I’ve been playing League of Legends on PC since open beta, back when there was only one server in North America. After waiting a decade, Riot Games finally released its mobile version this year, and I got to play closed beta on one phone, and open beta on another.
Thankfully I managed to get an invite to the League of Legends: Wild Rift closed beta for Southeast Asia. It was only available for android, and I was using a phone that was released last year that was priced midrange with a fairly large screen. Wild Rift was playable on the device, but I wanted more.
More than a month later, the Wild Rift open beta arrived. This meant that I could finally play the game with my friends. At that time, the latest cell phone in the market, the iPhone 12, was also released, so I took the opportunity to upgrade since it’s a game I know I would be invested in.
The last time I possessed an Apple phone was the iPhone 4, which coincidentally also came out ten years ago. I remember going out of my way to get a custom Exiled Morgana iPhone 4 phone case made just so that I could show off one of my most favorite support champions.
For some reason, my previous android phone weighed 220g. So when I picked up the iPhone 12 for the first time, I was delighted at how much lighter it felt. At 162g, it was more convenient to hold for longer gaming hours.
After installing Wild Rift on the iPhone 12, I loaded my first game. The very first thing that surprised me was the sound. Of course, I knew there was background music playing throughout a match, but I didn’t know it was this good!
“Oh my gosh, guys. Do you hear that? There’s really good music!” I exclaimed to my friends. I couldn’t believe how different it sounded. As an original music soundtrack fan, and a support main who started playing the walking in-game Spotify champion Seraphine, I appreciated being able to hear the music clearly alongside in-game sound effects.
Even though my older phone also has two speakers at the bottom as well, the sound effects overpower the orchestral music. The iPhone 12 generates high quality stereo sound for the user to create a fuller gaming experience. You can hear the difference in the two game play clips above, done via screen recording.
- Wild Rift patch 1.0A will nerf Xin Zhao, Blitzcrank, and Vayne
- Riot confirms plans to add role selection to Wild Rift ranked games
Another perk I enjoyed came when Riot recently introduced the option to toggle between 30 FPS and 60 FPS. Since the iPhone 12 was already built to optimize for 60 FPS, I was happy to turn it on. The phone did feel warmer due to the higher FPS setting, but nothing near hot. Wild Rift felt smoother to play, and most of all clearer.
Playing on a handheld screen means that a lot of visual information is packed in a small area. In a game of Wild Rift, there’s many things to keep track of on both sides of your screen whilst micromanaging your own champion.
For that reason, as a hardcore gamer, it puts my mind at ease to know that I’m playing a game I thoroughly enjoy at an optimized level, and not having to worry about a single thing other than my gameplay — which isn’t affected at all when I turn on screen recording. This is definitely a plus for content creation.
Come next year, I’ll also be looking forward to playing Wild Rift on 5G. Right now in Singapore, the ultrafast network is currently being tested and it’s going to be interesting to see how smooth playing outside of the house will be.
Thanks to Riot, I not only got to try out Wild Rift beta, I even got to eat a real-life Honeyfruit! Yes, the plant that you proc in your lane that restores a small portion of HP and MP. Since I upgraded my phone which has a 12MP camera, you can clearly see the inside of the Honeyfruit which is very… unique.
When I took a bite of the Honeyfruit, it exploded with taste — spicy, sweet, chocolatey, citrus, and minty at the same time — just like how all League of Legends games go. Some things clearly don’t change, whether on PC or on mobile.
READ MORE: Wild Rift beginner’s guide: Everything you need to know about the client
