How to Play Phone Games on PC

Edmund_McGowan · January 2

Smartphones, the pocket sized mini-computers the world has grown to love are everywhere nowadays. With over 9 out of every 10 Americans owning one, they are integral to our daily lives. From contacting friends, family, and colleagues, to social media, banking, music streaming, and even health monitoring, the uses we’ve found for these handy devices are myriad!

Smartphones share many of the characteristics of your PC, and it's no surprise that phone games are super popular among people of all ages. Since the early days playing Snake on old school Nokias, to Call of Duty: Mobile, and Candy Crush Saga, there’s a game for everyone.

Today we’re not reviewing phone games. For serious phone gamers, the natural evolution of gaming on your phone screen is to take the game to a bigger screen, namely your PC. In this article we’ll furnish you with the lowdown on why you might want to play phone games on a computer, then provide a step by step guide on how to play phone games on your PC. Read on, and put your phone down while you get stuck in to phone gaming on your PC!

Why play phone games on a computer?

The burning question, is it not? Your phone is a perfectly good device, it’s got you this far in your phone game exploits, so why make the switch to play cell phone games on PC? There are actually some great benefits to transferring your phone gaming to a PC. Let’s have a look at the top four improvements we’ve noticed after making the switch to PC:

Improved performance. Whether you use a laptop or desktop, chances are that your trusty PC has hardware that outguns your diminutive smartphone. A more powerful processor (CPU), graphics card (GPU), and far greater RAM mean that your PC can run your phone games smoother, at faster speeds, and with less lags than on your smartphone. This translates to better gaming performance for you, the player, meaning abundant victories await!

Beat the heat, save your phone. We’ve all been there, stuck in the thick of the action, trying to run a graphically demanding game on our smartphone. As the game progresses, the battery level gets lower and lower, while the phone gets so hot you’re worried the battery might melt! Transfer these gaming odysseys to your PC and you most likely won’t need to worry about overheating, which can seriously shorten the lifespan of your phone’s battery. Another plus: your phone stays free to receive messages and calls while you game.

Control. To play your favorite phone games on your PC, you’ll need an emulator (more on that later), via the emulator, you can map touch controls to your keyboard and mouse inputs. Compared to your phone, keyboard and mouse control delivers faster reaction times and increased precision, giving you the edge over opponents. You can also connect to external controllers (Xbox, etc) enabling console-like gameplay for phone games. The increased control possible with PC keyboard, mouse, and game controllers gives you a competitive advantage over touchscreen players, so get ready to win big. PUGB Mobile is an example of this phenomenon you may well have heard of, where playing with a mouse is akin to paying in god mode!

Screen real estate. Screens come in many shapes and sizes, using a variety of display technologies. One thing is for sure, transport your phone games from the small screen of your phone onto your laptop or monitor and you’ll open up a world of gaming possibilities. Strategy games, RPGs and FPS will come to life on a larger screen, with more details and room to properly play in an immersive environment. Added bonus: no more eye strain from staring at your phone screen, because a larger display can lead to hours of comfortable gaming.

How to play phone games on PC

Now let’s get down to the technical nitty gritty, that really isn’t too challenging at all -the art of playing phone games on your trusty PC. There are a couple of different ways to play Android games on your PC. These include using an emulator (our personal fave), game streaming, screen mirroring and cloud gaming. Emulators allow you to run Android apps and games on your PC. At time of writing the best emulators include:

BlueStacks is the most widely used emulator, user friendly across a range of apps and games, customizable.
MEmu, the serious gamer’s choice, prioritizes gaming performance, compatible with demanding titles and delivers smooth gameplay.
LDPlayer is the casual gamers delight, offering fast, lightweight gaming that won’t ask too much of lower-end PCs.

Steps to phone game on your PC

Most emulators follow a similar process to help you get started playing phone games on your PC. Follow these simple steps to transfer your phone game campaigns to your PC:

Download an emulator that meets your needs. There are many available, and a quick Google search will deliver the goods.
Install your chosen emulator. Once you’ve settled on an emulator, simply run the installer and follow on-screen instructions to finish the setup.
Run the emulator. Log in using your Google account and access the Play store, as you would on your smartphone.
Download games. Following on-screen instructions, find and download the game you’re burning to play, then install it on the emulator.
Customize and play. Following the instructions of the emulator, you can map your keyboard and mouse inputs to mimic touchscreen controls. Launch the game and tweak your customizations as you please, for the enhanced performance of smartphone gaming on your PC.

Tips to takeaway

If you’re unsure about the emulators above, try Google Play Games, an official way to get hundreds of your favorite phone games running on your PC. There are a few prerequisites for this app, though: you’ll need Windows 10 or later, an SSD boot drive, and before downloading, you must enable Virtualization support in your PC’s BIOS settings. If that’s too much hassle, we recommend trying out an emulator -you might be pleasantly surprised.

Finally, here’s a few tips to help you have the best phone gaming experience on your PC. Do your emulator research, and choose one that is made for gaming. After you’ve settled on an emulator, optimize the app's settings for your PC’s specs. Don’t forget to also optimize your PC setting for gaming. You can do this by going to Windows Power Settings, and selecting “High Performance” to assign maximum resources to running your game smoothly.

Also free up CPU and RAM by closing background apps that you don’t currently require. Finally, make sure you customize your keys with the emulator’s key mapping tool. The perfect key setup for one game might be incompatible with another, so remember to save your preferred key mapping profiles. We’ll leave you for now, and wish you luck on your gaming journey as you migrate, with your favorite games from phone to PC!