Apple has heavily marketed its iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max as highly capable mobile gaming devices thanks to the inclusion of the A18 Pro. The chipset’s 6-core GPU is said to be faster than the A17 Pro, with the company claiming that the SoC can deliver 200 percent quicker hardware-accelerated ray tracing than its predecessor. Surely, that means we should witness a framerate boost in AAA games, too, right?
Not quite, and while it is possible to fire up games like Alien Isolation natively, the experience is different than the performance metrics you are used to seeing in bigger and more powerful machines. For instance, the game developed 10 years ago cannot render beyond 30FPS at the native resolution.
At a lower resolution, Alien Isolation’s framerate jumps to a solid 60FPS thanks to the A18 Pro
We might come off as harshly critical of the A18 Pro, but bear in mind that we are thoroughly impressed that a chipset tailor-made for smartphones can run AAA games, which were originally designed for consoles, gaming PCs, and gaming laptops. What we are disappointed in is seeing a significantly older title performing sub-optimally despite maintaining a playable framerate on the iPhone 16 Pro Max.
The YouTube channel MrMacRightPlus tested out Alien Isolation, which is free to play on Apple’s App Store for the first two missions, to see how an older title performs on newer hardware. There are no in-game video settings to tweak, but only a ‘Graphics Preset’ option that lets you decide if you want a higher framerate or improved visual fidelity. The latter will run the game at the 2,796 x 1,290 resolution, with a locked framerate of 30FPS.
As for the ‘Performance’ preset, the A18 Pro successfully locks the game at 60FPS, with the resolution set at 2,097 x 967. However, during the testing, the YouTuber notes that the iPhone 16 Pro Max got quite toasty, reaching an external temperature of 49.7 degrees Celsius. We also noticed that there were no MetalFX upscaling options in the settings menu, which would have given a small performance bump.
It is possible that upscaling is not included in Alien Isolation because technologies such as DLSS, FSR, XeSS, or others were not introduced during the game’s official release in 2014. While it is remarkable that such a game managed to run on an iPhone 16 Pro Max, we strongly believe that the A18 Pro should have obtained better performance.
Regardless, if you own an iPhone 16 Pro or iPhone 16 Pro Max and want to experience the same game, we recommend getting the Backbone One game controller for either one of the devices, which retails for $99.99 on Amazon and transforms your handset into a handheld with dedicated buttons.
About the author: Omar Sohail is a reporter and analyst for Wccftech's mobile section, specializing in the technology and business of the mobile industry. His expertise lies in the intricate hardware supply chain, covering developments in semiconductor manufacturing, chip lithography, and camera sensor technology.
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