Control sticks in my memory as one of the best showcases for ray tracing technology, despite launching in 2019 - just one year after Nvidia's 20-series cards brought hardware-accelerated RT to the mainstream. Seven years later, you can play Remedy's magnum opus, with all of its ray tracing features, on the power-sipping mobile chipset inside the iPhone 17 Pro. It's an incredible statement of technological progress, but does the game hold up on the small screen? And how does Control run on the rest of the battery-powered Apple lineup, from iPad to MacBook Pro?

We've tested exactly that, looking at the iPhone port of Control in detail on five separate devices to see how a game designed for high-end PCs runs on mobile hardware, from its advanced ray tracing to MetalFX upscaling and frame interpolation. This game essentially establishes a new baseline for what is possible on portable devices, effectively bridging the gap between mobile platforms and dedicated home consoles.

On the iPhone 17 Pro, the experience is built around a consistent 30fps target. While the settings menu allows for extensive customisation of textures, shadows, and volumetric effects, the internal frame-rate remains capped to ensure stability. In its default two megapixel configuration, the game renders at 476p internally before upscaling to 952p using MetalFX upscaling. This configuration maintains the original game's visual identity while fitting within the thermal and power constraints of a handheld form factor.

The mobile version is a significant upgrade over the original PS4 release in several key areas. The iPhone's modern CPU and fast storage eliminate the severe performance drops and stuttering that plagued the base PS4 during heavy combat. Although the console version produced a higher raw resolution, the pixel density of the iPhone screen hides upscaling artefacts and specular aliasing, resulting in an image that appears reasonably clean, despite a low internal pixel count.

MetalFX frame interpolation is a major technical addition, though its current implementation is still maturing. The technology attempts to double the perceived frame-rate from 30fps to 60fps to improve fluidity. In practice, the feature encounters difficulties during rapid camera movement and intense action, occasionally leading to skipped frames. Because the technology is working from a 30fps base, it doesn't quite provide the same level of responsiveness found in PC-based frame generation.

Hardware-accelerated RT is the most impressive aspect of the iPhone 17 Pro version. The game supports a wide range of RT effects, including reflections on both opaque and transparent surfaces, contact shadows and (limited) diffuse global illumination. These features can be transformative at full tilt, though the reflections account for most of that uplift. Control has plenty of glass and lacquered wood, and remains one of the best RT reflections showcases even today.

Unfortunately, pushing all RT features to their maximum settings can lead to stability issues or outright crashes on the iPhone, particularly when exploring the Oldest House's larger and more complex environments. The most intriguing experience is found using the "For This Device (RT)" settings, which prioritise RT reflections and deliver a reasonably good 30fps, combining the game's most impactful RT lighting technique with decent performance.

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The performance scales across different tiers of Apple hardware too, including the older iPhone 15 Pro and the M2-equipped iPad Air. The iPhone 15 Pro delivers a decent 30fps update, albeit on lower settings than 17 Pro devices, and with no options for ray tracing. The M2 Air has a pretty good lock on 30fps, but again it lacks RT. Ray tracing requires an M3, M4, or M5 iPad with at least 12GB of memory, or an A19 Pro based iPhone.

The M5 iPad Pro takes things further by exposing a RT preset as one of the defaults. To accommodate these intensive effects, the tablet drops its internal rendering resolution to ~552p before upscaling. This trade-off results in some shimmering and a slightly less stable image compared to the iPhone, but it remains a remarkable feat for a tablet.

Higher end Macs allow Control to reach its full potential. The high settings preset sans ray tracing can deliver a pretty stable 4K60 experience using MetalFX upscaling, which arguably compares favourably to PS5 and Series X. Macs are capable of employing RT, but a clean 4K60 presentation with RT seems harder to achieve on M4 Max.

While certain aspects like interpolation and high-end stability are still being refined, this port stands as the most ambitious AAA effort on the platform and a definitive showcase for the future of gaming on Apple silicon.