Hadlee Simons / Android Authority
One of the more notable emulation stories in the last couple of years has been the rise of apps that let you play PC games on your Android phone or tablet. No, we aren’t talking about streaming, either, but actually running these games via emulation/translation.
Winlator and GameHub are the two leading apps in this regard. The latter recently received an update that improves performance on devices with Mali GPUs. This came about via a partnership with MediaTek, but developer GameSir told us that this should also benefit Google Pixel phones. So, with that in mind, I thought I’d try playing some PC games on my Pixel via GameHub.
Getting started with GameHub
Hadlee Simons / Android Authority
GameHub itself can only be downloaded from GameSir’s website, as it is not available on the Play Store. The company noted that the Mali GPU improvements were available with the latest download (version 4.1.3), but I was running version 4.1.4 at the time of writing.
I opted to use my Pixel 7 Pro as it’s the only Pixel phone I have on hand. However, this should be a good baseline for Pixel owners. If a game runs here, then you can expect better results on more recent Google phones.
It’s worth noting that my personal device only has 128GB of storage, which means I can’t test games with huge file sizes. 128GB of base storage really isn’t enough for an $800+ phone in 2025. Nevertheless, I opted to try a variety of lightweight and more demanding titles.
GameHub has a pretty intuitive UI, but setting things up can still be a tedious experience.
Installing games can be a long-winded affair, though. You need to install the game on your PC and copy those folders to your phone, or install the game via GameHub using your supplied setup files. So far, so good. However, the latter approach can be a bit of a pain, as you ideally need to install games to the D or E drive (which corresponds to your phone’s accessible folders like Downloads) if you want to import that title into GameHub. Otherwise, you have to boot up the desktop environment each time you want to play that specific game. Once you’ve installed a game via the app, you can add the title to your library by browsing for its exe file.
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