Game Runs Poorly on Lower-Tier Android Devices

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1

Godot Version

4.3 Stable

Question

I am fairly new to Godot, I am attempting to complete my first card game. I’m about 95% complete - at least I thought I was - and I’ve been testing the game on real Android devices. I’m exporting an APK file to the devices. The disappointment has been overwhelming…

The devices so far:

  • Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra (12 GB Memory / 128 GB Storage / Android 13)
  • Galaxy Tab A8 (3 GB Memory / 32 GB Storage / Android 10)
  • ONN Tablet (2 GB Memory / 32 GB Storage / Android 14)

The Samsung S20 phone operates perfectly - no issues.

The Galaxy Tab A8 tablet it runs just OK - at times a bit glitchy. The worst thing is that it takes about a minute initialize the Admob Ads - which is a major issue.

The ONN Tablet - so far in testing it never can initialize the Admob ads and overall the game runs horribly. When I tap a playing card it can take a second or 2 for it to move from A to B. The game has frozen and also crashed. I’ve also noticed that my timer (a clock that increments by 1 second) freezes up repeatedly.

So, as I see it as memory decreases on the device the performance gets worse. I am worried that since Godot is not native to Android, there may be issues running a game developed in Godot on a lower-tier device. I’ve built games before for Android in Java and I’ve never had this issue. However, part of me thinks I may have just built this game incorrectly which keeps it from operating efficiently across all device types.

I know I haven’t shared any code here. My general question is generally if there is a barrier for using Godot on low-tier devices. And if the answer to that is NO, can anyone point me in the direction of some literature or tutorials that may assist troubleshooting building on such devices. Or perhaps is the issue the apk file, should I try to test with an aab file? Any insight would be helpful, thanks.

2

please show screenshots of your game, we can’t help you like this.

as for requirements, those are not a godot problem.

look at games like raid shadow legends and marvel snap. they used to work on 2Gb phones but stop working as more and more assets are loaded into memory and the phone gets older. marvel snap is made in unity.

2Gb and even 3Gb is too little for running any somewhat complex game. again, it depends on the game and we don’t know what yours looks like, but it would not be a surprise.

the biggest problems for mobile are graphics, due to cheap, bad and outdated gpus, and badly designed code that uses too many resources. also lacks of or bad optimization.
but look at graphics first.