Friday, December 11, 2020

Samsung’s GameDriver app promises ‘improved graphics performance’ on Galaxy devices

Samsung has finally released the GameDriver app for the Galaxy S20 and the Galaxy Note 20. The GameDriver app is based on Google’s GPU Inspector Tool that was unveiled earlier this year. The new app promises to bring “the best gaming experience with improved graphics performance on Galaxy devices.”

The GameDriver app is compatible with the Galaxy S20, Galaxy S20+, Galaxy S20 Ultra, Galaxy S20 FE, Galaxy Note 20, and the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra. If you were wondering if it works on both Exynos and Snapdragon variants of the smartphones, Samsung has released two versions of the app, one for the Snapdragon (Adreno GPU) variants and the other for Exynos (Mali GPU) variants.

Samsung GameDriver currently supports only three games, but wider support is coming in the future

The GameDriver app allows Samsung to issue hardware driver updates and bug fixes to its smartphones (directly via Play Store) without the need to release a full-fledged firmware update in case something goes wrong. The company can also release performance and stability improvements for supported games.

In the app’s description, Samsung mentions that it currently supports three games: Black Desert, Call of Duty: Mobile, and Fortnite. The company also stated that it would support more devices and games in the future, but it did not provide any particular time frame. A few users who installed or updated the app on the Galaxy S20 or Galaxy Note 20 devices have complained about reduced performance and reboots.

Many game studios, game developers, and developers of other mobile gaming related tools have partnered with Samsung to bring support for the GameDriver app. You can find the whole list of partners that the South Korean firm is working with on this webpage. It includes Crytek, Deep Silver, Game Evil, Microsoft, Square Enix, Super Evil Megacorp, Turn 10, and Unity.