year i went with the plus model but just keep in mind that all three us variants as long as they have that snapdragon 888 will perform exactly the same when it comes to emulation basically the only internal difference between the ultra and the plus is the ultra has 12 gigs of ram this one has eight and we're not limited by ram whatsoever we have plenty in this unit so yeah i'm super excited about this and it mainly comes down to that new snapdragon 888 chip that they're using in this phone and this was really the only phone that i could pick up in the us with that cpu right now but keep in mind there's more flagships coming so if you're not into samsung just wait a little while and you can get your hands on another 888 powered phone but straight off the bat i'm gonna go ahead and tell you right now that this is the best emulation that i've seen out of any android device and it comes down to that snapdragon 88 and next year when they release the 890 or whatever they're gonna call it it's gonna get even better and so on and so on that's how technology works but right now in 2021 this is the best chip for emulation on android hands down so in this video we're going to test out some dreamcast some n64 some sega saturn we're gonna go with some gamecube some wii some ps2 some psp some 3ds and see what this thing can really do but before we jump right into it i just want to give you a quick rundown on the basic specs here plus i ran some benchmarks and i just wanted you to take a look at some of these scores so for the cpu we have the all-new qualcomm snapdragon 888 this is an octa-core cpu we have one big cortex x1 core running at 2.9 gigahertz three smaller cores running at 2.8 and 4 running at 2.2 the gpu is the new arduino 660 and they're claiming up to a 35 performance gain over the snapdragon 865. eight gigabytes of lp ddr5 ram a 6.7 inch hertz dynamic amoled display at 1080 by 2400 and a 4800 milliamp hour battery so taking a look at the specs on paper really doesn't do it justice what we need to do is get into some performance testing so the first thing i did was run a couple benchmarks first up we have geekbench 5 with a single core score of 1095 and a multi-core score of 32.81 next up we have 3d mark slingshot which tests the opengl performance of the gpu we came in with a score of 8862 and finally 3dmark wildlife which tests the vulcan performance of the gpu we came in with a 5810 so i'm pretty impressed with the scores but now it's time to see how this thing really handles emulation we're going to jump right into it first up we have some dreamcast so here we are with dreamcast using the redream emulator and i was able to upscale this all the way i mean this is the maximum that redream can do on android 3840 by 2880 this will run any dreamcast game at this resolution as long as it's compatible with the redream emulator which is quite a lot of dreamcast games next up we have n64 using the standalone version of moo pin 64 plus fz from the google play store we have goldeneye 007 running at an upscaled resolution of 1920x1440 and as you can see i mean it's running at full speed and it's performing amazingly sega saturn using yobasi and shiro at 3x resolution inside a retro arch this is one of the harder games to emulate here we have virtua fighter 2 and it's running it at 60fps i haven't seen any dips at all initially i went to 2x and then i figured maybe we could go up a bit more so i just took it up to 3. definitely looks better and it plays just fine psp using ppsspp i'm using the vulcan back in and i'm at 10x resolution now i do have to admit that going to 10x on a screen like this really isn't going to increase visual quality but i did want to see if it could handle it and the snapdragon 888 paired with this new arduino gpu is just powering through all of this at 10x now when it comes to the more problematic games like chains of olympus or ghost of sparta we got killzone and i think midnight club we can't quite do 10x but we can go to seven and you'll see that by the end of this psp test but i wanted to test one more at 10x and on screen we will have the name of the emulator the name of the game if i'm upscaled and what back end i'm if you need more using try purchasing it at a gadgetron vendor so here's chains of olympus i'm going to go into the settings real quick and just show you that i am at 7x so we're at 7x here and i also have filtering set to 16x and it runs this game beautifully by the way i'm using the vulcan back in here but i also tested opengl and it was just as good moving over to 3ds using cetra now i personally haven't run into an arm device that can run this emulator as well as i'm seeing it run here we're at 2x resolution and i know it doesn't sound like a lot but it definitely ups the visual quality on this emulator here and it looks great on this screen now the citra team has put a lot of work into the android port here and it's working really well on the a88 even on the 855 and the 865 there's some games that do run pretty well at 1x but i've never really been able to upscale any of this stuff to 2x like you're seeing in this video here now as i'm making this video this chip hasn't been out long and i'm sure that more optimizations will come down the road for citra and the snapdragon 88 but yeah this is definitely the best performance that i've seen out of this emulator on any android device so far uh let's go ahead and check out some gamecube and wii emulation using the dolphin emulator within the last two years i'd say the dolphin emulator has come a long way on android allowing us to play a lot of these gamecube and wii games on the go but even with the older flagship chipsets the 855 855 plus 865 there were some games that wouldn't quite run at 60fps like this one here auto modalista this is one of my favorite racing games and it's a harder one to run with the dolphin emulator on android that's why i throw it in every video and in the past there have been some chips that come really close to running this at full speed like the snapdragon 865 plus but i was never able to upscale it to 720p like i am with the 888 here fps is in the top right hand corner and this is running flawlessly on this device another one that's always given me issues on android is f-zero gx but here we are we're even upscaled to 720p and it's running it at full speed now every once in a while you'll see it dipped down but i think that shader cache going on in the background either way i look at it this is the best performance that i've seen out of this game on an android device so far i also wanted to go through a couple wii games using the same emulator so we're still on dolphin 720p vulcan back in haven't had any issues with this either uh uh and finally ps2 using daemon ps2 pro now when it comes down to it we just don't have a great ps2 emulator for android this is not about the power here the way this game is running it has nothing to do with this chip not being powerful enough to play this game it comes down to the emulator itself what we really need is a scratch built ps2 emulator for android and in my opinion i think it's way off there's another one out there called play that looks pretty promising but even right now on these higher end devices we can't get much to run with that emulator there's lots of hacks going on in the background of daemon ps2 pro even if you don't enable them you can get into the debug section set it to auto fast or recommended but there's still hacks going on like frame skip that makes it seem like the game's running at full speed or at least it'll show 60fps on the fps counter but in all actuality it's skipping a ton of frames in between now the final game here for daemon ps2 pro is geow2 and it seems like they've done a lot of back-end configuration to get this game to run well but uh it runs exactly the same on the 888 as it does on the 855 or the 865. so right now when it comes to ps2 basically we don't have a great emulator for it on android yet okay so before i wrap this video up i just wanted to give you a quick reminder about these flagship samsung phones they do support hdmi over usb type c and they have samsung dex built-in if you're not familiar with dex all you need is a usb type-c to hdmi adapter or a usb type-c monitor you plug it right in it'll bring dexop it's basically an android-based desktop operating system and if you want to do emulation on this or play your favorite games you can easily do it on the big screen with no lag whatsoever because we're actually running over hdmi instead of casting to another device i personally use samsung dex a lot my main android phone was the samsung galaxy s10 but i traded that in to get a little bit off of this s21 plus and now this is going to be my main android device hands down this is the best android device that i've ever tested for emulation yes it does beat the nvidia shield by miles i mean this chipset will overpower that x1 every single day the x1 is getting really dated now but i'm not coming out and saying that specifically the galaxy s21 the s21 plus or the s21 ultra is the best it really comes down to the snapdragon 888 chipset which will be in a ton of phones in the us very soon they've already released some in china with the 888 and personally i can't wait till we get a tablet with this same chipset but yeah i mean when it comes to emulation using an android device with an arm cpu this is the best of the best right now but that's gonna wrap it up for this one i really appreciate you watching i will have a couple more videos coming out using the s21 in different ways i definitely want to take a deep dive into decks and just see how that performs on the snapdragon 888 if you have any questions or you want to see anything else running on this device just let me know in the comments below and like always thanks for watching\n"