It's been x years and x months since I stopped gaming on mobile completely.

• This doesn't cover Tablets with external Gamepads that don't attach to your phone. That I am still testing.
• Of course there are games with ads, pay-to-win mechanics and in-app purchases but this discussion is even after including paid games that are pretty good and play really well when being compared to their console/pc ports.
• I completely understand that many people can't or won't just move to PC or console gaming and the mobile phone might be their only avenue to gaming.
  I understand that, and I am still asking you to drop gaming from your phones entirely and only pay on consoles attached to big TVs or PCs or in some cases laptops.
  Yes, I am asking you to STOP GAMING ALTOGETHER if you don't have access to a bigger screen eye-height gaming like Monitor or TVs.
• I also understand that you use gaming for escape and your current work/home life is so shit is that all you want to do is escape from this reality with whatever means necessary. That I will cover in a future blog, for sure but in short, you shouldn't use gaming as an escape mechanism.
  Just because most people around you jump into a volcano doesn't make jumping into a volcano's the right thing. It's hot inside the volcano, it's a bit uncomfortable.

Watch these videos until the blog is complete.

• Unless you lie down with your hands supported on pillows, you will always be in a position where you are looking down on the screen and there is a lot of strain put on the neck muscles.
  Even if you try your best to actively keep looking up

Gaming without Gamepad

Gaming with external Gamepad that attaches to the phone

Gaming with external Gamepad that isn't attached to the phone

So I have been gaming a lot on my phone with a phone gamepad attached for the last few days mainly to test that gamepad and I realized something from a health standpoint.

No matter what I do, my default position while gaming on a phone becomes looking down on a screen and it puts a lot of pressure in the areas just behind my neck, back shoulder is it? tricepts? I don't kno what this is. But I keep actively trying to look up but I keep catching myself looking down.

And this somehow puts a lot of strain on the body and I am unsure about this, increases heart rate or blood pressure.

Could you look for scientific evidence to prove or disprove my instincts.

Now the thing is if you do put your phone upto eye height, you can't use the gamepad designed for phones as you will have to hold your hands up to eye height as well, so this means you might as well get a regular ergonomic gamepad that doesn't attach to your phone instead of getting a gamepad that's designed to hook to your phone.

Now let's forget gamepad and let's talk about the eye strain only. I am not saying blue light red light shit. Just the high concentration of many pixels on a phone and the fact that you have to keep the screen quite close to you to to be able to see what the fuck is going on.

Let me explain a bit more: When I used my laptop 15.6" screen for my work(researching tech stuff and updating website) even by lifting it up and putting an external keyboard under the laptop so that I am close to the display just so that I can fit a lot of stuff on the screen(By lowering the scaling in windows) it became quite straining on the eyes.

When I got like the cheapest 22" IPS 1080p 100Hz monitor I could find(Yes the cheapest one), this eye strain reduced severly to the point of me not even noticing it anymore.

Same 1080p content whem put on a 15.6" screen with 115% scaling was somehow straining the eyes due to how closely packed the pixels were when compared to 1080p content on the 22" screen with 100% scaling.

And I feel in the past many days of gaming, that it's the worst on a phone with like 6" screen.

There's two more things. First, this is with me getting an external gamepad, if I didn't, the overlay buttons which have to be small to make sure the games aren't very small on your phone, cause a lot of strain on your fingers.

Before getting a gamepad I remember getting do much strain on my fingers that I completely had abandoned mobile gaming and only picked it up because I got this gamepad and I thought I would review it instead.

And the secnd thing is: Gaming sort of makes you sit through actual physical pain without you realizing it.. Yesterday with my mother getting her physiotherapy(ironic) I stayed outside for an hour with her very light purse in my right hand supported by my elbow while I sat half standing on my leaning bike playing games on my gamepad.

I did try to keep my face up but it was not happening if I am being honest. The gamepad itself being like 300gms and my phone 200gms+, easily 600gms with phone case, I was never going to keep my neck facing upwards if I am being honest.

And I didn't realise this but my elbow joints were getting a lot of strain and only when it was time to leave that I realised the immense pain I was under.

When I stood up and took the purse out, I realised my right hand near the elbow had sort of frozen and trying to straighten my hands out it was so so much pain that I had to actually massage it with my left hand for many seconds to be able to actually even put those hands on the bike in a normla position.

The pain didn't go away for the next many minutes.

The problem is becoming so bad with mobile gaming both on my neck muscles and eyes and even body pains due to things above that I am thinking of abandoning mobile gaming permanently.

I just wanted to document my experiences somewhere later and tell someone about it before I did so I guess. I will copy our exact conversation and put it on my blog and then making a video on it but for now I am done with mobile gaming and I am right now going ro delete all gaming apps on my phone and all the games and remove all wishlists also.

You say you want to help with handheld gaming but I am being honest with you, gaming is something that you will forget the "right" posture for it and no matter what external stuff you add to your phone, it will always be dangerous for mobile gaming.

And just to be clear the yesterday elbow pain wasn't with some awesome game. It was a fucking shitty Sponge Bob Comsic game that was so irritatingly basic that I didn't bother to complete the game and actually uninstalled it because I couldn't be bothered to finish it.

Can you imagine what would have happened if it was an actual good game?

And I am an older more aware about his body kind of guy. Can you imagine what the kids would be like? Do you think they will bother to do your 15-mins rituals at all? Do you really think they will follow the healthy posture and guidelines or will they just go back to the terrible position which hurts their eyes, fingers(if no phone gamepad), elbows and shoulders(if phone gamepad due to extra weight), neck and the tricepts ares.

I can't have that on my conscience and remember I started my YouTube channel Makinggamefriendly to tackle exactly this kind of thing.

If even one person completely abandonds mobile and heck yes all handheld gaming because of my upcoming videos and blog I will be very happy

With that said I would actually like to go ahead and permanently for the last time in my life, get rid of all mobile games on my phone right now before I even move forward.

The next we will be taking about is handheld retro console and if I am being honest they are even worse with their smaller screens and smaller gamepads which strain this even further. It's a joke the controls on those, they look like proper gamepad, but are worse on every way if you look from a health standpoint.

So next will be handheld retro consoles.

Just after this we will cover Tablet and a full sized external gamepad gaming.

And then we can talk about laptop gaming and finally monitor and tv gaming.

I am writing these as I am doing these.

Removed all wishlist from Google Play Store.

Uninstall Epic Games Launcher from my phone.

Uninstalled Super Meat Boy and Rush Rally 3, only two games I have had on my phone.

Deleted PS2 games/BIOS and uninstalled PS2 Emulator.

Uninstall PSP games/BIOS and uninstalled PSP Emulator.

Uninstalled Switch games/bios/firmwares and uninstalled two switch emulators.

Uninstalled KeyLinker app to change settings of the phone gamepad.

Uninstalled Steam Link, the main app I used to play games on my phone.

Moved the Steam App(NoMobile games with this, just check stuff for pc gaming like deals and reviews) from Games Folder to Shopping folder.

Uninstalled the GameTester app which used to pay me for mobile games testing and I used to justify playing 3-6hrs games on this just because it paid me to ruin my health. I will not be accepting any mobile Gametests no matter how much they pay me.

Removed the games folder from within Nova Launcher and renamed their default games folder to deleteMe before hiding them.

The last thing that was left to just tell you about it

I want to go off topic just one time and then we can talk about gaming and health.

I loved drinking Horlicks, some Complan also but actively loved that sugary horlicks in mill drink where I would concentrate the milk with horlicks and it was such a yummy treat.

But even then I knew back in my head somewhere that it's not healthy really is it? It's sugary drink that gives you the runs if you drink it too much. I used to drink it and all my stomach used to get clean, maybe due to malt in it ? Who cares, not the point.

The point is when I decided I want to get rid of it, I went ahead and gave myself a month and I bought a big packet of the horlicks and I chugged it all down in a few weeks but once that packet was over, I never looked back.

Not even "just for taste", 'it's been so long, I should give it one last try." Nopes never and just to be clear it's always there in the shops I visit on a regular basis. I look at it and feel nothing because I gave myself time to enjoy it one last time.

This feels just like it. For the past many months, I bought 4 retro consoles, gave two of them away, and the two I have, one is broken beyond repair and the other's screen is fucked up and I only use it as a music player for my tinnitus.

Then I got two gamepad, one the heavier ones I was playing with, and another one which is on it's way and I won't test it much and probably give it away to kids without gamepads so atleast they have something better than no gamepad and later I can tell them to stop mobile gaming all together.

Then I played the shit out of all of them but in my mind I guess I was enjoying the last few days together before deciding it.

I am done with mobile gaming forever now. ni6hant Signed at Purnea Bihar India 26th Nov 2025

I also went ahead and deleted all games from my retro console, the one that still works with broken display.

And also deleted the roms files that are already sorted on my PC which I could have put on my console.

I kept telling myself that I will keep the games here because when I gift this to a kid they won't have to bother about putting games on it. But that's a big fat excuse if I ever saw one.

They can put their games themselves and if not I will put in 3-4 games for them They don't need to haord the whole library and it certainly can't be used as an excuse to keep this device in my vicinity thay I know has a lot of games on it.

So I just am done deleting all the games for it.

In return I won't uninstall Steam from my PC which I have been struggling to do for the past few days and will actually play the emulator games on my PC in return instead of feeling bad about it.

Sure we will talk about it but isn't it obvious that the retro handheld are also as bad if not worse than phones.

Also thinking about the negative effects of all these, I can't give these phone gamepads or retro consoles to kids.

So I have asked a college kid in Delhi, Madhur, who has been following my youtube channel and is very active on everything I do if he will be willing to sell these retro consoles and terrible gamepads I have and more that I have already ordered. I really hope he says yes because I want to get rid of them as soon as possible.

I hope who he sells them to are getting something better, like they were playing on touchscreen but now they are playing with gamepads. Hopefully later they will move to consoles or PCs.

And I think after the new handheld that I already ordered I will not be ordering any more phone controllers or retro handhelds and will actively discourage users from getting them and instead saving up for a PC setup even if that's a used old Office PC.And I think after the new handheld that I already ordered I will not be ordering any more phone controllers or retro handhelds and will actively discourage users from getting them and instead saving up for a PC setup even if that's a used old Office PC.