I’m not sure what the default retroid settings are, but android could be tweaked to at least have a better battery life than that I’d wager. Have you dug through the settings? I have old phones that last nearly a week on android if left with the screen off, no tweaking (galaxy s7)
Comment on Hands-On with the Retroid Pocket Classic; A Love Letter to the Game Boy Era
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
I have a Retroid but despite the hardware being fantastic, I wouldn’t recommend it because Android is a bad retro gaming experience.
Instead of turning on the device and instantly being in a game, you have to boot Android, which is ridiculously slow. If you don’t do a full shutdown after playing, you’ll find your Retroid’s battery dead the next time you pick it up because of Android’s idle battery drain.
Linux retro handheld’s like the Miyoo Mini work so much better. You turn it on and you are in your game in 10 seconds instead 45 just to get to the os and then need to load the emulator, load game and restore state. When you hit power on a Miyoo or equivalent Linux, your game state is saved and the device fully powers down so there is no idle power draw.
Calfpupa@lemmy.ml 13 hours ago
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
There’s nothing to really tweak on Android because it is Android which hides most things from your control. I did everything I could. If you play every day and charge every day it’s fine. But if you treat it like a classic handheld you will be frustrated.
A real handheld like a Gameboy Advanced can be left in a drawer for a year and ready to go. That’s the experience that a Linux retro gives you. You don’t have to constantly think about charging. It’s instantly ready whenever you are.
Calfpupa@lemmy.ml 10 hours ago
In Developer options you can limit background processes, deep sleep, and other power usage settings, which were the main ones I was thinking of.
Prove_your_argument@piefed.social 12 hours ago
So I do casually follow the handheld emulation stuff. I’ve always thought android sucks as a platform for gaming in general, but shouldn’t all of those retroid problems apply to the ayn thor? My assumption is that people are in love with that thing, but maybe the boot times are just better or they did a better job of the driver/power management?… or maybe the marketing is just on point.
I have a deck so I don’t really see a point to having another handheld, but I still want to understand why x vs y.
Also am full time linux on desktop os at home and work and I can definitely see how the boot and sleep state times would be much better just in general on a properly tweaked distro.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
The Thor is more like a mini Steam Deck replacement instead of a Gameboy replacement. So the limitations of boot times and standby time aren’t seen as a problem when the alternative is a laptop.