I dream with a new mainstream handheld console that is neither an extension of a regular console experience, a smartphone, or a wine-powered Linux machine

When I was a kid in Brazil, we had a manga and anime club in my town. It was somewhat official. At our gatherings, there were lots of manga and VHS tapes that we exchanged and duplicated when possible. There were always two or three kids, each with a Nintendo DS. Sometimes more. For us, they were the rich kids. Back in 2005, it was unimaginable for most kids to own a DS, or even a Game Boy for that matter. They connected their devices and played some kind of Pokémon. I pretended I did not care and did not pay them overt attention. My envy knew no bounds.

At least a decate later, when the PSP was already going out of fashion (and was therefore much cheaper), I managed to get a PSP Go. It came fullly cracked with hundreds of games. I loved that cheap little thing. I eventually graduated to a PS Vita, which I believe was the finest piece of hardware I ever had in my hands. But the proprietary memory card was pricey, and so were the games. I didn't have lots to play. It's a bittersweet memory.

Seeing how the Vita became an emulation powerhouse makes me regret selling it.

I never owned a Nintendo DS, but a friend of mine lent me his for several years. I loved that too, but the stylus felt like a gimmick, and I would have gladly swapped it for regular controls. I was not a fan of the dual screens either. But at least it was interesting, you know? They were trying to do something different, and I respected them for that.

Now I have two retro handhelds, the Miyoo Mini Plus and the RG35XX H (Anbernic). Cheap Chinese products, but decent enough. Setting them up correctly was not hard, but it was laborious.

Maybe I am crazy, but I still think handheld consoles could work in the mainstream. It won't happen, of course. But it would be awesome to be excited by hardware once again. Something unique that is not a phone or a way to play Windows games on the go. With games that are developed explicitly for handhelds, with UIs that are adequate for small screens and crazy features that wouldn't make sense in the living room. A sturdy piece of tech that is always there for you, suggesting nothing but escapism.

One can only dream.

I just got back from the 'Nintendo Switch 2 Experience', so I though I'd share my thoughts on the console for those who didn't/won't get a chance to check it out.

The Console Itself - 8/10

The S2 is a decent amount larger than the original, which really helps with the ergonomics. Pretty much all the controls are bigger, and the rounder shape might alleviate fatigue when holding it (I never got to hold it for long, the demos were mostly on TVs). I think it looks a lot worse than the original, but that's neither here nor there. The pro controller was a huge upgrade from the (already great) original, super comfortable materials and nice buttons. The screen is not OLED, which I think is ridiculous for the price tag. It theoretically has HDR, but I could not tell. Overall, it's bigger and better, but nothing super special.

Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour - 0/10

For the price of $10, Welcome Tour is a complete joke. There's absolutely nothing to say about it, it's basically an ad for hardware you'll already own. Should be free, don't buy it.

Donkey Kong Bananza - 5/10

This is the Mario Odyssey formula applied to Donkey Kong, you run around, collect bananas in some semi-open worlds. All the environments are destructible, which is super fun but adds one huge caveat: the game runs like shit. A nice 60fps when running around, but as soon as you try smashing stuff (the main gimmick of the game) the framerate jumps all over the place, and going to the world map tanks the fps to 20-30. I enjoyed surfing on chunks of the ground I pulled up, but I was constantly pulled out of the fun by performance hiccups. It looked about as good as Mario Odyssey (but at native 4k ~60pfs, of course).

Mario Kart World - 9/10

Okay, now I can start saying nice things! Mario Kart World is–as you might expect–awesome. It's a really fun twist on the formula that was perfected in 8 Deluxe. There's no more kart customisation, which I don't mind, but each kart looks really nice and detailed. I got a slight taste of free-roam mode before each knockout tour I played, and it was... fine? The open world looks great and plays well, but I'm curious to see how it's "gamified". The knockout tour was the main booth on the floor, with 24 people playing at once with the last placing racers getting eliminated at different checkpoints. It was chaos, but that classic Mario Kart chaos that works really well. I managed to come 2nd on my first race. It looks quite a lot better than 8 Deluxe, but that's mostly in the art style and animations.

Drag X Drive - 9/10

This is the gimmicky competitive game for this system (like Arms or Splatoon), showing off the mouse controls in the form of Wheelchair Basketball. I was super surprised by this game, the gimmick clicked with me instantly. I got dunked on like twice, but I also only had 5 minutes to prepare, so cut me some slack!

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond - 7/10

Again, the mouse controls work super well. It all felt pretty simple and intuitive, but that might be because I'm a PC player most of the time anyway. I don't know anything about the Metroid series, so I can't comment on the story or gameplay beyond that. It looked pretty good and ran at (I think) the full 120FPS the whole time.

Cyberpunk 2077 - 4/10

Cyberpunk was... rough. It had that classic "really really upscaled" look, and dipped down to 10fps a lot in combat. I tried both "performance" and "quality" mode, but both looked and played about the same (which might be a bug).

Breath of the Wild: Nintendo Switch 2 Edition - 2/10

I can't believe they're charging for this. It's literally just the original game running at 60fps with slightly better draw distances. You can get this look with CEMU. This is how I felt about all the "Nintendo Switch 2 Edition" games that I tried.

Conclusion

While the games were pretty good and the experience was nice, I don't think the console has justified itself costing as much as it does, and so I'm not going to buy it on launch. I'll probably pick it up used when there's a reliable jailbreak, but the preview event really dissolved any feelings of FOMO that I might have had about it, which I'm glad about because now I can save that $800! I hope there's still people playing Drag x Drive when I get to it in a few years.

Feel free to ask me any questions, and hopefully I can answer them.

I believe a few of us have Steam Decks, thus I wanted to do this kinda public announcement.

TL;DR

• If your Steam Deck reports low battery health (low % of original capacity) drain the battery until it shuts down and then fully charge and check again
• Use your Steam Deck until it shuts down from time to time (say once every 6 months?) to keep your battery level indicator (and remaining time) precise

Long version

I have my Steam Deck since May 2022 and I put certainly over 1000 hours in gaming on it. I would believe if it was even approaching 2000 hours.

Lately I played demanding game and battery was discharging rather fast with remaining time on full charge being under 1:30 hours, which I wasn't used to just a few months ago when it lasted over 2 hours even in demanding games (I limit to 30 fps and I also limit TDP/power). This weekend I jumped into desktop mode and checked the battery life which showed me what I feared - 65% of original capacity.

I went on iFixit page and the price for new one is hefty 95€, but since Steam Deck got me so much enjoyment, I was ready to pay for it - if it was in stock, that is. I'm glad it wasn't!

Since I have a bit of electronics and software background (hobby level), I realized that the charging chip (or whatever keeps the info about state of charge) was running since day 1 on relative data. What I mean: I have never discharged my Steam Deck lower than 10% and most of the times charging anywhere between 30-80%. And since the charging chip likely measures last fully charged capacity (and thus battery health) based on, well, how much it was charged and discharged all over again, it probably skewed its measurements in those three years.

So I went on a "quest" to play until dead. And I was surprised when Steam Deck reached 3% battery and kept running for another hour (ligthweight game) until it was finally dead. Then I fully charged it and voila - battery health 90%!

I have already said how it likely happened, but once more and in short: the charging chip needs to reach both limits, 0% and 100% of battery, from time to time = You have to let it drain fully here and there if you want your battery level indicator (and remaining time) to be precise or if you want to get the real state of your battery.

A bit offtopic: I've had laptop that had 50% of original capacity. I have changed the battery cells inside the battery and let it fully discharge and charge again but the vendor locked the chip from "learning" the real capacity making the new cells useless because the chip still reported 50% thus telling me when I booted it up that the battery has to be changed and also telling me non-relevant remaining time based on this 50% battery health... I'm glad that Steam Deck is capable of re-learning this data and not playing dumb.