Google’s Nexus 5 is not only a great smartphone, it’s a great phone for gaming if these benchmarks are anything to go by. According to Rightware’s Power Board database, which compiles and store benchmarks, the Google Nexus 5 is the second best gaming smartphone behind the Apple iPhone 5s.

The Nexus 5 scores an impressive 14.27 on the Basemark X gaming graphics performance test, while the iPhone 5s scores an even more impressive 15.54 for the top rank. The Samsung Galaxy S4 on the other hand scored a meager 8.20 on the test.

It is clear the Google Nexus 5 is shaping up to be an absolute monster of a smartphone, and the one Android device to beat in terms of performance and price. We’re still quite surprised Google is selling this thing for $349 contract free. Microsoft may need to take some notes for when it is ready to launch its own Windows Phone 8 devices after the Nokia deal goes through.

The Nexus 5 features a 2.3GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad core processor, a 4.95-inch full HD display, 8-megapixel camera with image stabilization, Android 4.4 Kit-Kat and 2GB of RAM.

We still can’t come to terms how Google managed to bring the price of the device to $349. Hopefully this move by Google will force others to do a similar thing to make high-end smartphones more affordable to the masses. …Okay, maybe not.

[via Rightware]