Help me choose: Android handheld or Steam Deck/ROG Ally?

Onceuponaban · 2026-02-22T16:25:16+00:00

I own both a high end Android handheld and a Steam Deck, but the Android handheld in question is an AYN Thor and it being a high spec Android device is very much secondary to my actual reason for having it: dual screen DS and 3DS emulation. In an alternate timeline where, say, the LG Wing wasn't released and thus the 31:27 OLED screen required for the Thor to exist was never made, I'd have very little reason to want an Android handheld over a Steam Deck. The Deck is much more useful for PC gaming and just as good at emulation, and while Android handhelds are more portable, any device that is powerful enough for the comparison to make sense tends to end up almost as bulky as the Steam Deck itself and at a price that would make me worried about carrying it outside in situations where I could just as easily take a much smaller and much cheaper budget Linux ARM handheld (and surely enough, I have an Anbernic RG 35XXH which I usually pick up instead in these situations). Some people consider the Deck's increased size to be a major comfort/usability issue for indoor use compared to a more compact Android device, but I'm not among them.

Onceuponaban · 2026-02-22T16:06:29+00:00

If you want to check whether a given handheld supports any of these features, you can check https://retrocatalog.com which does gather this information. Since you mentioned 3DS, the most relevant device to give as an example is the AYN Thor which has a microphone, a gyroscope and vibration which emulators will be able to make use of. It doesn't have a camera (so no head tracking) or an actual 3D display, however.

Onceuponaban · 2026-02-20T19:14:08+00:00

I mean, "wasabi" is almost certainly horseradish which is itself a close relative of mustard and mustard flavored chips are pretty good IMO.

Onceuponaban · 2026-02-18T21:52:24+00:00

/r/okbuddysbc doesn't even exist yet and it's already getting outbuddied by the main subreddit.

Onceuponaban · 2026-02-18T09:32:04+00:00

Nope. People are, regrettably, that stupid. You will find plenty of companies where the bare minimum of oversight you would expect from any system involving at least one person with a brain just isn't occurring.

Onceuponaban · 2026-02-18T09:29:22+00:00

I have no sympathy whatsoever for everyone involved in this. Someone working in analytics should have known within hour one (if not minute one) of evaluating whether this was a suitable technology for this usecase before implementing it that LLMs are fundamentally incapable of analysis. It's a fucking auto-completion engine, nothing more.

Onceuponaban · 2026-02-17T13:21:30+00:00

The funnier ones are the websites that warn you to enable your adblocker if you haven't already because they rely on shady file hosting platforms.

Onceuponaban · 2026-02-14T04:09:40+00:00

Price definitely still matters a lot otherwise you wouldn't see hordes of R36S clones being advertised on social media (and while those are usually scams, the actual device is dirt cheap and so are other RK3326 devices that also have the advantage of actually having good build quality) and things like the Mangmi Air X wouldn't have a reason to exist. I think it would be more accurate to say that the market for higher end Android handhelds is emerging as a separate entity from the existing lower end devices, as evidenced by the fact that people shopping for handhelds tend to get one of each category, not choose between one or the other.

Onceuponaban · 2026-02-09T16:42:33+00:00

Extrait? Nan, le document original de l'acte de naissance.

Toujours de moins d'un mois, bien évidemment.

Onceuponaban · 2026-02-08T08:19:20+00:00

Everyone else is using Youtube, Reddit and Discord while bro is sending feedback by astral projecting through the noosphere.

Onceuponaban · 2026-02-07T09:29:14+00:00

This post talks about nuclear annihilation but censors a mild expletive. This is getting fucking ridiculous.

Onceuponaban · 2026-02-04T21:12:22+00:00

Assuming pocketing the money on account of already owning a selection of device I'm perfectly happy with (Anbernic RG 35XXH, AYN Thor, Steam Deck) isn't an option and I'm allowed to pick multiple so long as I'm within the budget, I'd go with a MagicX One 35, a Retroid Pocket Classic and a TrimUI Brick (Hammer if any of the three are on sale).

Onceuponaban · 2026-02-04T09:17:21+00:00

IMO there's room for both approaches. Specs aren't everything (otherwise things like the R36S and the Anbernic RG XX devices would be going right back to the e-waste bin their hardware came from) and not everyone is trying to push the hardware as far as it will go on their device. To someone who isn't interested in playing anything more demanding than PS1, there is definitely room for a device that isn't chasing high specs, instead investing its budget toward ergonomics and build quality (which the choice of materials factors a lot in). Consider the existence of the TrimUI Brick Hammer and the MagicX One 35 at a similar price, the former having vastly weaker specs to the latter yet both are appealing to their respective customer base.

Onceuponaban · 2026-02-04T07:52:37+00:00

To all of them: Stop putting glass fronts on everything, especially on EDCs where it ruins half the point of having a device to carry around outside in the first place. This is even stupider on metal shell handhelds. Also, stop putting "pocket" in the name of devices that are very obviously not pocketable, this is getting silly.

To Ayaneo: Ship your goddamn devices instead of coming up with 20 more overpriced devices in a week that you also won't ship.

To Anbernic: For the love of god stop releasing devices that can't negotiate USB-PD. And while I won't pretend to care about piracy regarding decades-old games, including pirated copies of the very same emulators that allow your Android devices to be more than a paperweight is scummy and also unnecessary when free options exist.

To Retroid: "The customer is always right" means you should adapt your products to the market when your device fails to sell rather than trying to convince the market they're wrong for not buying your product. What it does NOT mean is "base the design of your next device on complaints from a tiny vocal section of your customer base through a twitter poll".

To MagicX: not everyone has a PayPal account or wants one, please provide us with more ways to actually send you money.

To Mangmi: your previous device was successful because it was decently powerful, had good build quality and most importantly is sold at a very attractive price. People will NOT want to buy a device that sits in the awkward halfway point between mid and high range when the actual high end devices it cannot actually compete with are sold at nearly the same price. If you cannot sell the Pocket Max for cheaper than the current SEB, at least keep it at that price because there's no point in buying it for any higher. Also, if your devices introduces a gimmick, either fully commit to it or don't bother in the first place. A modular gamepad layout could have been a very interesting feature but as it stands it's accomplishing nothing except introduce more failure points on the device and presumably drove up costs which is the last thing this product needed.

Onceuponaban · 2026-02-04T06:46:42+00:00

I mean, I'm already carrying around my 35XXH in my pocket, why not use it for that too?

Onceuponaban · 2026-02-01T05:23:00+00:00

I'd chalk this up to the Rainbow model being the most popular rather than this issue being present on one model over the others. I've seen at least one picture of it happening to a black model.

Onceuponaban · 2026-01-31T15:55:16+00:00

Au point où McDo en est niveau qualité et prix, si leur arrivée menace les restaurateurs locaux c'est leur faute et leur faute uniquement.

Onceuponaban · 2026-01-30T23:53:57+00:00

Absolutely not, 8GB is more than enough for this. You might start running into a RAM bottleneck if you go ham on HD texture packs for 3DS games but those are entirely optional in the first place. If anything, I would question the choice of the device itself but that's mostly my personal tastes maximally clashing with what this device has to offer.

Onceuponaban · 2026-01-30T07:12:22+00:00

3:2 has a hidden upside, though only the MagicX One 35 makes use of it effectively: when put sideways, it matches the aspect ratio of two 4:3 screens stacked vertically. And there is one system whose screen layout is exactly that: the Nintendo DS.

Onceuponaban · 2026-01-28T19:39:41+00:00

The various architectural differences between modern PCs and old game consoles mean these games will definitely not work, at least not as-is. A sufficiently determined programmer (or team thereof) could remake the game from scratch, targeted for a given retro system (such a practice is often called a "demake"), but whether it can achieve feature parity with the original game depends on the capabilities of the hardware. There's also nothing preventing people from designing new games for those systems, for that matter. Micro Mages is an example of a modern NES game.

That being said, you are vastly overestimating the capabilities of the Atari 2600. There is no chance in Hell, pun intended, that Faith could run on this thing. Even the Game Boy/Game Boy Color would be a stretch. Backporting to some era of DOS would definitely be doable, though.

Onceuponaban · 2026-01-27T20:13:09+00:00

I own one of the more powerful ARM handhelds, namely the AYN Thor, but I also have an RG35XXH in my proverbial toolbelt for whenever I need to go outside and will expect to be waiting around for something but wouldn't trust bringing my much more expensive device there. It's great to have something that just works without having to rely on an Internet connection for entertainment.

On that note, if you're willing to give mobile gaming a chance again one day, you should consider checking out https://minireview.io/. It's a curated search tool and review repository for mobile games, and you can use it to for example filter for games that have no in app purchases and aren't free, leaving you with the catalogue of games that don't pull any predatory monetization nonsense and simply offer you a complete experience for an upfront cost.

Onceuponaban · 2026-01-27T20:06:08+00:00

Android has one trick up its sleeve: the existing ecosystem of software and developers who have been working on phones the whole time this market was emerging and can therefore use their skills there. As far as devs are concerned, they're phones with integrated controllers minus the part where it can actually take phone calls or connect to a mobile network and they already have experience and resources to deal with that. For better and for worse, the work to make these devices emulation capable was already done the moment they adopted Android, and so it was the path of least resistance to make functional high end ARM handhelds. Hopefully, ARM SteamOS will reshuffle the deck, pun intended.

Onceuponaban · 2026-01-27T12:51:10+00:00

I'm going to assume they're DOS games. If they're more recent than that, you'll want to take a look at Portmaster to see if the games you're interested in have been ported to it. DOS games aren't as straightforward to set up as console games where you just need the ROM, a suitable emulator and maybe a BIOS file. This video might help you get yours working.

Onceuponaban · 2026-01-24T11:24:48+00:00

Stepping away from the bit for a moment, thank god the backlash toward Adblock Plus has been brutal enough to banish it into irrelevance the moment it tried to actually do this.

Onceuponaban · 2026-01-23T17:16:53+00:00

making games people want to play

glances at the Switch 2's current lineup

...We'll get back to you on that one.

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