GameNative just got a major upgrade for Samsung Galaxy users

Published Aug 21, 2026, 11:22 AM EDT Patrick O'Rourke is XDA's News Editor and Entertainment Segment Lead. Previously, he was Pocket-lint's Editor-in-Chief, the Editor-in-Chief of Canadian tech publication MobileSyrup, and earlier in his career, he worked as the technology editor at the Financial Post and Postmedia. He's based in Toronto. Over the past 15 years, he's written thousands of articles. Patrick has also interviewed dozens of tech industry executives and covered GDC, E3, Gamescom, WWDC, Apple keynotes, Samsung Unpacked events and more. Patrick has a BA in journalism from Toronto Metropolitan University. Sign in to your XDA account Summary GameNative v1.2.0 brings CPU/GPU power controls to Samsung Galaxy with four profiles. Choose Power Save, Balanced, Performance, or WALT; set min/max CPU frequency and GPU power for fine-tuning. The app update also adds faster external load times, favorites, community configs, and improved frame generation. GameNative, an app that offers one of the best ways to install and play PC games on Android devices, is now far more capable on Samsung Galaxy devices thanks to a range of new CPU and GPU power controls. With GameNative v1.2.0, you can now select from one of four power profile options, including Power Save, Balanced, Performance, and WALT. While the Power Save option tops out at 998MHz, other profiles reach their maximum frequency at different clock speeds (via @Android Authority). This should help with Galaxy phone thermals and also allow you to easily kick performance up a notch for more intense PC games. If you want to take things a step further, you can also make more granular adjustments to the minimum and maximum CPU frequencies, or even select the maximum frequency with either the minimum/maximum GPU power. This is the sort of fine-tuning that's usually reserved for Windows 11 handhelds or the Steam Deck, so it's great to see it make its way to a smartphone. Hopefully, the new power settings land on other Android devices soon. Other new features are included in GameNative's latest update Several retro handhelds are also getting the new CPU and GPU controls Credit: Google Play Store Other GameNative v1.2.0 features include faster loading from external storage, a favorites tab, a community configuration browser, and improved frame generation. Along with Samsung Galaxy devices, GameNative's new CPU and GPU controls are also available on AYN and Retroid handhelds like the Odin and the Retroid Pocket Classic. GameNative v1.2.0 is available on GitHub right now as a pre-release update. It will likely make its way to the Google Play Store soon.