I think that handhelds are having a bit of a renaissance but I think ultimately they will fade in popularity
PC handhelds are too big, heavy, and have bad battery life. I see mobile phones with telescopic controls like backbone/kishi or switch like joycon controls ultimately winning out. Console quality games are starting to be ported to iPhone and I’m sure android is not far behind. Emulation and cloud streaming are just getting better and better. Handhelds aren’t going to replace home consoles and PCs though, just supplement it, as it’s a device everyone already has
PC handhelds are too big, heavy, and have bad battery life
I generally agree, but if ARM chips next year don’t disappoint then it won’t be the case for long. It’ll take time until x86 games play nice on them but when they do we can expect PC handhelds similar to Android ones. Reasonably sized and with a great battery life. Handhelds have a good future.
If they’re machines with ARM CPUs playing x86 games, they have to translate CPU instructions from x86 to ARM before they can execute it. That puts considerable strain on the CPU, especially on top of running the game itself.
It would also murder any battery gains you’d hope to gain from switching to ARM.
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I think that handhelds are having a bit of a renaissance but I think ultimately they will fade in popularity
PC handhelds are too big, heavy, and have bad battery life. I see mobile phones with telescopic controls like backbone/kishi or switch like joycon controls ultimately winning out. Console quality games are starting to be ported to iPhone and I’m sure android is not far behind. Emulation and cloud streaming are just getting better and better. Handhelds aren’t going to replace home consoles and PCs though, just supplement it, as it’s a device everyone already has
I generally agree, but if ARM chips next year don’t disappoint then it won’t be the case for long. It’ll take time until x86 games play nice on them but when they do we can expect PC handhelds similar to Android ones. Reasonably sized and with a great battery life. Handhelds have a good future.
Isn’t it the GPU that drains the battery, why would a new CPU, help with that.
If they’re machines with ARM CPUs playing x86 games, they have to translate CPU instructions from x86 to ARM before they can execute it. That puts considerable strain on the CPU, especially on top of running the game itself.
It would also murder any battery gains you’d hope to gain from switching to ARM.
I think it’s the screen, actually, and I don’t see much they can do about those.