Oh, boy, we have amazing news! The Pixel 8 just became a gaming smartphone! Well, not a gaming phone per se, but it has received a significant boost in its gaming performance via Google's December 2023 Feature Drop update.

As renowned leaker, Mishaal Rahman shared on X (former Twitter), Google's December Feature Drop update to Pixel phones includes a newer Arm Mali GPU kernel driver, which, according to users, improves gaming performance.

The December 2023 Feature Drop update brings a much newer Arm Mali GPU kernel driver to Tensor Pixels, which users report significantly improves performance in games like Genshin Impact and Fortnite!

The GPU kernel driver has been upgraded from r38p1 released on August 18, 2022… pic.twitter.com/uG8DXrLmUw

— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) December 6, 2023
Users have seen a significant boost in games like Genshin Impact and Fortnite. For example, YouTuber TechDroider (via Android Police) has noticed that the Pixel 8 can now run Fortnite at 60fps at the highest graphical settings of the game. The good news is that the new GPU driver is not exclusive to Google's latest and greatest Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro phones, so expect a better gaming performance on your older Pixel smartphone as well, albeit not quite at the level of the Pixel 8 lineup.

Google's Tensor platform has never been famous with its raw power, unlike Qualcomm's Snapdragons, so if you like playing games all the time, chances are high that you will go for a more powerful phone like the Galaxy S23 Ultra or a proper gaming handset like the Asus ROG Phone 7. Nevertheless, it's amazing that Pixel users can now play their favorite games with significantly better performance.

Google's December Feature Drop update brings many other improvements. For instance, the Pixel 8 Pro now has a cool new feature called Video Boost, which, when enabled, sends your captured video to Google's servers where the clip gets "boosted" by Google's software magic and becomes even more incredible-looking.

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