Valve Releases Steam OS for Arm Devices
Valve has released Steam OS for Arm following the release of its Arm-powered Steam Frame headset. Developers have subsequently ported this version of Steam OS to Android handhelds. We were able to run Steam OS on an AYN handheld, yielding a Steam Deck-like experience.
Ever wanted to run Steam games on your Android handheld? There’s no shortage of ways to do so, such as Android apps like GameNative and Winlator. We also installed the Rocknix Linux distribution on our Android handheld earlier this year, which includes an official Arm version of Steam. But what if you actually want to install the Steam Deck’s OS on your device? We now have some good news.
Valve recently released Steam OS for Arm devices. This isn’t a surprise as its newly launched Steam Frame VR headset runs on an Arm-based Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset. It’s basically a VR headset powered by a phone’s internals.
The developer community has wasted little time in bringing this Arm flavor of Steam OS to Android handhelds. Developers hashtagbasit and MaSieS4Fun have ported Steam OS to Android handhelds. Best of all, it can run from a microSD card. That means you don’t have to wipe your device’s internal storage if you simply want to try it out. Supported devices include the AYN Odin 2 family, the AYN Thor, the Retroid Pocket 6, and the AYANEO Pocket ACE/DS/EVO/DMG/S 2K consoles.
Sure enough, I took the microSD card route and successfully installed the MaSieS4Fun variant of Steam OS Arm on my AYN Odin 2 Portal. Steam OS booted up without issue, and I was able to go through the setup process just fine.
Would you buy a Steam OS phone?
- Yes, absolutely – 46%
- It depends on the price and game/app compatibility – 38%
- No, I wouldn’t – 15%
I only tried a few lightweight games so far, namely Prodeus, Pac-Man Championship Edition DX, Baba is You, Geometry Wars 3, and Spelunky 2. The former game worked out of the box with playable, if variable, performance. Mixed performance in general can be partially attributed to these games (and the OS) running off the microSD card. Meanwhile, Baba is You and Geometry Wars 3 worked after switching to a different Proton version. Unfortunately, Pac-Man and Spelunky 2 didn’t boot up at all after trying different Proton versions.
I’m sure others might have better luck with more comprehensive configuration tweaks or different games. However, I’d tentatively argue that most people interested in playing Steam games on Android are better served by apps such as GameNative, GameHub, and Winlator Ludashi for now. GameNative, in particular, offers a known configs option that automatically applies the best settings for each game.
Nevertheless, it’s still amazing that you can run Steam OS on an Android handheld. Even if Valve doesn’t plan to officially support these handhelds any time soon, it’s clear that the groundwork is being laid for an eventual Arm-powered Steam Deck. Furthermore, Valve will undoubtedly continue to work on Steam OS for Arm to iron out any kinks and improve game compatibility. So you should definitely keep an eye out on these unofficial Steam OS ports.
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