Samsung introduces GameDriver app for improved gaming performance

XDA

By Brandon Russell

Published Dec 10, 2020

Samsung has released a GameDriver app that will allow the company to deliver more frequent updates for your phone’s GPU.

In the early days of the smartphone, gaming was more of a distraction — something that kept you occupied while you waited in line. Today, mobile devices are bigger and faster than ever, making them the perfect vehicle for gaming. To make gaming more of a core part of its devices, Samsung has released a GameDriver app available now on the Play Store.

Basically, Samsung’s GameDriver app will allow the company to deliver more frequent updates for your phone’s GPU drivers. “GPU driver optimization and streamlining driver updates is a key area to making the most of hardware capabilities and maintaining optimized performance of a GPU,” Samsung said.

According to Samsung, the company collaborated with Google and major GPU vendors, including ARM and Qualcomm, to distribute updates to its phones' GPU drivers via the GameDriver app. Samsung is working with more than 50 partners, including ChuckleFish, Crytek, and Unity, to patch drivers for better stability and performance. The first driver update brings better support for Call of Duty: Mobile, Black Desert, and Fortnite, the last of which you can find in Samsung's Galaxy app store. Better support for more games is expected over the coming months.

Since announcing its Galaxy GameDev Program in 2016, Samsung said its Galaxy smartphones now make up the world’s largest gaming platform. With the new GameDriver, the company clearly wants to make gaming even more of a priority.

Samsung isn’t the only company to introduce GPU driver updates independent of larger software releases. Earlier this year, Xiaomi and OPPO released GPU driver updates for their lines of flagship smartphones.

Samsung’s GameDriver app is currently available for its Galaxy S20 and Galaxy Note 20 range, with support for more Samsung devices coming soon. With mobile gaming becoming more and more popular, we can likely expect this practice to become the norm among all major OEMs in the future.

Samsung users can find the new app on the Google Play Store. The Adreno version is for supported Samsung Galaxy devices with a Qualcomm Adreno GPU, while the Mali version is for supported Samsung Galaxy devices with an ARM Mali GPU.