Even though projects like Armada and Thorch began development before the Steam Frame was released, there are now a few more options for those who want SteamOS on Android. This week, Valve released its official SteamOS ARM build for the Steam Frame, and in just a few days, it’s been ported to work with some your favorite Android handhelds.
Surprisingly, the AYN Odin 2 was one of the first handhelds to get a new build, thanks to SteamOS-ARM-SM8550 from MaSieS4Fun. Not long after that, SteamOS-ARM-SM8650 landed on GitHub courtesy of hashtagbasit, bringing support for the KONKR Pocket Fit G3 and the AYANEO Pocket S2 and S2 Pro. This one made the most sense, seeing as the Pocket Fit and Pocket S2 lineup share the same Snapdragon G3 Gen 3 chip that’s found in the Steam Frame.
The fun hasn’t stopped there, as we stumbled across Holodor, which will eventually bring the same SteamOS build to the Odin 3. However, at the time of this writing, there’s not actually a build of Holodor available to download, but we have to imagine it’s only a matter of time before that changes.
As expected, the Armada team was flooded with questions about how it plans to integrate the official SteamOS build into its own. Yesterday, the following announcement was made over on the Armada Discord:
Hey all. We’re getting a lot of questions about what SteamOS for Steam Frame means for Armada so I just wanted to quickly address it. We’ve had access to the Frame’s software for a few days now and we’ve been learning as much as we can. We’ve found a few interesting things that we’re working to adopt, but we haven’t seen anything yet that suggests the Frame has meaningfully different performance or compatibility vs Armada.
What you’re seeing on Reddit and other places today are new distros being built around the Frame’s userspace code. Practically speaking this means using an Arch base (vs Fedora like Armada). They will all be using their own kernel because Valve’s doesn’t support anything outside of Frame. While it’s exciting to finally be able to see SteamOS for Frame, it doesn’t unlock anything that wasn’t possible today. We’ve had Arch based distros in this space for a while (Pocknix, for example). Our opinion is that an immutable distro based on Fedora bootc supports rapid development and reliable OTA updates, but choice is good so we’re excited to see what evolves.
Long term we don’t expect much to change in the direction of Armada. We’ll align some parts to be more consistent with Frame, but mostly for correctness and ease of leveraging upstream changes. We’ll continue to invest in the areas we’re focused on today, including improved device support, lower power sleep, performance, emulation, and unique experiences like dual screen support.
It sure seems like the idea of being able to turn your Android handheld into a mini Steam Deck has finally come to fruition. That being said, don’t expect it to run quite as flawlessly as an actual Steam Deck, or even other x86 handhelds that are officially supported by SteamOS.
Nevertheless, it’s an exciting time for Android handhelds, and we’re excited to see what’s to come to Android handhelds in the coming months. Perhaps, we’ll eventually reach the point where something like the Odin 3 is capable of surpassing the Steam Deck in terms of compatibility. At the very least, it’s probably safe to say that this initial wave of projects won’t be the last ones to be made available.
Lastly, while these are exciting times, we would be remiss if we didn’t point out that none of it would be possible were it not for the ROCKNIX team. Each one of the projects mentioned in this article requires the ROCKNIX ABL to be installed first, otherwise, we would just be stuck with Android on these handhelds.
