Opinion: The argument for Android gaming keeps getting stronger

There's a simple, indisputable fact when it comes to mobile gaming - iOS is better than Android.

This isn't some fanboyish, pointlessly partisan brand of platform loyalty on our part. It's simply a matter of fact that the best smartphone games usually come to iOS first, and that the uniformity of Apple's hardware often (but not always) means that it's the best platform to play them on.

Of course, there's always been one massive area in which Android has been better than iPhone as a gaming platform - inclusiveness. There have always been affordable Android phones, allowing those on a budget to get a certain level of gaming experience on the cheap.

The thing us, up to now, those experiences have always been compromised due to poor or underpowered hardware. That's no longer the case.

Android has always been the smartphone platform for the masses. While Apple's few iPhone models continue to sell better than any single Android phone, there are far more Android phones out there in total.

While Samsung makes a song and dance about its latest Galaxy S flagship, there's always been the other end of the scale - those crappy sub-£100 efforts with the awful screens that your mum ends up getting duped into signing up for.

Developing countries, too, buy a lot of cheaper Android hardware, because their citizens quite simply can't afford anything else.

Android has always been the affordable option, but it was only ever much cop when you got to the top end of the market.

Behind all of this, however, there has been a steady improvement in quality at that lower end of the smartphone market. In particular, Chinese manufacturers have refined their efforts well beyond the point of naff iPhone knock-offs.

Brands like Huawei, Lenovo, ZTE, and Xiaomi now turn out handsets that can compare with the best that Samsung and LG have to offer. What's more, those handsets are making their way to the West.

The result is that, here in 2015, you can get a premium gaming experience for less than £200.

Let's take a couple of examples. The ZTE Blade S6 (pictured above) sports a crisp 5-inch 720p display, a capable Snapdragon 615 64-bit quad-core processor, a solid (if derivative) design, and decent custom UI that's essentially a light reskin of stock Android 5.0 Lollipop - Google's latest OS, which gives iOS 8 a run for its money for stylish design.

Here I am, playing Trials: Frontier on it, and it's pretty much as slick as it was whilst playing it on my iPhone 5S or my iPad Air 2.

The ZTE Blade S6 costs £170 on Amazon right now. That's a third of the price of an iPhone 6.

Or, if you want to take a slight step up, there's the Honor 6 (pictured below) from Huawei with its 5-inch 1080p display. It too has a 64-bit quad-core CPU (Huawei's own Kirin 920), and it also has a generous 3GB of RAM. Real Racing 3 and Dead Trigger 2 fly on it.

The Honor 6 costs £240 on Amazon right now. Or, to put it another way, less than half the price of an iPhone 6.

These two examples are just that - examples. The amazing thing is that you can spend a little less or a little more than these prices, and you'll only get a slightly inferior or superior gaming experience respectively.

Combine this with a rapidly improved - and rapidly improving - Google Play Store, where the gap between iOS and Android releases is nowhere near as pronounced as it used to be, and the choice for any mobile gamer on a budget is clear.

Android might not be the absolute best mobile gaming platform out there, but it's now the best option for an awful lot of people.