The armbian community is on another level of commitment. Installing a recent debian version on an old ARM Rockchip totally blew my mind... Those people need more recognition !
48Yeah, Armbian is amazing. The half of the official images for the Rock Pi S don't even boot while with Armbian it works great.
10
I mean... is this a big deal? Every retro ARM handheld out there runs some version of Linux or Android. I gues Retroid was an Android-focused brand, hence the name, but if you wanted to run Batocera on a handheld there is no shortage of options.
13Snapdragon hasn't had mainline kernel support and has always been a pain to set up, enough so that nobody does it. This is using a snapdragon processor. Those are also fairly powerful.
11It could be a big deal if the developers of GarlicOS / OnionOS support it. I have a Retroid 3+, a Miyoo Mini (lost it) , and now an Anbernic GBA SP.
The Retroid seemed amazing at first but after using a Miyoo with OnionOS, I'm not going back to Android retro gaming.
The usability of being able to pick up a hand held and play immediately cannot be understated. Android doesn't normally shutdown. It sleeps which means it only lasts a few days (not being used!) without being plugged in unless you explicitly pick power down from the menu. If you do power down, it takes over a minute to boot. The Android retro front ends also take hours and hours to setup.
OnionOS/GarlicOS completely power down so the battery always has charge and is ready to go. Because there is no Android, boot to being back in your game (it defaults to powering up right back where you left off in a game), takes seconds. The menu scraping works so there's virtually no setup needed.
7This thing is supposed to be fairly powerful, I don't know that the straightforward, minimal approach of Garlic/Onion makes sense on it. Ideally you'd want a bit more versatility. For that I think the Anbernic SP and that class of slightly cheaper devices probably make more sense.
I mean, as I said above that's my thing with these flagship ARM handhelds. At some point it takes a lot to justify spending a couple hundred on one of these instead of a bit more for a more flexible Steam Deck. The smaller, cheaper ones are a lot more charming, and they fit in your pocket, so they can be a throwaway toy to carry with you.
But hey, we live in the handheld golden age, I'm not gonna complain about more options.
4
If this can dual-boot, that could be really handy.
2The published spec sheet says it does dual book with Android 13.
4
Running Linux instead of Android might mean you can run the games that run on SteamOS.
1Nah. This is running a Snapdragon 865 SOC with an older Adreno GPU. If you think Windows on ARM gaming is a struggle this isn't going to be your Linux handheld killer. There's also no reason for it to be, the Steam Deck already exists.
For its intended use case as a retro handheld (or an Android gaming handheld, I suppose), this seems like it'll be fine, but I'm also less excited about these mid-tier ARM handhelds now that we have good x64 alternatives with decent battery life and better performance that aren't much more expensive. I still think the cheap, tiny ones are cool, though.
I guess this is nominally cool because other comparables like they Ayn Odin 2, need a bunch of tinkering to run Linux, but beyond that it seems Linux is well represented on both extremes around this awkward middle ground of more expensive ARM handhelds.
4
Huh... for some reason I thought it was a combination of Retro & Metroid.
1Hah. It may be, I don't know. Maybe both?
1
the most recent Android is Linux v5 I think, so I'm kind of with you that the gain isn't huge when compared to modern mobile devices.
Still, for older ARM sets, the max Android they used had only Linux v3, so it's impressive that they mainlined enough of the hardware to be usable in today's market.
1
I bought a Miyoo Mini Plus on sale last year and ended up liking it so much that I wish I'd bought a more expensive model with analog sticks. Meanwhile my Steam Deck gathers dust because it's just way too bulky, I grew up on a Game Boy Color and want something that fits in my pocket.
The ultimate dream for me would be if/when someone gets SteamOS running on something this size.
9I know what you mean, I bought a PSP and PSVita after my Steam Deck and currently I'm using the Vita as my goto emulator, the PSP is great for when I'm out and about and want something smaller.
Battery life on both is great
1The retroid flip is incredible, clamshell so it's infinitely portable, the sticks are less good than the nicer ones though.
1
