When I purchased the Steam Deck a handful of many years ago, I was skeptical. I was ready to hazard purchasing only the most inexpensive version possible—a $400 handheld with a measly 64 GB of storage. Now, I know I really like it. I have used it for hundreds of hours currently, caught with confined, slower storage. If I ended up to rectify this blunder, I’d have to invest in a total new console. Or at the very least, that is what other gizmos have trained me to think. Not this time.
I have a extensive record of upgrading my products myself, when I can. The desktop Pc I use on a daily foundation has been ship-of-Theseus’d from the same laptop I constructed over 20 yrs ago—never thoroughly replaced, but upgraded, piece by piece, over the years. During that time, it’s more and more develop into the exception to the rule. Till the Steam Deck came alongside.
Elusive Upgrades
I utilized to change the battery in my early smartphones when they obtained outdated, breathing new lifetime into dated components. Now, couple of phones allow this with out cracking open up the whole thing. My 1st MacBook had space on the bottom to update its RAM. Now it’s baked ideal into the M-sequence processors. I wouldn’t be capable to up grade it, even if it weren’t hard to access.
Which is probably why I felt so pleased to find out that my Steam Deck is, in simple fact, amazingly simple to improve. Methods like iFixit, which advocate for a user’s proper to restore their possess devices, have guides that demonstrate how to do unique updates on unique gadgets.
The information for upgrading the Steam Deck’s storage is refreshingly straightforward. Unscrew and get rid of the again panel, remove the board protect, pop out a cable, and unscrew the outdated storage. Set your new SSD in its area and reverse the course of action. Performed.
It is not pretty as easy as changing the battery on your TV’s distant, but it was a lot quicker to insert much more storage than it was to reinstall Steam OS. All told, the course of action took probably an hour. Alternatively of shelling out $130 added for a various Steam Deck—or even worse, getting a full new a person for $530—I compensated $20 for a inexpensive SSD on eBay. Minus the value of a first rate hamburger and fifty percent the size of a typical online video essay on YouTube later, I can now put in extra games on my Steam Deck, in significantly less time and with shorter loading screens than I had prior to. This does not have to be a novel knowledge.
Mend on the Horizon
It also may not be, for substantially extended. Before this calendar year, the European Union voted to pass new polices that will demand smartphones to arrive equipped with person-replaceable batteries. Presently, attempting to switch a battery on a new Iphone demands specialty applications and complex know-how, and can still end result in warnings that you are not using “genuine” sections, even when making use of official Apple batteries.
By 2027, that variety of barrier to changing a battery will not be lawful in the EU, however the knock-on result will possible guide to manufacturers complying globally. We now saw a equivalent result happen when the EU passed a regulation requiring all phones, tablets, and cameras marketed in the region to have a USB-C port. It’s just more effective to make a person product that the enterprise can promote everywhere you go.