An APK teardown also hints at 1440p streaming for phones
Cloud gaming has been quite the buzzword over the past few years due to its potential to eventually kill consoles, but unfortunately, there’s little in the market that’s come close to fulfilling the promise of the technology. Take Google Stadia for example, which, while it has definitely seen a boatload of improvements since its 2019 debut, is far from being as reliable as a console. Slowly but surely, though, the service is making progress with each update, and this week’s update has some sweet signs for the touch gameplay experience on mobile.
As spotted by 9to5Google in its APK teardown of the Stadia 4.13 update now rolling out through the Play Store, touch controls may soon show their game-specific purposes rather than their alphanumeric names. For example, the A button will be replaced by the graphic of a person jumping, R2 will get a bullet icon, L1 a grenade, and so on. Considering how console games aren’t typically optimized for mobile gaming, this little change will help the overall experience inch closer to that of native mobile games. The only catch here is that these new buttons will probably not be used in a real game anytime soon and are only intended to be a demonstration of what’s possible.
The 4.13 update also contains a new mention in its code — “UPTO_1440P” — which could be an indicator of upcoming support for 1440p streaming on mobile in the near future. Stadia currently only allows that resolution on high-res monitors despite many mobile displays being capable of it or even 4K. If not mobile, then the code is likely meant for Stadia’s Android TV app.
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