That’s a bit of a stretch on “handheld”.
DS: Deam Steck
Game Boy Advanced SD
Steam Peck
This is a cool idea, the clamshell would make it a lot easier to toss into a bag or something without needing a case but that particular design doesn’t feel like it’d be the most comfortable to hold while playing. I think it’ll be interesting to see if anyone iterates on this idea at all.
Yeah, I can feel my palms hurting looking at those corners. Still is a cool idea though, growing up with the GBA and DS left me with a nostalgia for clamshell handhelds.
I’m hoping that whatever Valve is doing with the Index, people will get working on Ayn Thor, so I could finally upgrade from my 3DS.
You can try GameNative, it’s an attempt to bring FEX (the x86 > ARM compatibility layer) to android devices. There are some other projects trying the same thing, I think they’re called GameHub and Winlator.
Yes, I’ve got Slay the Spire 2 working on my Thor with this method.
“Without needing a case”? Dude, the device literally comes with a great case. You can even detach the internal part to get a slim version of it. Is using a zipper really that hard?
Not all of them come with the detachable case - my wife’s OLED case isnt.
It still comes with a case, doesn’t it?
Yup comes in a hard shell case, no removing it from the shell though. And yeah it makes transporting it much better than just dropping it in a bag as is
Different form factors of the deck would be awesome. The reason I never used mine and ended up selling it was because I found is so damn uncomfortable and if I wanted to take it anywhere it took up way too much space.
Mine was getting burdensome too. I needed the big case, keyboard, mouse, extra charger for shitty outlets, backup battery to charge on the go, my SD card case, mouse pad, display monitor, aeron chair, glass mat for rolling chair… desk.
Don’t forget the solar panels and the Econoline van with the trailer just to carry your barrels of food and water to have the nutrients to carry all this stuff in your fanny pack
So this option which makes it thicker, larger and has awful ergonomics is better? Ok…
No. I’m saying that it would be awesome if there were different form factors available. OK…
Maybe an Android handheld would be better for you. They are not as powerful as the Deck. But they are cheaper and available in more varieties. And thanks to Gamenative you can still play PC games on them. They’re usually enough for older games and indies.
I did exactly that and got a Retroid Pocket Flip 2 with the money I sold the deck for.
If you have a recent flagship android phone you probably don’t need a Steam Deck.
My old Samsung S23 Ultra and a phone cooler and controller is basically just as good as a steam deck these days. I was playing Hades next to my gf last night, we were both playing the same game and it looked way better on my setup and the game ran smooth for both of us.
Compared to the Steam Deck my phone is 120hz and nearly double the resolution, The snapdragon 8 gen 2 CPU and Adreno 740 GPU have more Gflops, It only has 12gb of ram vs the Steam Deck’s 16gb. The Steam Deck also runs on Linux and has more compatibility. I’d rather have a Steam Deck personally but it’s hard to justify buying it when I have something that is nearly just as good.
I was about to buy a some kinda pc handheld then stumbled upon the Odin 3 and then realized my phone is basically the same specs and basically with some decent cooling and how far GameNaitive has come, it’s a pretty decent gaming handheld. Not to mention this phone uses the aluminum back to help cool so adding on cooling is super easy. I use the GameSir X5 phone controller and the FX5 Thermoelectric Cooler which I kinda have to angle around my camera to get over the cpu and gpu but it works quite well.
I have an another one with a super beat up screen that still works that I’m going to try and setup in dex mode for a steam console/emulation station on one of my TVs. There are even guys taking apart phones and putting them in these cute little baby pc towers with crazy cooling on YouTube.
Anyways I didn’t know all this till recently so just spreading the word.
I have an Ayn Thor, which has a Elite 8 Gen 2. While playing x64 games on it does work, you’re pretty much limited to indie games and some older 3D games (assuming you can get them to run due to a lot of compatibility issues). Even if you can get some bigger games to run, you’ll be struggling to get 30 fps on the lowest settings.
Its still really cool to do. You can get some smaller/more portable form factors to play games on the go. However, I still use my Steam Deck a far amount for better compatibility and for larger games (if the steam deck can even handle them).
A couple things, Hades isn’t a good comparison since it has a pretty good optimized android port. You won’t get nearly as favorable a comparison on other games if one’s running on the Deck and the other is running through GameNative. The FEX compatibility layer will have a performance hit vs running on x86 hardware, although I don’t know if anyone has found a good way to measure it yet.
For RAM, the S23 has a slower memory bus than the deck, and Android + background processes will typically use 4-6GB of the system RAM. So you’re generally left 6-8GB for your combined RAM/VRAM, accessed at a slower speed, which will severely hamper a lot of more modern games.
For TFLOPS, phones are usually rated at a peak rating, rather than something that can be consistently sustained. A big part of this is thermals, which an external cooler will help with a lot. But you’re still going to probably have pretty significant decrease in performance outside of those peaks, typically only 50-60% of the peak power. There’s also practical TDP limits, even high end phones have a max TDP of 5-7w vs the Deck’s 15w limit, which will limit how much it can run.
It’s also just kinda nice to have a separate, low fuss gaming device. I can grab up the deck and immediately continue playing where I left off in seconds. I used to play more games on my phone before the deck, but I had constant issues with calls and other interruptions making it hard to get proper play sessions in. I typically gave up on playing any game that didn’t have save on exit, because of all the lost progress. And your setup sounds like it takes longer to setup, needing a cooler and controller setup each time you go to play.
I agree that the comparison makes no sense. However, your TDP comparison also makes no sense. Firstly, TDP is not power consumption. It’s basically an arbitrary number and all chip manufacturers have a different equation for it. Secondly, you can’t compare the TDP of x86 and ARM. The latter is way more efficient.
ARM is specifically better at switching to a low power state. This makes it much more power efficient for low power states like web browsing or video playback, but has a much smaller impact on things like playing games. Add in the CPU overhead from fex, and you probably won’t see any lower power usage from ARM hardware vs x86 to run the same games.
A) you’re ignoring the tdp thing and B) you’re proposing a hypothetical scenario for which you can’t provide any actual numbers. This thread is literally pointless. I’m out.
What I was trying to say about TDP is that if the effective power efficiency is about the same for both, then the higher TDP will be a direct improvement in how much performance the device is able to put out.
It’s kinda the opposite of the relationship between the Deck and other more powerful handhelds. A lot of them are more powerful mostly because they have a max TDP of 25w. We’ve also seen this with new graphics cards, where the GPU power usage gets higher each year.
Now that Moore’s law is dead, one of the easiest way to have a more powerful device is to make it where it can utilize more power. If two devices are comparable in power efficiency, usually the device the uses the most electricity will be the most powerful.
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Very cool idea. I’m always so surprised to see such creative ideas.
Oooh, I love that! Good for them, it looks great.
Thanks for sharing this with us here!
those corners on the bottom look like they would dig into your hands. other than that it’s pretty cool.
