Imagine a Google Pixel level phone made by Valve, running Steam OS (Linux) on ARM. That’s my nerd wet dream.
I’d be happy with just installing full blown Linux on my pixel a la graphene.
Surely this Pixel 7 Pro has enough oomph to do some of my games.
I think memory is going to be the limiting factor. 12 gigs is very limiting on non-console systems
This is just nuts to me… My first laptop came with 512MB of RAM and only supported up to 2GB. They were still selling Macbook Pros with only 8GB of memory a year or two ago.
12GB SHOULD be enough to do everything, especially if it’s running a linux OS. But I guess we can’t have nice things because of memory hogs like Chrome.
I considered Bazzite with Steam Game Mode on a recently purchased mini PC I’m using as a HTPC to replace Android TV. In addition to not working well with a remote, the data Valve collects via Steam is a concern. Not sure I’d consider a proprietary, closed-source front-end as the main UI on a phone to be much of an improvement over Android, though I’m sure Valve’s other related efforts to get Linux working well on a phone that get open sourced would be good.
If it runs linux you’ll easily be able to run whatever you want on it
I guess my overall point is that DEs like KDE or Gnome don’t work well on other form factors like TVs, phones, and tablets. Just having Linux on a device without an appropriate UX isn’t that useful. Steam Game Mode acts like a DE for SteamOS that provides a good UX for a controller, but it’s not something I care to use unless it’s blocked from the internet so Valve can’t collect data and spy on me. If Valve makes a phone that isn’t private, the main value would be that the hardware can run Linux, but it would still need an appropriate DE to make it actually usable.
There is Plasma Bigscreen that’s a modification for HTPCs. For touch screen based devices, a tiling WM is available for both Gnome and Plasma, though not baked in. IMHO bigger issue for both is a poorly working touch screen keyboard. This is something that SteamOS solves quite well.
It’s useful because it provides a development target, part of the reasons they currently aren’t great on phones is because there isn’t a target and nobody has one.
I’d imagine that once the mobile walled garden ecosystems are fully opened up, we should look for the debut of Android and iOS Steam clients. Let’s see how that pans out in 2026…
That seems a bit too optimistic IMO. While it is possible to run PC games on a phone, a fully functional Steam client would still be quite a surprise.
a fully functional Steam client would still be quite a surprise.
What’s running stand-alone games on Frame then if not a fully functional Steam client?
