Best mobile phone to play League of Legends: Wild Rift

As the mobile version of one of the most popular and competitive online multiplayer games , League of Legends: Wild Rift is a pretty big deal.

The original League of Legends has become legendary as a MOBA turned major eSport. How major? The 2019 League of Legends World Championship attracted more than 100 million unique viewers, and doled out a minimum prize pool of US$2.5 million.

However, LoL (as it's often abbreviated) remains the exclusive preserve of PC and Mac players. League of Legends: Wild Rift finally brings Riot Games's smash hit MOBA to mobile, and both Android and iOS owners can get in on the act.

This is a technically demanding game, and giving its competitive nature, the smoother and clearer you can make it, the better for you. So which smartphone is the best for playing League of Legends: Wild Rift? Here are our two top picks.

iPhone 12 Pro Max

Those who have followed our periodic advice on the best gaming smartphones will know that we generally favour the latest iPhones, and not because of any tiresome sense of Apple fanboyism. Besides the peerless App Store, the latest iPhone is invariably the most powerful phone on the market.

It stands to reason, then, that we'd recommend the iPhone 12 Pro Max as one of our top League of Legends: Wild Rift picks. It packs the same A14 Bionic CPU that powers the rest of the iPhone 12 range, which is considerably more powerful than any other mobile chip, including that of our other selection.

We know that LoL: Wild Rift has been fully optimised for the A14 too. At the iPhone 12 launch event, Apple called developer Riot Games out onto the stage to speak about the work they had been doing together.

 

According to Riot Games Executive Producer Michael Chow, the iPhone 12's A14 enables a "brand new level of fidelity that you can't find on any other platform. With off-the-charts GPU performance and frames per second, you get amazing details and fluid gameplay - even in the most chaotic team fights".

This applies to the entire iPhone 12 range, of course. What's exclusive to the iPhone 12 Pro Max is the biggest and best mobile screen Apple has ever made - a beautiful 6.7-inch Super Retina XDR OLED with a 1284 x 2778 resolution. League of Legends: Wild Rift looks as good as it runs on this phone, and there's sufficient screen space that you'll never miss a tactical manoeuvre.

The iPhone 12 Pro Max is arguably your best LoL: Wild Rift pick - for now.

Asus ROG Phone 3

What if you hate iOS or Apple, or you simply find Google's Android ecosystem preferable in every other way? There are plenty of Android phones out there that will show LoL: Wild Rift off brilliantly. And in some ways, even better.

Our absolute top pick of the Android bunch right now would be the Asus ROG Phone 3. This gaming-focused phone sports a large 6.59-inch Full HD+ AMOLED display. While this isn't quite as big or sharp as the iPhone 12 Pro Max's screen, it has one major plus point: a rapid 144Hz refresh rate. That's more than twice as fluid as its 60Hz iOS rival.

Now, at the time of writing LoL: Wild Rift doesn't officially support such high refresh rates, despite there being techy ways to get around this (Google it). But you can be sure that such support is incoming, and when it arrives, the game is likely going to feel better on phones like the Asus ROG Phone 3 than on any iPhone.

Indeed, running the game at a consistent 90 or 120fps would likely provide a significant competitive advantage.

Future benefits aside, the Asus ROG Phone 3 is just about as fast an Android phone as you can get right now, at the very end of 2020. It runs on the Snapdragon 865+, an enhanced version of the chip that powers most 2020's flagships with a 10% faster GPU. That's backed by a whopping 16GB of RAM.

The phone also packs such gamer-friendly features as a huge 6000mAh battery and an advanced cooling system, both of which make extended gaming sessions more viable. Remappable AirTrigger buttons on the side of the phone are handy for when you're caught without a controller, too.