Nick Fernandez / Android Authority
Love it or hate it, Infinity Nikki is here to stay. The unabashedly girly gacha title is a cozier take on open-world games like Genshin Impact or Breath of the Wild, and after spending a few hours with it this morning, I have no doubt that it will make an absolute truckload of money.
But apart from the glamour and glitz of collecting outfits that let me fly and catch bugs, one thing stood out to me: This game is incredibly power-hungry. Despite being a cutesy romp around Miraland, the system requirements for Infinity Nikki are so high that many fans may find themselves locked out.
So to find out just what phones can run Infinity Nikki, I installed the game on a variety of devices (and coerced my coworkers to do the same). Here are the results.
What phones can run Infinity Nikki?
The minimum requirements to run Infinity Nikki on Android are a Snapdragon 888 processor and 8GB of RAM. Anything above that should play smoothly. Results on Exynos and Mediatek devices were mixed, with good framerates but frequent graphical glitches. On iOS, you’ll need an iPhone 11 or newer.
The needs of high fashion
When I first booted up Infinity Nikki, I was greeted with an extremely long install time, followed by another long wait period for “rendering shaders.” When all was said and done, it more than 30 minutes to install the 20GB game. I repeated this process on four separate phones, for content, of course.
Those phones were an Exynos version of the Galaxy S24, a Pixel 9 with a Tensor 3, a Snapdragon 865-sporting OnePlus 8 Pro, and a Redmagic 9S Pro with a suped-up Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. The Venn diagram of Redmagic 9S Pro users and Infinity Nikki fans is probably two very distant circles, but it’s the only recent Snapdragon device I have.
Infinity Nikki requirements call for a flagship phone from the last few years.
Infinity Nikki was built in Unreal Engine 5, and the website lists minimum requirements of 8GB of RAM and a Snapdragon 888, Dimensity 8100 Max, or equivalent processor. That’s far, far more than previous games in the Nikki universe, and far more than other open-world games like Genshin Impact, which recommends a Snapdragon 845.
To be fair, Genshin Impact was released in 2020, but it seems excessive for a game like Infinity Nikki, which probably doesn’t appeal to people who impulse buy the latest tech gadgets.
So how new does your phone have to be to run Infinity Nikki? Let’s take a look.
Can your phone run Infinity Nikki?
Nick Fernandez / Android Authority
In order to get more benchmarks, I reached out to my colleague Rob. He’s the real tech wizard here at Android Authority, and for the small price of a piece of his soul, he tested the game on a few different devices. Combined with my own results, it painted a pretty clear picture of what phones can play Infinity Nikki.
Unsurprisingly, our top pick for gaming phones, the ASUS ROG Phone 9 with its Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC, played buttery smooth at 30fps. Yes, the maximum is 30fps on Android, which is a very low bar in 2024. I got equally excellent results with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 in the Redmagic 9S Pro.
However, not all flagship processors are created equal. The Exynos variant of the Galaxy S24 produced tons of visual glitches, the draw distance was much lower, and the overall gameplay experience was noticeably worse. The Exynos 2400 isn’t inherently worse than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 (at least in our testing), so it likely has more to do with drivers and optimization. We saw something similar a few years ago with Diablo Immortal, which wouldn’t run on Exynos devices at launch.
Exynos and MediaTek processors were noticeably worse than their Qualcomm counterparts.
We saw similar results on the new MediaTek Dimensity 9400 in the OPPO Find X8 Pro. It could hit 30fps, but there were frequent drops and a lot of jank in gameplay. No matter how recent the device, it seems that Infinity Nikki plays best on Snapdragon devices.
But what about older devices? I tried Infinity Nikki on a OnePlus 8 Pro with a Snapdragon 865, which is a generation older than what developer recommends. Before even loading the game there’s a message saying that it might not play well, which didn’t get my hopes up.
The results were mixed. The game was definitely playable, but it couldn’t maintain anywhere close to 30fps. Draw distance was pretty terrible, and the device was quite hot after just 10 minutes of gameplay. It’s fine if you just want to get a taste of the game, but long-term, I wouldn’t recommend playing on anything below the recommended specs.
The game did just come out though, so it’s sure to get some optimizations that might make the game play more smoothly. Personally, I’d love to have the option to play in 60fps, which would truly make this the new benchmark for performance on Android. Pink socks and all.
