Tilt or touch: how should you steer on a phone?

The tilt-versus-touch debate is basically a religion in mobile racing circles, so we sat down with a stack of games and actually compared them properly. The short answer is: it depends on your grip and the game.

Tilt steering feels more immersive and, when it's well tuned, more precise for fine corrections. The catch is you need a stable posture. Play tilt on a bumpy bus ride and you'll hate it within a minute. It also rules out playing one-handed.

Touch steering is more forgiving of context. You can slouch, lie down, hold the phone however, and still steer fine. The downside is that on-screen buttons eat into the view and can feel less connected to the car.

My take after all this: use touch for casual sessions and tilt when you're seriously chasing lap times on a good surface. Most of the games we tested let you switch mid-session, so there's no reason to commit to one forever.