CPU 45°C, Battery 24°C.

USB Hub with HDMI for external monitor and the dongle for my cheap controller. And powersupply of course.

Officially: Google has reversed its decision and announced that it will allow sideloading of Android apps following a wave of user feedback.

I can't be more happier, it brings tears to my eyes all those memories again, I just can't stop loving Mali, ALL HAIL MALI 🔥🔥🔥

PPSSPP, Citron, Xenia Edge, Vita3K and Play! deserve better respect.

Source: https://xcancel.com/RetroNationX/status/2095149706980553120

Redmagic 13 pro, snapdrgon 8 elite with drivers

Max fps is 90 but average is like 50 overall pretty good!

This project started with a stupidly simple question:

How far can I push a smartphone if I stop treating it like a smartphone?

This is my Nubia Z70 Ultra with 24 GB RAM and the standard Snapdragon 8 Elite.

The phone is now literally sandwiched between TWO desktop CPU coolers, mounted inside a custom acrylic case. 😂

Yes. Two full-size PC CPU coolers. On a phone.

And surprisingly, it works extremely well.

The interesting part: I'm NOT using one of the newer boosted chips

My Z70 Ultra uses the standard Snapdragon 8 Elite, with its prime CPU cores running at up to 4.32 GHz.

That's important because some of the newer devices I'm comparing against are using newer and/or higher-clocked Snapdragon variants.

For example, the REDMAGIC 11 Pro uses the newer Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, reaching around 4.6 GHz on its prime cores.

So I'm not trying to beat these phones with the same CPU and better cooling.

I'm taking an older, lower-clocked 4.32 GHz Snapdragon 8 Elite and seeing how far it can go simply by giving it completely unreasonable cooling. 😂

In my 3DMark ranking screenshot, my Z70 Ultra reaches 10,533, putting it right among much newer devices and even slightly above the Galaxy S25+ result shown there.

And sustained performance is where the cooling really becomes interesting.

3DMark Wild Life Extreme Stress Test

Best loop: 6,980

Lowest loop: 6,910

Stability: 99% over 20 loops

That's only a 70-point difference between the best and worst loop.

But benchmarks aren't actually the main goal of this project.

I'm trying to replace my PC with the phone

I now have a native Termux + XFCE4 Linux desktop running directly on Android.

External monitor, keyboard, mouse, Linux applications and hardware-accelerated graphics.

I can boot into my desktop environment and use the phone almost like a small ARM computer.

Dofus is running directly from my XFCE desktop, rather than simply mirroring an Android game onto the monitor.

And then there's Windows gaming.

The Witcher 3 — 1080p, ULTRA graphics preset

I'm currently running The Witcher 3 at 1920×1080 using the ULTRA graphics quality preset.

Not Low.

Not Medium.

Not a 720p performance test.

1080p + Ultra graphics preset.

Depending on the scene and GPU load, I'm currently getting approximately 20–30 FPS, with the GPU basically sitting at 99% utilization.

I've even seen it go slightly above 30 FPS in some scenes, as shown in the screenshot.

Obviously, this isn't desktop-GPU performance, but that's not really the point.

This is The Witcher 3 running at 1080p Ultra at around 20–30 FPS on a Snapdragon 8 Elite phone. 😂

And underneath all of this, it's still Android.

So my end goal is to have one device that can do everything:

**Android phone / gaming device

native Linux XFCE desktop

Windows applications

Windows PC games**

The software side is still a work in progress and I'm continuing to optimize everything.

But apparently the solution to smartphone thermal throttling was very sophisticated:

one CPU cooler wasn't ridiculous enough, so I installed two. 😂

development of winlator is paused now.

I'm a simple man, if an emulator doesn't have save states and/or fast forward, I don't play on em, even if my device can more than handle tough games fine.

I'm not even being obnoxious, I'm at a point in life where I have max 10-15 minutes per day to play a game, and I am NOT wasting that on tinkering, going through longer loading screens, having to get to certain save points to be able to save, etc. I need to have my game loaded up in few seconds with the fast forwarding/load state features, and leave at any point with save states and maximize the limited time I have.

Anyone else like me?

Android change coming:

Google won't fully block sideloading (installing apps outside Play Store)

But from 2026, phones will only allow apps made by verified developers