Steam Deck 2.0 could focus on battery life over better performance
Steam Deck 2.0 could focus on battery life over better performance
Expand / No word on if the next Steam Deck will help protect the wood on your deck.
Sam Mashkovech
Now that Valve's Steam Deck has been technically available for about 10 months (and widely available for about two months), customers are increasingly wondering what Valve might have in store for an inevitable "version 2.0" of the gaming laptop. Handy pc. While some gamers may be looking for a more powerful "Steam Deck Pro", hardware designers Lawrence Yang and Pierre-Loup Griffais say battery life and screen quality are the biggest "pain points". most likely they would like to address in a new release. .
This news comes from a wide-ranging interview with The Verge, where both Valve designers hinted that it might be worth keeping the same base spec target for future hardware. "Right now the fact that all Steam Decks can play the same games and we have a goal for users to understand what kind of performance level to expect when playing and for developers to understand that to target - there's a lot of value in having that spec," Griffais told The Verge.
"I think we will choose to keep the performance level a bit longer and only change the performance level when there is a significant gain to be had," Griffais added.
Right now, it's hard to say that putting more powerful CPUs into a new Steam Deck would result in a "significant gain" for users. As it stands, over 6,000 Steam titles have been listed as "verified" or "playable" on the Steam Deck, meaning they have little to no trouble hitting the 1200× resolution. 800 from the system at a minimum of 30 fps. It's not just legacy titles that get checked, either; many recent AAA releases like Elden Ring, Spider-Man: Remastered and Death Stranding: Director's Cut have been fully verified by Deck.
A higher-end "Steam Deck Pro" might be able to extract a slightly higher resolution or frame rate from some of these games, of course. But as long as a critical mass of games are in playable form on hardware, Valve seems less interested in increasing performance and more interested in increasing battery life. We also wouldn't mind if keeping specs consistent meant that a new Steam Deck could be thinner and/or lighter than the current chunky version, but that's just a wish on our part. .
Past, present and future updates
Elsewhere in the Verge interview, Valve's designers revealed some somewhat stealthy internal changes they've made to recently manufactured Steam Deck units. This includes a change to the adhesive that holds the battery in place, which should make it easier to remove and replace, improving an issue identified by iFixit's teardown specialists.
A whiny fan from Delta Electronics in some older Steam Deck units has also been replaced in newer units with one with thicker foam padding, which you can purchase and install yourself if you have the noisy version . The new Steam Deck units also improve the feel of the spongy Steam and Quick Access buttons that sit next to the screen, the designers said.
Valve also plans to roll out additional Steam Deck features via software updates in the coming months. These include the ability to choose a new Bluetooth profile/codec to reduce wireless audio lag and use Bluetooth microphones, for starters. Steam Deck users will also soon be able to share power profiles, just as they can currently share custom control profiles for specific games, to maximize battery life and performance through crowdsourcing. p>
Expand / No word on if the next Steam Deck will help protect the wood on your deck.
Sam Mashkovech
Now that Valve's Steam Deck has been technically available for about 10 months (and widely available for about two months), customers are increasingly wondering what Valve might have in store for an inevitable "version 2.0" of the gaming laptop. Handy pc. While some gamers may be looking for a more powerful "Steam Deck Pro", hardware designers Lawrence Yang and Pierre-Loup Griffais say battery life and screen quality are the biggest "pain points". most likely they would like to address in a new release. .
This news comes from a wide-ranging interview with The Verge, where both Valve designers hinted that it might be worth keeping the same base spec target for future hardware. "Right now the fact that all Steam Decks can play the same games and we have a goal for users to understand what kind of performance level to expect when playing and for developers to understand that to target - there's a lot of value in having that spec," Griffais told The Verge.
"I think we will choose to keep the performance level a bit longer and only change the performance level when there is a significant gain to be had," Griffais added.
Right now, it's hard to say that putting more powerful CPUs into a new Steam Deck would result in a "significant gain" for users. As it stands, over 6,000 Steam titles have been listed as "verified" or "playable" on the Steam Deck, meaning they have little to no trouble hitting the 1200× resolution. 800 from the system at a minimum of 30 fps. It's not just legacy titles that get checked, either; many recent AAA releases like Elden Ring, Spider-Man: Remastered and Death Stranding: Director's Cut have been fully verified by Deck.
A higher-end "Steam Deck Pro" might be able to extract a slightly higher resolution or frame rate from some of these games, of course. But as long as a critical mass of games are in playable form on hardware, Valve seems less interested in increasing performance and more interested in increasing battery life. We also wouldn't mind if keeping specs consistent meant that a new Steam Deck could be thinner and/or lighter than the current chunky version, but that's just a wish on our part. .
Past, present and future updates
Elsewhere in the Verge interview, Valve's designers revealed some somewhat stealthy internal changes they've made to recently manufactured Steam Deck units. This includes a change to the adhesive that holds the battery in place, which should make it easier to remove and replace, improving an issue identified by iFixit's teardown specialists.
A whiny fan from Delta Electronics in some older Steam Deck units has also been replaced in newer units with one with thicker foam padding, which you can purchase and install yourself if you have the noisy version . The new Steam Deck units also improve the feel of the spongy Steam and Quick Access buttons that sit next to the screen, the designers said.
Valve also plans to roll out additional Steam Deck features via software updates in the coming months. These include the ability to choose a new Bluetooth profile/codec to reduce wireless audio lag and use Bluetooth microphones, for starters. Steam Deck users will also soon be able to share power profiles, just as they can currently share custom control profiles for specific games, to maximize battery life and performance through crowdsourcing. p>
Expand / No word on if the next Steam Deck will help protect the wood on your deck.
Sam Mashkovech
Now that Valve's Steam Deck has been technically available for about 10 months (and widely available for about two months), customers are increasingly wondering what Valve might have in store for an inevitable "version 2.0" of the gaming laptop. Handy pc. While some gamers may be looking for a more powerful "Steam Deck Pro", hardware designers Lawrence Yang and Pierre-Loup Griffais say battery life and screen quality are the biggest "pain points". most likely they would like to address in a new release. .
