Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

If so, what kind of games (mostly Nintendo ones) would fall into that category?

Nope. It'll run like a slideshow, assuming you could install Dolphin on it, as it's common for the manufacturers to ship 32-bit Android on low-end devices, even when the hardware has 64-bit support. Also keep in mind most flagship Android phones, which are several times faster than your Galaxy A10s, still struggles to maintain full speed in some games. GameCube/Wii emulation is very demanding...

I see. How about a Xiaomi Redmi 9A?

Galaxy A10S is one of the slowest phones today. If you want to play some games on Dolphin, you'll need something more powerful, I suggest you Redmi Note 9S, Poco X3 or Galaxy A71 at least, the faster the better.

If I could get them, I would. But those two devices are all I have right now, but if neither of those can run any game, that would be disappointing, but it can't get helped (at least not right now).

Just for future reference, those devices you mentioned are among the (currently) best phones for Dolphin? If not, which are?

No, those are mid-range phones, they are not the best option for Dolphin, but will have decent performance on most games playing at native resolution. I believe one of the best gaming phones currently is OnePlus 8T besides the ROG Phone 3. OnePlus devices always have a good performance for intensive tasks among other devices with same SoC (CPU/GPU).

For future reference, focus on the chipset a phone has. That will be your best indicator of possible dolphin performance. Snapdragon processors are the best for dolphin performance. So look for phones with Snapdragon 675, 720 or better.

Sorry, I made a mistake earlier, it's not a Redmi 9A, it's a Redmi Note 9 . According to Wikipedia, that variant doesn't have a Snapdragon chipset... but still, I'm curious to see if it changes anything.

Unless you can get something with a recent Snapdragon 8xx SoC (e.g. Snapdragon 845, 855, 865), don't expect good performance in all games. For devices with Mali GPUs (used in nearly all Mediatek, Exynos and Kirin SoCs), also expect graphical glitches and other weird issues that usually doesn't happen with the Adreno GPUs found on the Snapdragon SoCs.

Some lightweight games might run well on recent Snapdragon 7xx SoCs (e.g. Snapdragon 720, 730, 765) but I wouldn't push my luck, honestly. Like I said earlier, Dolphin is a very demanding emulator and it requires a reasonably powerful Android device to perform well.

I only want to play lightweight games like NSMB Wii (if that counts as a lightweight game). Sorry for insisting, but can the Note 9 run that game? Or to put another example, what about Mega Man 10?

Also, you got me curious with your comment. Is the best phone out there capable to run all GC/Wii games at playable speeds? I doubt that might be the case, but it's been years since I last followed anything related to Dolphin.