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Are ARM/Android Handhelds on the way out? (self.retrogaming)

submitted 2 years ago by Overcast to c/retrogaming

10 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I love my Ayn Odin. There are great emulators on Android but also a ton of native games with controller support. With a Play Pass subscription ($30/year) and Netflix Games (which I'm paying for anyway), I have everything I need and the battery last 6h+.

The Ayn Odin has a Snapdragon 845, which is quite powerful but just borderline for PS2 and after. I was sad to see that the new Odin devices are windows/x86, which are more powerful but have shitty battery and shaky sleep features.

Other than the Razer, is there any company working on bringing newer Snapdragon chips to compact handheld android devices?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

No way. If anything, x86/amd64 are on the way out.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

How? There's been more of them than ever

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Because they’re horribly inefficient - power hungry, hot, just so unsuited to portable devices. More and more hardware (and software) is being made for the ARM64 platform - Apple Silicon really blew a lot of the industry out of the water and we’re beginning to see more laptops with ARM64, and that means more and more software (and thus, emulators) will be made for ARM64, and more consumer hardware will be ARM64

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Even Intel is starting to move away from x86 toward arm and RISC-V. They own the patent on x86 and make money licensing it so that should tell you how good arm has become.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/331740-intel-plans-to-license-cores-that-combine-arm-risc-v-and-x86

[–] kadu 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

An actively cooled modern ARM SoC would certainly fit way better for handheld PCs than X86... If not for the need to support decades of legacy software. I believe it will take white a while for us to see X86 go away, and in the meantime, I'll heavily prefer the X86 handhelds over the ARM ones... But a day will indeed come when this logic flips.

[–] Eldritch 1 points 2 years ago

Just for a point of reference. Intel is only just now releasing and creating an uproar over their new core s x86 processors. Which drop hardware support for 32 and 16 but instructions. The newest of which is 30 years old. If people are this upset about a move like that yeah it will be a while till it's replaced.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

I absolutely love my GPD Win 4 for PC gaming and higher-end emulation, but not so much for older retro gaming. It’s heavy to hold and it’s a bother to think about what TDP settings to use for better battery life and remember to adjust them. So there’s still a place on my shelf for my Anbernic handheld. 🙂 Not to mention the massive price difference and how even the lower-end x86 handhelds aren’t in the budget for many folks. There’s still a market for ARM-based handhelds and although it may be getting saturated, I don’t think it’s actually dying.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

There is always the phone + controller grip option. I do that whenever I want to play something later than ps1

[–] adibis 1 points 1 year ago

I think the issue has always been software. Hardware, once built, is cheap. Supporting software is expensive.

If windows on arm or steam gets its act together and we have better arm support then x86 doesn't make any sense for handhelds.

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