Modders are turning Android handhelds into "mini" Steam Decks

[Alfonso Maruccia]

Connecting the dots: Valve recently released an official port of SteamOS for Arm devices alongside the Steam Frame headset. Now, modders and open-source developers are turning the company's work into a renaissance of "Steam-like" experiences across a growing number of handheld devices.

The recently introduced Steam Frame is delivering more than just Valve's new VR experience. The headset is based on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC, which means the company had to tune its SteamOS platform to run on Arm-based processor technology.

The gaming-focused operating system includes both open-source and proprietary components, and FOSS developers are now exploiting this hybrid nature to port SteamOS's previously exclusive features to other devices.

The number of projects designed to bring the new SteamOS experience to Android-based devices is growing by the day. The main effort started months ago with the Armada project, well before Valve introduced the official Arm-based Steam Frame hardware. What's more, Armada-like projects are now appearing for Android gaming handhelds.

Armada is designed to provide a SteamOS-like Linux experience on Arm handhelds. The system packs the Linux kernel, Valve's Arm64 Steam release running as a userspace application, the FEX emulator, Proton, and other components required to build a compatibility bridge between x86 Windows games and the Arm Linux environment.

As of today, Armada provides the most reliable Steam experience on handhelds made by Ayaneo, Ayn, Retroid, and Konkr. Thanks to Steam Frame's SteamOS release, more ports are now coming online for Ayn's Odin 2/Odin 3, Konkr's Pocket Fit G3, and Ayaneo's Pocket S2/S2 Pro. These porting efforts rely on SteamOS's native hardware support for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC, but developers still need to build a custom Linux distribution that can run on the target device.

Needless to say, compatibility and reliability may vary significantly compared with the "official" SteamOS and Steam Frame experiences. Some of these devices are based on the same Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 technology used in Valve's headset, making developers' lives just a tad easier than they might otherwise be.

The idea of turning an Android handheld device into a custom Steam Deck machine will certainly appeal to mobile gaming enthusiasts, especially after Valve decided to cripple the platform with a massive price hike a few months ago. Most certainly, Valve will never provide any kind of official support for hardware or software issues related to SteamOS ports to Android handhelds; the open-source community will have to deal with those problems on its own.

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Modders are turning Android handhelds into "mini" Steam Decks

 

[yRaz]

Considering the dumpster fire that android is becoming and how phone manufacturers trying to lock the hardware, I welcome this. I would absolutely buy a steamOS phone as a way to de-google my life. Phone are basically as powerful as PCs 10 years ago and we were playing GTA5 and Skyrim on those. Also, it would be nice to add my steam library to my phone as most mobile games are just AI Slop MTX orgies.

In the same way that Valve is getting us closer to the year of the Linux desktop (I argue that it's already here), maybe they'll help get us closer to the year of the ARM desktop?

 

[NumberNine]

I like this a lot. More open source proliferation please. Make these skunks earn their stripes.

 

[Taroo]

That's great. We need more and more cool things emerging thanks to good open-source software.

Proton was the ground-breaking step. Now, there is no turning back.
It'll be better from day to day.

 

[jbright]

Raw FPS probably won't be the hardest problem here. Getting suspend/resume, controls, thermals, battery life, and game compatibility to behave like an actual console is where the real work starts.

 

[erickmendes]

I built a SteamOS gaming machine to let my children play Minecraft Java in coop woth mods, but I may be forgetting something because I was able to launch Minecraft Java with the mods they wanted but I couldn't make it run split screen local coop, also the bluetooth controllers are quite laggy...

But after I fix those two it will be ready to primetime

 

[acrossthestars]

Raw FPS probably won't be the hardest problem here. Getting suspend/resume, controls, thermals, battery life, and game compatibility to behave like an actual console is where the real work starts.

Yes, that is basically the reason the Steam Deck is such a great analogue to the consoles. Windows―until very recently―had no gaming mode. Even when it was put on a handheld, it was 100% Windows, 100% of the time, and Windows suuuucks as a gaming console.

The only reason people use Windows for gaming is because it has the widest degree of gaming software and hardware compatibility, but it is quickly losing ground to SteamOS specifically and Linux generally, in that regard.