2021 has been a big year for gaming handhelds, between the new Switch OLED model and the announcement of the forthcoming Steam Deck (now delayed to 2022), not to mention myriad ways to play games via the cloud on any phone or tablet. Now Qualcomm, the chipmaker behind the Snapdragon processors found inside most high-end smartphones, has declared its intention to get into the gaming space: Its first foray is the G3x, a high-end mobile processor designed for gaming. But Qualcomm knew that a chip alone wasn’t enough to turn heads, so it teamed up with Razer to make a device that can showcase it.
This is the Snapdragon G3x Gen 1 Developer Kit, a handheld mobile gaming device that Qualcomm hopes will be the start of an entirely new platform. It has a 6.65-inch FHD+ 120hz OLED display, haptic feedback, active cooling, and of course a standard set of thumbsticks, buttons, and triggers. Inside is the aforementioned Snapdragon G3x chip, which has an eight-core processor and 6GB of RAM, running an Android-based operating system. To be clear, this isn’t yet a consumer product that you’ll be able to find on store shelves this Christmas; it’s a developer kit that Qualcomm hopes will inspire both game developers and hardware manufacturers to expand mobile gaming as we know it.
I had the chance to go hands-on with the G3x and play through a handful of gaming scenarios and came away not necessarily impressed, but definitely intrigued. Size-wise, the G3x is a little bit larger than a Nintendo Switch, but smaller than a Steam Deck. The buttons, triggers, and thumbsticks all feel fairly similar to those found on the Razer Kishi phone controller attachment, though Razer told me they’re not the exact same parts. The face buttons are serviceable if a little bit spongy, but the triggers feel very squishy and lack clickiness. That said, the G3x’s controller grips are much more substantial than Switch Joy-Cons or the even-smaller Kishi grips, which was definitely more comfortable in my adult-sized hands.
I played three games during my time with the G3x: the sci-fi racer Redout played via Steam in-home streaming, Minecraft Dungeons played via Xbox Cloud Streaming, and an aerial combat tech demo running natively on the device. Redout and Minecraft Dungeons both played relatively smoothly, save for a few small hitches and some graphical artifacting that could be attributed to streaming. The aerial combat demo played smoothly, but I can’t say I was blown away by the visuals. Backgrounds and model textures weren’t terribly detailed, and explosions looked blocky as I flew through them. That said, it was a tech demo intended to show off the haptics and controls of the device, not necessarily its graphical prowess.
These three scenarios intended to show the various use-cases for the G3x – that is, a single device that can serve as the all-in-one conduit to a variety of different platforms. But more than that, it’s a proof-of-concept for game makers to give them a sense of a device that’s worth developing for.
Of course, there’s already a plethora of games available for Android devices, but many of them are designed for the vertical portrait orientation, or for touch controls. This device, on the other hand, is intended to serve the more traditional landscape orientation, physical controller-based gaming experience. There are some games like that on Android already, and the G3x has a built-in touch-mapping system that should allow most games that don't have native controller support to still work.
The G3x developer kit is also an invitation to hardware manufacturers to develop similar devices. As I said before, this developer kit isn’t a product you’ll be able to buy – at least, not now and in its exact current form. It’s possible that Razer will release something similar to it in the future, as could other manufacturers like Asus, Acer, or any of the other many companies making gaming hardware today.
All of that said, I have to say I’m skeptical about where a device like this will fit into the current gaming landscape – particularly when it comes to price. A robust set of controllers to play cloud-streaming games is certainly nicer than the current solution of phone-clips or controller attachments, but I can’t imagine a lot off people will be willing to pay very much for a pure cloud-streaming receiver, not to mention one that puts the stability of your platform in the hands of cloud-streaming services.
The other option is, of course, games that run natively on Android devices, of which there are some – Genshin Impact, Pokemon Unite, and the upcoming Diablo Immortal come to mind as recent standouts, as well as a growing stable of ports like Fortnite, Stardew Valley, and Dead Cells – but the overall library pales in comparison to Switch or PC. Given that, I wouldn’t want to pay more for this than I would a Switch or Steam Deck.
This leaves things up to developers, which again, really is why this developer kit exists in the first place. Qualcomm says the G3x chip is more powerful than its top-end mobile processors on the market right now, which is certainly impressive. That puts it head and shoulders above the Switch’s now-ancient Tegra X1, and potentially in the realm of the Steam Deck’s custom AMD APU, though we won’t know for sure until Qualcomm releases the chip’s full specs. Either way, Qualcomm’s hope is that the existence of powerful mobile hardware like this will incentivize developers to design with this platform in mind – or at least port their existing games to it.
Of course, there are Android handhelds on the market already. Beyond the controller-attachment options like the Razer Kishi and the Backbone One, there are gaming phones like the Asus ROG phone and its slew of gaming accessories, as well as all-in-one devices like the Ayn Odin, a $200 Indiegogo product with a Snapdragon 888 processor and Switch-like design. None of these devices have found a significant foothold in the market though, at least not compared to the massively successful Switch. It will be interesting to see how that changes if and when major hardware manufacturers start launching G3x-powered devices.
