FYI: Some emulators on Android have a clever trick to unlock your phone’s performance

Video game emulation has been pushing boundaries for decades, and it’s just as exciting to see a PlayStation 4 being emulated in 2025 as it was to first witness GameBoy games running on a 486. Because emulators have to do just so much computation to effectively simulate one computer inside another, we regularly see emulation targets lagging a generation or two behind the systems we’re running these apps on. But for Android-based emulators in particular, it turns out there’s a little trick that some use to squeeze more performance out of your device than might be available to the average app.

Now, full disclosure: This trick is nothing new, and it’s something Android developers have known about (and have been taking advantage of) for years now. But it’s also just the sort of hacky, esoteric loophole that you might have reasonably assumed was shut down long ago — as it turns out, though, this one’s still got some legs on it.

Over on Reddit’s EmulationOnAndroid sub, Producdevity, developer of EmuReady, shares a reminder of this clever solution. Remember how many times over the years you’ve heard stories about Android manufacturers “cheating” at benchmark performance? Our phones rarely run with all their hardware cranked to 100% because we want our batteries to last a reasonable amount of time, and in normal operation, are constantly making decisions about striking that right balance between performance and endurance.

Instead of accurately benchmarking real-world operation, though, some companies configured their phones to recognize specific benchmarking apps (usually by way of their package names), and to say “the hell with battery optimizations” when it detects them running, squeezing every last bit of performance out of the hardware. But that kind of hacky approach turns out to be ripe for abuse, and developers have realized that they can also flip that same invisible performance switch by just using similar package names for their own apps.

Producdevity shares a few examples, and beyond just benchmarking apps, these days some phones also try the same trick with popular, demanding games: PUBG, Antutu, Optimized, Genshin, and Ludashi are all keywords that can trigger unthrottled operation when detected in app package names.

Even within those, there can be some meaningful differences, and while seeing “Antutu” might cause a device to just let out all the stops, running at full-tilt (with the expectation that benchmark tests are reasonably short), “PUBG” or “Genshin” may instead activate a slightly more reserved performance mode, balancing the boost you want with protections to keep your phone from melting, or the battery running down in mere minutes.

With all of these, though, there aren’t any changes to the underlying app — it’s just all in the name. But for a phone that’s playing these benchmark games, that’s all it takes. Of course, different phones can have wildly different approaches here, and the impact of these name changes will vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. If you’re looking to take your emulation to the next level, though, these kind of package name hacks might be well worth you checking out.

Curious about just what kind of boost you could expect? And which phones you’re going to want in order to take full advantage of this? We’re working on an analysis of our own, and look forward to sharing those figures with you soon!