Handheld consoles gain momentum with new chip

Many of us had convinced ourselves that handheld consoles were a thing of the past. These types of machines had their heyday many years ago, and the popularity of recent desktop consoles, as well as the dominance of PC and mobile devices, left a complicated scenario.

However, things have changed, largely thanks to Nintendo Switch, with an unbeatable hybrid proposition that has sparked the existence of Steam Deck. But it’s also been thanks to cloud gaming, which allows games to run on devices that, without streaming, wouldn’t be able to run them. And Qualcomm wants the industry to follow suit.

The company has launched its new Snapdragon G3x, a product that is very much related to all this. It’s a chip designed specifically for use in future handheld consoles, but with a difference: it tries to offer guarantees for devices that want to run games in the cloud.

These devices can be both mobiles and consoles. In fact, the firm has teamed up with Razer to create a Handheld Developer Kit, a portable console that will serve as a reference for manufacturers that want to bet on streaming video games and titles published on Android.

It has a 5G modem with mmWave support, the ability to use 120Hz OLED screens with HDR, Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2, and the ability to use a webcam with 1080p resolution to stream video games while at the controls.

It has Snapdragon Sound integration, the brand’s audio technology, and an advanced haptic system that aims to trap us with a high sense of immersion. Finally, it has a 6000 mAh battery and a USB-C port for connecting monitors or accessories.

Developers are the first lucky ones to be able to test this new Snapdragon G3x, so we’ll have to wait to see how the first devices with the technology use it. In the meantime, the closest hardware is Steam Deck, which has been delayed to 2022 due to a general lack of supply.

Source: eleconomista