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I have tested plenty of gaming phones, but nothing quite prepared me for watching Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut boot up on the Red Magic 11S Pro. This was not cloud gaming or something like Remote Play from a PlayStation sitting somewhere else in the house. I used GameHub, linked it with Steam, and after some trial and error, had the PC version of Ghost of Tsushima running on a phone–and it was far more playable than I expected.
And yes, it looked as ridiculous as it sounds. Seeing Jin Sakai on a phone screen with a GameHub overlay, virtual shoulder buttons, and a live FPS counter sitting on top made the whole setup seem a lot more viable.
How I went about it and the rough first step
Getting the game running was not as simple as tapping install and riding into Tsushima. Thankfully, it wasn’t too frustrating either. GameHub lets you either connect your Steam account or manually copy over PC game files and have the app detect them. I went through the Steam route, then had to fiddle with settings inside GameHub and the game itself. The GameHub library screen made the process feel surprisingly close to using a tiny PC launcher. Ghost of Tsushima sat alongside other PC games.
All graphics settings went to low, which felt like the only sensible place to start. Even then, the first run was not exactly smooth. In one scene, the overlay showed Ghost of Tsushima running at around 20fps while the phone sat at 48.7 degrees Celsius. In another, it climbed to 24fps with the temperature crossing 50 degrees. This was not an elegant performance, but the fact that you can hit relatively playable framerates on a phone is pretty impressive.
However, it’s not all smooth sailing. The game could crash during certain loading screens, especially if you failed a mission–talk about a realistic hardcore punishment for not being good at the game. This was very much an experiment, and the phone made it pretty apparent.
How the GameHub settings came in handy
After watching a few community guides, I started tinkering with the settings in GameHub. At this point, I basically felt like I was emulating games on my desktop PC. Heading into GameHub’s compatibility settings, the app gave me options for the compatibility layer, translation parameters, DirectInput behavior, audio driver, and CPU translation. I ended up using community guidance to smooth things out, and those tweaks made the experience noticeably more stable. The compatibility layer, in particular, was key for a better experience, and the game felt smoother after shifting to Proton.
With the Red Magic 11S Pro offering different power modes to really squeeze performance out of the flagship Qualcomm, it isn’t surprising that mobile chips are being used in some entry-level laptops nowadays. The liquid cooling mechanism, shoulder triggers, and various GameSpace tech really helped in making it feel coherent.
Diablo mode was tempting and risky
The Red Magic 11S Pro gives you multiple performance modes, and Diablo mode is the epitome of smartphone performance modes. There’s rarely ever any meaningful change in gameplay feel when switching to the “performance mode” in any smartphone, including flagships. But raising the phone to Diablo mode outright doubled the framerate in Ghost of Tsushima. I was even hitting 60fps occasionally.
However, the trade-off was stability and temperature. With the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Leading Version going up to 80 degrees Celsius, the game was prone to more crashes. The numbers were exciting, though not realistic for a playthrough. So, for my experience, I stuck to the second-best thing, which is the “Rise” mode. Longer gaming sessions had me stick to Balanced mode to make sure the experience is more consistent. This is still not the ideal way to play Ghost of Tsushima. But I’m not complaining, as the fact that it worked is still impressive.
