Android 15 makes it easier for games to go above and beyond the default frame rate

Gaming has always been a popular use case for Android flagships, and there are plenty of great games on Android to enjoy on your phone. But no matter how powerful your phone is, Android will assign a maximum frame limit of 60Hz on your game as a default, leaving your powerful and overkill Android gaming phone relatively underutilized unless you mess with the in-game settings. If you’re tired of manually setting all games to their maximum settings, Android 15’s latest build makes it easier for games to run at their full potential right out of the box.

As spotted by Mishaal Rahman, Android 15 Developer Preview 2 includes a new setting that disables the default 60Hz maximum frame rate for games. Note that while fps is traditionally used for frame rates, Hz can be used as it means 1 event per second (frame rates in this context), though equating Hz to fps is a debate beyond the scope of this article.

This new setting is present in Developer Options, so it isn’t meant for most people to use. Developers can use this setting to unlock the default frame rate applicable to games, letting their game run beyond 60fps if the rest of the phone hardware allows for it. I presume this can be useful if you, as a game developer, want to explore the maximum that your in-testing game can push a particular phone without running into arbitrary system limits.

This setting is intended to help game developers develop and test their games better on Android. This setting does not mean your games will now magically run better. This setting only affects the default maximum frame rate and not the possible maximum frame rate. If your phone already struggles to play intensive games at 60fps, disabling the default will do nothing to improve your situation.

The next time you begin a graphically demanding game on your Android flagship, this new setting could allow you to run the game at a frame rate higher than 60fps right out of the box without enabling any dedicated high-graphics setting on the game to unlock higher fps. Just keep in mind that many more variables will affect how many frames you get out of your game.