Interesting. Something to look forward to in the future.
Now I’m also hoping for a more power dense battery.
You, and everybody else. I think everyone has been waiting on a new battery technology breakthrough for the past 10+ years.
True, but I was thinking there might be a smaller, incremental improvement in lithium ion batteries each year. Am I wrong about that? Are we going nowhere with lithium anymore?
There are smaller improvements each year, and from looking at it, it seems like EV automobiles and other markets are helping drive increasingly significant gains actually. I’m not sure on how much of the emergency density gains actually apply to small batteries though, or if it’s more about improvements in larger batteries. Either way it’s less stagnant than I thought.
Solid state batteries are the next leap we’re likely to see. They already exist but aren’t widely available for consumer products yet.
I don’t need any special advances in batteries, I just need “it’s possible to replace them” and “it’s possible to get them”.
You can already replace the battery. You can purchase a replacement here, along with all the tools you need to replace it if you don’t already have them: https://www.ifixit.com/products/steam-deck-battery
There’s also a full video guide on the process.
Valve worked with iFixit to make sure they have replacements available for every part in the deck. Valve was very up front that they wanted to enable people to do their own repairs and upgrades.
I have an early Deck, so I know that pulling the battery* is going to be a huge pita.
*without setting it and myself on fire.
The bezels were already pretty large on the LCD deck.
I fear the price point on this will not be able to compete with just getting a new SteamDeck OLED
I think this more of test the water things, target audience are people whose screen broke and they hate e waste. that guy will spend extra not throw out hardware.
economies of scale could make it viable tho
I’m that guy. If my screen breaks I will be looking at a mod like this.
i am working on being better myself too after i realized that i spent most of my adulthood consooming like a dumb bitch and blowing money doing so, kinda pathetic :/
When you think about it in pure money terms, fixing things becomes a lot more attractive. You can’t get a better deal than $150 for a Steam Deck (the cost to replace the screen on the one you already own).
It’s always tempting to replace old stuff with new stuff, but it also always feels like a big victory when I repair something I already own. There is so much satisfaction in it, especially if you learn a new skill in the process e.g. soldering.
Agreed. Though I think it’s cool, it’s gonna be spendy.
If it could be less than $150, or better yet less than $100, I’d be in. Otherwise I might pass.
Would this be better or worse for battery life?
The article says that the influence on battery usage is low. But the higher resolution might result in a higher power draw.
My understanding is that oleds are a weird beast. Since there’s no backlight, each pixel can be considered a small colored light, if you have a fully black screen, then it’s essentially off and not using any power. However, there are instances where the peak brightness is limited to a small portion of the screen, because blasting the entire thing of full brightness white would pass the power supply capacity…
That said, let me stress this: it’s my understanding. Not a hard fact, I might be wrong or just basing things on old information.
Yes you are correct. Peak brightness is a variable based on load.
As for power effeciency, I have no idea.
I realize I’m probably in the minority here, but do they have an option at the original 1280x800? I don’t want my games performance to tank, and I find that resolution to be perfectly comfortable.
you can always just run the games at that resolution
Or at 720p, as this is a 16:9 aspect ratio, and running stuff on it at 16:10 will look weird.
That’s fair. I’d just rather not pay for pixels I won’t use (/s)
i think screens look blurry in the wrong resolution. i always rather use it in the native resolution. that effect will probably be more noticeable in a low ppi screen like the deck’s.
There’s also an argument to be made for the pixels not being an ideal multiple. Maybe it matters less when there are 3440x1440 of them on a traditional screen, but the blurriness caused by this effect at small screen sizes is quite noticeable on text.
Just donate the extra pixels to charity, problem solved!
Yes, but they will have to be upscaled somehow, which will noticeably reduce clarity.
FSR2/XeSS upscaling pretty much acts as free anti aliasing, making it look better. And you get better UI rendering.
I personally find the sharpened look of FSR to look really bad to the point where I prefer conventional bilinear upscaling, not to mention that using FSR also uses precious compute time on weaker systems.
FSR1 is pretty bad as it’s just upscaling the static image, I agree.
FSR2/3, XeSS and DLSS are temporal, meaning they use info from the previous frames to construct a higher resolution image that gives much better results. They also need to be implemented in the game engine, meaning not every game supports them.That might explain why I don’t have the highest opinion of FSR. I’ve only used it in Counter Strike 2 and Godot. I’ve never tried XeSS or DLSS but thanks to your comment I just learned that XeSS can apparently run non intel GPU vendors from their github page
It’s probably not possible for supply reasons. OLED displays are expensive to produce in small numbers, so this is probably using screen components originally made for another device. Not many devices use a 720 or 800p screen at this size, so sourcing one probably isn’t possible.
Shit like this is why I won’t buy another handheld console again until they can smoothly run the latest games at at least 1440p 240hz (I was initially going to say 4K but 1440 is enough for a small screen IMO).
I don’t care if it takes a decade or more, I’m happy with my desktop; I’ll wait.
Shit like what? Someone else’s opinion?
I realize I’m probably in the minority here, but do they have an option at the original 1280x800?
Wouldn’t it then make more sense to sell you LCD Deck and buy an OLED one? Whether you buy an extra screen or the added cost of a new OLED one, the price difference should be in the same ballpark. Not to mention the risk of damage and the need for a modified BIOS. New warranty on the OLED model would be an added bonus.
My issue is the same as with DeckHD, the resolution bump is fine… having to use a modified BIOS? Not so much.
Wasn’t support promised by valve not too long ago?
Seems so, neat!
