Samsung has been doing this for a long time with DeX an it’s awesome. However it won’t really be a thing for most people until Apple does it.

Absolutely. It sounds ideal for something like that.

The issue is they sit in this odd place from a price perspective. I can get an N4000 based stick PC with 4GB RAM and eMMC storage for $140 CAD, or a vastly better performing N95 based mini PC with 8GB RAM, real SSD, and additional outputs for $50 more.

The stick PC really only makes sense if you need that form factor, or if you’re on a really tight budget. The improvements for $50 are just too much to ignore.

Your wishlist sounds almost identical to mine. As frustrating as the limitations of streamers are, they are easy to use. HDMI CEC makes single remote setups possible, easy volume changes, input switching, etc. Apps are vetted so they “just work”.

As for casting, most platforms support running Miracast or AirPlay receivers. Google is the stickler here that won’t let you run a Google Cast receiver (or at least I haven’t found one) and also doesn’t implement Miracast on Pixel devices. It’s such a shame because I vastly prefer casting the URL to the TV and letting it source the content than mirroring my phone all the time.

Yeah, those were on my radar as well. I haven’t yet had a chance to look into what the Linux compatibility is like, but that sounds promising that you were able to do it.

The big downside I see is that while the power consumption is low, they’re running a really old SoC, usually based on Intel N4000 (launched late 2017). Looking around it seems to have h.265 decode which is the most important one to look out for. It doesn’t support AV1, but that’s mostly streaming services and not that common (I think?). There may be other disadvantages I’m not thinking of at the moment.

What was the performance like for you?

I do have surround sound, but I wasn’t aware of that being an issue with a PC solution. Have you encountered issues getting that to work?

All my current self-hosting is running off an N100 mini-PC. OPNsense, NginX, Home Assistant, Unifi Controller, Docker host, etc. They are fantastic, it just seems a bit overkill for sitting behind the TV and playing Plex/Jellyfin and the occasional web stream in a browser. There’s really not much competition though as all the products below it offer a lot older processors that don’t have very up to date HW decode.

Pixel phones have some of the best alternative OS support around and have always had unlockable bootloaders with no hoops to jump through. GrapheneOS should satisfy you there.

The headphone jack, microSD card, etc? Google’s official response is “get bent”.

Of course they could, this is a software limitation. However consumer friendliness is not in either companies interests. Apple prefers to keep total control over their ecosystems so they aren’t going to do Google any favours, and Google likely doesn’t care much either way seeing how long it’s taken them to even attempt a similar network.

Kind of. From what I’ve heard each network will alert you if it always sees the same tracker from the other network, as a precaution against unwanted tracking / stalking. I don’t believe it goes further than that though, as in the networks won’t report back all the tags they see on a daily basis to help with location.

Any tag following you = alert

Tag from the other network seen = nothing

Yup. I’ve configured my thunder to look and feel really similar to the way I had Relay set up. The compact modenis great and the customizability is really good.

Android users literally run their lives out of Google Calendar. Think you can share your calendar with a friend from your phone? Think again. It’s back to the 10 year old desktop interface for you!

Oh you’re not at home at your computer, well, try using the desktop version of Google Calandar on your phone’s browser. I dare you.

Man made one of the pioneering smartwatches before anyone else. My pebble still had better battery life than my current feature bloated smart watch. He knows what he’s talking about.

The earlier phones just used off the shelf Snapdragons. It’s only the 6 and up that use the Tensor chip.

I don’t see the Deck as a critical mass device, and if Valve choses to make it one I will probably no longer be interested. The Deck is great because you can tinker to your heart’s content in an open system. That just isn’t going to fly if Valve decides they want to be the next Xbox or Switch.

Everyone is losing their shirt over ARM because Apple is producing some insanely expensive chips on it that have high performance. I’m not saying ARM doesn’t have some advantages, but I think that’s a long way out from going into something like the Deck where compatibility is everything. The switch being ARM has nothing at all to do with this conversation.

The whole point of the Steam Deck for me is playing my older games. Unless they get x86 translation working without a performance hit them I’d rather they stay on x86.

That’s a good point. I’ve never participated in that so it didn’t really factor into my opinion of them. In every way I’ve interacted with the company they have been excellent.

I like them because they make niche products that may not have mainstream appeal, but that their customers love (steam link, steam controller, valve index, steam deck). They have excellent customer support and always do more than they have to:

• My GF lost the power adapter to her steam link and asked how to buy a new one, they just sent her an entire replacement device since they were stopping production anyway
• One of my Index lighthouses died and I had bought it used from a guy since they didn’t sell them in my country yet. No questions, they sent me a new one
• When they were releasing Half Life Alex they just checked if you’d ever had an index connected to your PC and if so they gave you a copy. No asking for proof of purchase or redeeming codes that expire.

I could go on, but yeah to me they are pushing Linux forward, making hardware that excites me, have reasonable prices, and great service. So I like them.

You are technically correct, but Valve is a very “consumer first” company. This of course is no guarantee they’ll always be “good”, but Valve has earned and maintained my trust over the years and I trust them more than any other company I can think of. Far and away orders of magnitude more than Microsoft.

The same reason they removed the SD card, to get you using Google Drive, and the headphone jack, to get you to buy pixel buds.

I wish there were other options but most smartphone makers have dropped out of the game, cost a fortune, or have terrible updates.

It’s ridiculous that Google has disabled this feature. Even if we assumr it’s in preparation for desktop mode, that’s still unacceptable. Mirroring is a perfectly valid feature in its own right and it shouldn’t be held back by Google’s “plans”.

It’s crazy that my old Android phones from a decade ago could do this and the latest pixel cannot. We have been bleeding hardware features for years.