Video Games Tutorials and News - Steam Deck Was Delayed, So I Got This - Gpd Xp
Intro
The steam deck's been delayed now. Digital's got the answer with the GPD XP. Thanks to NZXT for sponsoring today's article. NZXT wants to make building a custom PC easier with the NZXT build. Just set a budget, see how the computer performs with your favorite games, and let the building take care of the rest.
This thing is basically half a switch, half a phone with swappable controls and, bizarrely, dual 4G sim card slots. At first glance, you'd be forgiven for thinking it's like the Rog phone, but no. The right section comes off. The left section is part of the chassis, so thankfully it doesn't do voice calls, or we'd be one step away from a Nokia Engage Taco phone situation.
Data access does make sense since GPD is marketing this as a way to play mobile games, including first-person shooters, to achieve that the removal controls aren't just for show. The right side can either be blanked off to become a great way to lead your team to victory in mobile games. Fit in with a traditional thumbstick and button controls for emulators and streamed console games, or replace them with a five-button hotkey cluster that the GPD says is ideal for first-person shooters that.
It might not look too intuitive, but the idea is that you can aim with your thumb on the touchscreen and use these buttons for utility features. The sticks are much nicer feeling; they're the same as the GPD Win 3. True to GP's roots, all controller modules can switch between Xbox mode or touch simulator mode via a dedicated button next to the thumbstick.
Tech specs
But enough about controls. The device itself is running Android 11 with Google's very not inspired by Microsoft Metro UI and yes, they actually call it Metro.
That's a lot newer than the Android 6 you'll find on the Retroid Pocket 2 or Android 7 on the previous gen GPD XD Plus and helps to make it relevant for more than just retro. Gamers, that's why it's so strange that GPD chose a MediaTek Helio g95 SOC, which is well below upcoming competitors like the Iron Odin and KTr1, which both sport the far more capable Snapdragon 845.
It's going to have the drive for a 60hz 1080p tall IPS display, which they call the Sunshine screen. It's not super premium and it has a lot of ips glow, but it's reasonably bright and wouldn't get a place on a mid-range smartphone. Unlike one of those, it's got an integrated active cooling fan that should hopefully prevent throttling over longer sessions, and with that very mid-range SOC, the chonky 7000 milliamp-hour battery just might give it some serious endurance.
The biggest flagship smartphones typically ship with 5000 mA or less, with brighter screens and much more power-hungry SoCs. In fact, it dropped less than 20 percent from full over an hour of gameplay in Super Mario Sunshine.
Expansion and non-gaming features
There's 128 gigs of ufs storage on board with the ability to swap one of the Nano Sims for a micro SD card, theoretically expanded even further with the USB type-c port if it could be relied upon to grip the cable like it falls right out.
Thankfully, you definitely won't be filling up your storage using the hole-punch camera at 5 megapixels. It's primarily marketed for article calls, which is better than nothing. I guess you'd probably prefer to use a real smartphone for that, but I'm not your mom. If I was, I'd tell you to buy a water bottle from {887} and stay hydrated more easily with the new caps.
I won't be around to take care of you forever. The speakers would normally be unremarkable on a handheld like this, but these are supplied by AAC Technologies, a Chinese company who happens to be the supplier that Apple uses, and these are in fact double-coil speakers, and, well, they're remarkably clear, but an iPhone this is not.
There's no base, just mids in trouble. Great for phone calls, but none of the included arcade titles are being done justice here. You'd think there'd be more space for resonance. Let's take Chambers in here. Let's take it apart and see for ourselves.
Disassembly
The screws are all Phillips and all the same size, which is to say quite tiny. There are a few clips too, but once it's off, check out the size of that battery. There's the active cooler, and hey, the sticks are on a separate PCB just like the steam deck.
Get subscribed, by the way, because if it's not clear by now, we're definitely doing more content on the steam deck and you won't want to miss it down here at the speakers. They're not tiny, but they're not huge either. There's definitely enough room here for larger residence chambers if they tried.
Well, let's button it back up and play some games.
Gaming experience
Although the built-in Neo Geo games seemed to work pretty well, although that's to be expected, input lag seems pretty low as well, and the controls feel responsive, as we have come to expect from GPD devices, even in the games that don't ship with the console.
The Dolphin Gamecube Emulator is one of the pre-installed apps, but it's not quite running at full speed. Will get the full 30fps, most of the time in Super Mario Sunshine, for example, but shader compilation and some special effects will bring the game's FPS down to the high single digits, to say nothing of more complex titles.
What's worse The version of Dolphin included with the device doesn't make use of the controllers, so you need to map the touch inputs manually. The PSP emulator, on the other hand, does work with a controller natively and runs reliably at 2x upscale often, even at the native 1080p resolution of the handheld, although it does drop frames here and there if you do that, but this isn't primarily marketed for emulation.
The Amber Nixons of the world are much cheaper and already do a good job of that GPD. Spins this as a console for modern mobile games and pubg mobile and Minecraft are good candidates for the additional controllers, but while setting up the touch control simulator isn't difficult for these, there's very little if any delay in frame.
The frame rates aren't great; we're getting 30 or 40 FPS in PubG at best, and in Minecraft's default settings, the frame rate fluctuates between 60 and what looks like somewhere in the 30s depending on what you're looking at regardless of the graphic settings. If you're willing to reduce the draw distance below the default of 20, you might actually be able to get a solid 60fps speaking.
The controls and some annoyances
The FPS module bizarrely places the trigger lower on the grip than a standard controller, which will take some getting used to. Nobody knows what that is, but I do.
The traditional controller grip, while comfortable, is already a little bit on the small side, so the FPS module ends up being painful for me to use for any length of time, and that's not the only issue here. The flat cap Let me grab this real quick to kind of show you what's going on here. What these controls do is slide directly on and off of this rail here.
