New Steam Deck Update Gives Millions Of Users Improved Battery Life

[Kaz]

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The Steam Deck is three years old, so kudos to Valve for continuing to issue regular software and firmware updates to improve the overall user experience. The latest is a small but meaningful update that aims to stretch your Steam Deck’s battery life even further.

 

 

This comes in the form of a Steam Deck Beta Client update with some very brief release notes. But here’s the one that matters:

 

“Reduced polling rate while the Steam Frame Limiter is active to save additional power. This can save up to 6% on battery life when running at 30fps in a low-power game like [Half-Life 2].”

 

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New Steam Deck Update Gives Millions Of Users Improved Battery Life

WWW.FORBES.COM

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3 years in, Valve continues to improve the Steam Deck user experience with meaningful software updates. And the BEST update is one that improves...

 

Time to update your steam deck!

[LabRat]

Just upgraded the SSD in a 'Deck for a friend. Was doing the re-imaging as I ran across this.

Will make sure to update to the latest Beta branch. Thanks 

[schuck6566]

I'm sorry but the story makes them sound like they're going the extra mile because they're updating hardware that's "three years old". Both Xbox and ps consoles are older and still getting updates and my Amazon tablet is older than them all and just received an update yesterday. While its nice to see them supporting the deck,the gushing over it seems kinda over board for something I'd HOPE to see from a main stream company. I do appreciate seeing it here so I can make sure my son knows about it.  

[LabRat]

  On 18/02/2025 at 16:10, schuck6566 said:

I'm sorry but the story makes them sound like they're going the extra mile because they're updating hardware that's "three years old". Both Xbox and ps consoles are older and still getting updates and my Amazon tablet is older than them all and just received an update yesterday. While its nice to see them supporting the deck,the gushing over it seems kinda over board for something I'd HOPE to see from a main stream company. I do appreciate seeing it here so I can make sure my son knows about it.  

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PR and Marketing wankery is par for the course.
+TBF, the Steam Deck is still viewed more as an 'ultraportable PC' than a Console. -and, consumer PCs often lose software/firmware support w/in Warranty period... 

Fair point(s), nonetheless.

[Sir Beregond]

One of these days I'd like to pick up an OLED Deck. Just not high up on the priority list right now. 

[Kaz]

  On 18/02/2025 at 16:10, schuck6566 said:

I'm sorry but the story makes them sound like they're going the extra mile because they're updating hardware that's "three years old". Both Xbox and ps consoles are older and still getting updates and my Amazon tablet is older than them all and just received an update yesterday. While its nice to see them supporting the deck,the gushing over it seems kinda over board for something I'd HOPE to see from a main stream company. I do appreciate seeing it here so I can make sure my son knows about it.  

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They probably own iphones.  Apple had several updates that made the iphone experience worse on older phones.  One update slowed phones down when batteries got older to try and 'save battery life', and another made them take longer to charge.  While those might be better for the battery, they feel much worse for the consumer.  Both updates felt like they were pushing people to upgrade their phones.

 

Valve's update should be an improvement for end users.

[schuck6566]

let's see what everyone thinks....  

 

 

[schuck6566]

I appreciate that the Deck is a more comprehensive PC than I thought it to be (Thanks to LabRat's post on my survey!) but doesn't that make the Steam OS release of software & Firmware updates 3 years in about equal to Microsoft's Feature updates in Windows?

"These updates typically include new features, visual improvements, and significant enhancements to improve the overall experience and security.If you use Windows Update, the system will download only the files necessary for the upgrade depending on your current configuration, making the download package up to 35% smaller." In other words based on your hardware and software already there.Seems like again they are doing what others are doing already lol. I would purchase a deck over the other options on the market without a second thought after looking at all the reviews,just something about the original story annoyed me. maybe I'm just being too judgy.

[tictoc]

In reality the base OS will basically be supported more or less forever.  Most of the significant hardware bits have been upstreamed to the mainline kernel, and with Arch Linux serving as the base OS, I don't really see a future where the SteamDeck turns into a worthless brick and/or a security black hole that should never be connected to the internet.

 

I'm running Valve's SteamOS on it now, but I have had plain Arch running in the past.  As of kernel 6.1 (released December 2022) everything on my deck worked out of the box running plain Arch Linux.