I think you need to take a step back and ask if ARM makes sense if you’re translating x86 instructions 100% of the time. Unless you’re hoping people will develop new games for ARM and you won’t use your SD to play existing titles much, but that seems like a 180° shift to me.
It doesn’t always scale down though. There’s always an efficiency curve so we really can’t speculate. I agree, we have to wait and see.
I wouldn’t count AMD out. The whole reason the Steam Deck is so successful is because of AMDs Mobile GPU, not necessarily it’s CPU. AMD has been able to make some very efficient GPUs lately, so I do belive with a couple new architectures and die shrinks we will get the generational leap they’re talking about.
ARM sounds nice, and it might one day be, but getting x86 translation working flawlessly WITHOUT performance/battery costs at the same time as proton is just asking a heck of a lot.
ARM does best when it’s doing ARM things. Since all games are built for x86 with nobody having any intention of compiling for native ARM, I don’t really see the point. The whole reason i like the Steam Deck is to play older back catalog games, and those are all x86. Apple pulls it off because they only translate x86 when they have to.
Yes. There are a couple different ways to do that.
That’s exactly what the GSMA is saying. Universal interoperability means not having to use Google’s encryption method, therefore iPhones and all other phones including customized Roms should work.
Now, they could absolutely get in the way of this, but I would hope that they would think it’s not worth the effort.
Samsung has been doing this for a long time with DeX an it’s awesome. However it won’t really be a thing for most people until Apple does it.
Absolutely. It sounds ideal for something like that.
The issue is they sit in this odd place from a price perspective. I can get an N4000 based stick PC with 4GB RAM and eMMC storage for $140 CAD, or a vastly better performing N95 based mini PC with 8GB RAM, real SSD, and additional outputs for $50 more.
The stick PC really only makes sense if you need that form factor, or if you’re on a really tight budget. The improvements for $50 are just too much to ignore.
Your wishlist sounds almost identical to mine. As frustrating as the limitations of streamers are, they are easy to use. HDMI CEC makes single remote setups possible, easy volume changes, input switching, etc. Apps are vetted so they “just work”.
As for casting, most platforms support running Miracast or AirPlay receivers. Google is the stickler here that won’t let you run a Google Cast receiver (or at least I haven’t found one) and also doesn’t implement Miracast on Pixel devices. It’s such a shame because I vastly prefer casting the URL to the TV and letting it source the content than mirroring my phone all the time.
Yeah, those were on my radar as well. I haven’t yet had a chance to look into what the Linux compatibility is like, but that sounds promising that you were able to do it.
The big downside I see is that while the power consumption is low, they’re running a really old SoC, usually based on Intel N4000 (launched late 2017). Looking around it seems to have h.265 decode which is the most important one to look out for. It doesn’t support AV1, but that’s mostly streaming services and not that common (I think?). There may be other disadvantages I’m not thinking of at the moment.
What was the performance like for you?
I do have surround sound, but I wasn’t aware of that being an issue with a PC solution. Have you encountered issues getting that to work?
All my current self-hosting is running off an N100 mini-PC. OPNsense, NginX, Home Assistant, Unifi Controller, Docker host, etc. They are fantastic, it just seems a bit overkill for sitting behind the TV and playing Plex/Jellyfin and the occasional web stream in a browser. There’s really not much competition though as all the products below it offer a lot older processors that don’t have very up to date HW decode.
We’d need a suitably powerful APU upgrade in order to make running a 1080p screen viable. Most of the reason the Steam Deck performs as well as it does is because games are only rendering at 720p.
My wishlist for a Deck V2 would be a
AND a Steam Controller v2 as a companion with the exact same buttons/sticks/touchpads as the Deck.
Of course they could, this is a software limitation. However consumer friendliness is not in either companies interests. Apple prefers to keep total control over their ecosystems so they aren’t going to do Google any favours, and Google likely doesn’t care much either way seeing how long it’s taken them to even attempt a similar network.
Kind of. From what I’ve heard each network will alert you if it always sees the same tracker from the other network, as a precaution against unwanted tracking / stalking. I don’t believe it goes further than that though, as in the networks won’t report back all the tags they see on a daily basis to help with location.
Any tag following you = alert
Tag from the other network seen = nothing
Yup. I’ve configured my thunder to look and feel really similar to the way I had Relay set up. The compact modenis great and the customizability is really good.
You can install Bazzite instead of Windows to solve the above problems.
I recognize thr average person won’t do this, but you can get the same steam deck experience by installing Bazzite.
Now the controller issue I definitely agree with. They need a second gen Steam Controller pronto!
Nope. I was actually able to get it working the other day after ditching flatpak and re-installing Steam, Gamescope, and MangoHUD with DNF instead. All the guides I read said that flatpak would be no issue, but it was clear that as soon as I referenced any of the above applications in the launch arguments it would fail to load because it didn’t understand what I was asking to launch.
So, all in all, I now have Rocket League running at a high framerate with FSR on integrated graphics. It only took two days :P
As an early season Simpsons lover, I enjoy D’ohrdle.