What just happened? With the upcoming launch of Valve'due south Steam Deck firmly in everyone's mind, companies like Razer and Qualcomm are taking note of growing consumer interest in powerful but portable PC gaming devices. That'due south why the two companies have partnered to develop an all-new handheld gaming machine. Or rather, a dev kit for one. The device volition run the first generation of Qualcomm'south freshly-announced Snapdragon G3x silicon.

The device doesn't have a slick codename correct now, so Qualcomm is just calling it the first "Snapdragon G3x Handheld Gaming Programmer Kit," which doesn't exactly whorl off the tongue. But that'due south fine. Neither Razer nor Qualcomm is trying to sell this to the boilerplate user, so a flashy product name isn't necessary. The announcement leaked a couple days ago, and we've only been waiting for the official reveal since.

And so, if this gadget isn't for ordinary gamers, what is its purpose? As with whatsoever dev kit, it's intended to assistance game and hardware developers create products well-suited for the portable gaming marketplace, which will probable grow essentially in the coming years.

That's especially true if the Steam Deck and its competitors sell enough units to catch the center of developers. Given that the Steam Deck received and so many reservations that Valve had to push back its estimated launch date several times, nosotros doubt that will be an effect.

At any rate, the device is broad, rectangular, and equipped with a pretty standard array of buttons: two joysticks, a d-pad, ii shoulder buttons, two triggers, iv labeled face up buttons, and three additional buttons for Start, Select, and 1 more choice that nosotros tin't make out the name of.

Regarding its other physical attributes, the device boasts a half dozen.65-inch OLED display with a 1080p resolution and back up for "upward to" 120hz refresh rates. It also has a built-in 5MP webcam designed for streaming, supporting 1080p, 60 FPS recording. Additionally, you'll find two microphones nestled on the left and correct sides of the display for sound capture.

Though we imagine most users volition game with headphones or earbuds, the unit of measurement does contain "4-way speakers" that supposedly provide "fantastic audio." Qualcomm says the ergonomics are solid, also, but we wouldn't be able to confirm that without trying a unit of measurement ourselves.

What about under-the-hood hardware? Evidently, information technology features a Snapdragon G3x as mentioned before (which contains an unspecified Adreno GPU) simply other details such as RAM chapters are still up in the air. The device does have a USB-C port, DisplayPort over USB-C functionality, Bluetooth v.2 support, and a 6000mAh battery.

Interestingly, Qualcomm says the G3x Gen 1 Gaming Platform will support cloud gaming, Android gaming, PC gaming, and even Android app usage from the same device. This is apparently not impossible to reach on a normal PC (far from information technology), but if switching between all those functions is seamless, Qualcomm might accept something special.