Best Phone for Samsung Gear VR – Top 3 Picks, Tips, FAQs & More

This section will explore all of the factors you must consider as a consumer before you buy a phone for the Samsung Gear VR headset. 

Many consumers tend to buy a phone without doing adequate research. As a result, they end up with a phone that might not fulfill all of their needs. If something like this happens to you, we’re sorry to say it but you only have yourself to blame. 

Make sure that you look up user reviews online, look at what your own needs are, and then, find a phone that fulfills those needs. 

The factors to consider before buying a phone for your Samsung Gear VR headset include:

Price 

This will depend on your budget but of course, you must consider the price of the phone that you intend to buy. 

Of course, the more expensive a phone is, the more features it will most likely have. However, it’s up to you to decide how many of those features you actually need and how many of them you could do without. 

Many of the more expensive phones will have features that you don’t really need. This is especially true if you intend to buy the smartphone simply for running VR titles on the Samsung Gear VR headset. 

A limited budget means limited options. 

However, that’s nothing to worry about since the Samsung Gear VR headset is a fairly old piece of tech at this point. Hence, the ideal phones for it are also fairly old. This means that you can get them at a fairly cheap price. 

Size 

The Samsung Gear VR headset is compatible with smartphones whose length ranges from between 5.1 inches to 6.3 inches. Hence, you must ensure that any phone you buy lies within this range. 

If the phone is smaller than 5.1 inches, then it won’t be able to fit snugly within the Samsung Gear VR headset. This means that as you try to play a VR title with a smaller phone, that phone will keep bouncing around inside the headset. 

Naturally, this won’t result in a very pleasant VR experience. In fact, it’ll pretty much be unplayable. 

On the other hand, if you buy a smartphone that’s bigger than 6.3 inches, then it simply won’t fit inside the pocket of the Samsung Gear VR headset. 

You definitely don’t want to waste money on a smartphone that doesn’t fit inside your VR headset so be careful. 

Always check what the size of the smartphone is and ensure that it’ll be able to fit into the VR headset that you have. 

Processor and RAM 

You need a fair amount of processing power to ensure that your phone will be able to run the VR titles you want to play with ease. 

A phone that doesn’t have the adequate processing power and RAM to run certain VR titles will mean that those titles will be virtually inaccessible to you. Either they simply won’t run at all or if they do, they’ll run at a decreased frame rate which could cause nausea and eye strain. 

Inadequate processing power or RAM will result in a very unpleasant VR experience. 

Hence, it’s important to ensure that the smartphone you get has a good enough processor and high enough RAM to run the VR titles of today. 

Since the Samsung Gear VR headset is fairly old, it won’t support many newer VR titles anyway, so you really have to worry about older titles that came out in 2017 and 2018. 

As long as you buy a high-end smartphone that came out around that era, you’ll be fine.

Internal Memory 

The internal memory of the smartphone you get matters a lot because that’ll determine how many VR titles you’re able to store within it at any given time. 

It’s important to note that you need to have adequate space since VR titles won’t be the only thing filling your phone; Unless you’re buying the smartphone exclusively to play VR titles on it. 

If you intend to use it as your primary phone as well, then you’ll also need space for other files such as pictures, videos, documents, etc. 

Hence, ensure that the smartphone you get has adequate internal memory. In addition to having high internal memory, you can also opt for a smartphone that has adequate memory extension options. 

There exist smartphones that let you expand their memory by up to 128 or 256 GB. Such smartphones can be great since you can get a micro SD card to expand their memory. This exponentially raises the capacity of your smartphone to hold more VR titles.

Screen Resolution 

Lastly, it’s important to consider the screen resolution of the smartphone that you intend to get. 

The higher the screen resolution, the clearer the image will be during VR. 

If you buy a smartphone with low resolution, then the images you experience in VR might be pixelated or blocky. While this doesn’t irrevocably ruin the experience, it definitely does mess with your immersion. 

Developers work very hard to bring you the most stunning visuals within VR as they possibly can. All of this will be nullified if you run the VR title on a smartphone that has low screen resolution. 

In fact, if your smartphone’s resolution is too low, it might not even be able to run certain VR titles. This is because certain VR titles only work with particular screen resolutions and not at lower ones.