Why some phones support eFootball and others do not

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Hello, let’s talk about why some phones support eFootball and others do not.

The blue screenshot above is a list of specs from Konami about the devices that should support their game.

iOS devices like iPads, iPods, and iPhones are very straightforward to understand as clearly stated on the screenshot. Android on the other hand is not.

Must read: eFootball 2024 Mobile System Requirements 

Why is eFootball not supported on your phone?

Why?

This is because Android phones are a jumbled mess of different parts from different manufacturers that are cobbled up together into one device.

Let’s take my Redmi Note 9 Pro for example. The SoC is made by Snapdragon with a blueprint from ARM. The RAM is made by SK Hynix, the LCD is made by Tianma, the software is from Google, the cameras are from Samsung and Omnivision, etc.

All of these different components were put together by Xiaomi to give us the Redmi Note 9 Pro.

So when it comes to Android, there’s no universal rule book to use. Lots of people talk about Android as if they’re referring to a singular entity which is wrong. Android itself is not a phone. It is the largest operating system by user count in the world today and if you don’t look at it closely, you won’t understand it.

After all, all androids are the same right? Wrong.

It’s not as simple as my friend’s Android is playing this game, Why is my device not playing it? My own must play it, give me a magic solution. Sadly, too many people have this closed mindset, so much so that they’re unteachable.

Even two Android devices from the same company will behave very differently. This is especially true for all those Samsung people. The ones who are willing to go and buy Samsung A02 because Samsung is above every other Android and then wonder why their phone doesn’t support eFootball. All because they do not realize that the Samsung S series and the A series are two very different entities.

The Redmi Note Pro and the regular Redmi and Redmi Note devices are very different things.

Read eFootball 2022: Quick guide on gameplay, contracts, training, etc.

So why do people make these somewhat silly mistakes?

Because of the glorification of ignorance. Knowledge doesn’t matter. Especially when ignorant mobs gather and make fun of the person trying to tell them facts. I don’t want to go too deep into all that.

But the takeaway is that specs are the fundamental information about any device. It is this information that will let you know what the devices can or cannot do.

eFootball Mobile requirements

In this case, let’s look at PES and the requirements that they brought for Android.

  • Software: Android 7.0 or above
  • Memory: 2GB or above
  • CPU: ARM-based quad-core or above
  • Clock speed: 1.5GHz or above
  • GPU: ???

These are the specs that Konami has put out and when I saw them, I laughed. Why?

Because these are the same specs that Tencent put out for PUBG 4 years ago. The only difference was that the Android version was 5.0 minimum and the clock speed was 1.3GHz minimum. I raised the issue on Reddit and Nairaland and as usual, nobody paid any attention. It was only on the blog that people started asking…
  • Will Phone A support the game?
  • Does phone B support the game?
  • Would phone C support the game?

And I answered as best as I could. The rest people simply didn’t care. In their minds, their phones met the minimum requirements

Read: eFootball Mobile is now available on Playstore/App store

The shocker

Then the game dropped and we started seeing messages like…

My phone met the minimum requirements, but it doesn’t work. Somebody help.

At this point, I was vindicated that the so-called requirements were a scam and truly undersold the needed parameters that a phone would need to run PES. Funnily enough if you check the bottom of the screenshot, there’s a disclaimer there that many people failed to read.

Why do some phones support eFootball and others do not?

It would be easy for me to come and just tell you that phone A will support the game and phone B will not. That’s what a lot of people are expecting to read or hear, but I would not be doing you a lot of good if I did that.

Not at all.

I want you to know the reason behind these things and then give you the tools to figure it out all by yourself even without my input.

In this whole mess of people feeling cheated and very angry, I’d like to say the following. Konami doesn’t hate Android and Android is not a phone.

The problem is that eFootball is a shrunken-down version of the console/PC game. It is huge. About 3.3GB.

As a result, it needs a lot of power to be able to process it and the part of your phone that processes data is the SoC. The system is on a chip. It also requires space (RAM) to load the game and it requires a phone with a 64-bit operating system.

The SoC

The system on a chip is what we call the processor. The proper name is a smartphone SoC or system on a chip. The SoC is named that way because it is an entire system. It contains an entire system of CPUs that helps a phone carry out its tasks.

The main parts of an SoC that are strongly related to gaming are the main CPU cores and the GPU. The CPU installs, loads, and processes apps and games. The GPU is what displays the graphics on the screen.

If the CPUs are weak, they will be unable to run the game correctly. In fact, in many cases, they will be unable to install the game. We’ve seen this practically with eFootball.

This is not just about eFootball Mobile alone as other games like PUBG mobile for example, or Call of Duty, Fortnite, and even Apex Legends won’t work if the CPUs or GPUs are not up to the task.

Even if the CPUs were able to handle the task and could install the game, if the GPUs are not powerful enough to render graphics, there will be problems as well.

I’ll never forget that app called GFX tool. This app helped me downgrade PUBG Graphics to the level that my PowerVR GE8100 on the Tecno Pouvoir 2 could play.

So like I said SoC is the main computing hub on a smartphone that processes data, especially for games.

See: eFootball Mobile System requirements

CPUs

The main parts are the CPUs and the GPU. CPU strength is easy to understand, very easy.

ARM Cortex CPU cores

Starting from the weakest, we have

  • ARMv7: Cortex A7, A9
  • ARMv8: Cortex A53, A55 (small cores)
  • ARMv8: Cortex A72, A73, A75, A76, A77, A78, X1
  • ARMv9: A510, A710, X2, X3

Anything below the red line (A53 and below) will struggle to play football. Why? Well because these CPUs are old and weak. They are not equipped to handle the load that the football brings.

64-bit

eFootball is a 64-bit only game and only phones with 64-bit SoCs and Operating system software can run it.

If your phone uses any of the following…

  1. a 32-bit SoC with a 32-bit operating system or
  2. a 64-bit SoC with a 32-bit operating system or
  3. a weak 64-bit SoC with a 64-bit operating system

It will not run eFootball.

RAM

Since football is a huge game, it is going to require a lot of resources to run. One of the most important resources is RAM. You would need at least 4GB of RAM to run eFootball. Those 2GB RAM phones of yours won’t be able to do the job.

Some good examples

Let me show you some phones that do not support eFootball.

Redmi 9a

If you look at the CPU, you’ll see that it is a cortex A53 set of CPUs.

Let’s look at another phone that doesn’t support this game, Tecno Spark 7

Can you take note of the CPUs that this phone uses? Yes, the same A53

The reason some phones can’t play PES or eFootball is because they have weak ARM Cortex A53 CPUs and 32-bit operating systems.

However, there are a few phones that can still run the game. Some of them have ARM Cortex A53 CPUs that are faster, like the Samsung A12 with its Helio P35. It can run the game because its A53 CPUs are super fast at 2.3GHz, and it uses a 64-bit operating system. That’s why it works.

Better 64-bit phones like Nokia 3.4 (Snapdragon 460), Redmi 12 (Helio G85), Spark 10 Pro (Helio G88), and more can run the game due to their superior SoCs, 4GB of RAM, and 64-bit OS.

So if you take a look at the the CPUs in use here, you can see very well that they use either A73 or A75 CPU cores.

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