Certainly interesting. However, it'll be difficult for people to take advantage of that in the way that games like that would drain the battery of a phone very quickly, and the fact that it would be difficult to sell a game that would be on the same quality as console games, seeing that a lot of profit in the mobile gaming market is made from in-app purchases, and not many mobile gamers would spend as much as those games may cost.

Well that is mostly because it had to work on older systems like Iphone 5 released in 2012?

It's actually crazy how much power the high end smartphones actually have nowadays, but then again they are enthusiast level devices that cost 800 or more. Already now top smartphones have 8 core CPUs at 1.5 GHz, which is roughly what the current gen consoles have. So while it wouldn't be that surprising, this doesn't mean that much for games on the smartphones. No one's going to build high end console quality games on mobile anyway, and at best this means emulation on mobile will become better. However the only emulators current phones are struggling with are Dolphin and PS2 emulators, and that is to a large part due to bad optimization. Since more recent emulators are not even properly developed on PC, we won't see them on smartphones for some time still, so I don't really see the use of so much power for the smartphones.

Edit: Actually the article points out a use for all this power. VR. Since the smartphones resolutions are already now a minimum of 1080p and more phones are starting to use 1440p, and couple this with the power of a console, and due to using it for VR the size becomes irrelevent, I could see how this could be great. Again while I doubt there will be many high end exclusives for mobile VR games, if enough ports are made this might provide a valid alternative for those who already have a smartphone, but not Oclulus Rift or PSVR.

That would be awesome for NX, same hardware on handheld and home console, with on par visuals of the 8th gen. it wont came in time for NX, though.

1. In terms of power this will be true. But ......
2. When it comes to invest millions in state of the art facial cam and high quality production value you will always need a AAA publisher. This is why PC hasn't surpassed consoles. Investment always matters.

You would need to consider that the top end phones cost more than double the price of a PS4.

I doubt we will ever see exclusive smartphine games with the prodution values to rival the latest console AAA games. However, as the article points out, this could be great news for VR. VR games will have a small install base to begin with, but if you can port them to mobile, that is a huge win for everybody.

So why does it still look and run crap on newer hardware?

There is no way a 9w soc can outperform a ~140w soc just in 4 years...

Just because it has a stronger processor on paper doesn't make it a better gaming machine. Even if they say they will be able to generate better visuals, it'll be at the cost of melting your phone case. We're just not there yet, and this is nothing but blowing smoke.

Factor in that Xbox One and Ps4 did not use the best hardware available at the time of release, and that the top smartphones cost at least twice as much as the consoles.

I'd imagine it's a bad port. Similarly with games like XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012) that are ported to Android, they are made in such a way to not to take as much space on your phone (no use in making games on phone that are 40gb) as well as supporting older hardware to increase the install base of people who could play your game.

No one said it would be. It simply becomes an alternative option for things such as VR.