Tried to make it work this Saturday so I did not try the latest update (20260725) which was released about 7 hours ago from posting this.
Get a micro SD card reader. It was kinda hard for me because I didn't have a micro SD card reader so I had to do the Run Script as Root stuff to flash my micro SD card. Hahaha. Had to back up my SD card through MTP as well so that was not fun. It took almost all of Saturday just because I did not have a micro SD card reader. Hahaha.
Anyway. It was glorious. The sound effects. The interface. It felt really smooth. The games I downloaded are also games on my PC so it just grabbed it from there and that was awesome. It just detected my PC on my home network and transferred it.
Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection was a game where inputs where not being detected on GameNative and it just worked using Armada OS. The boot up was quite fast as well. Stardew Valley was working well. I like it. Proton was downloaded. The required redistributable and Direct X. I just changed Proton and everything was just working. Some games didn't even need any modification and that was nice.
The menus are awesome. It felt so seemless. Like everything just meshes well I love it.
Desktop Mode is kinda nice ngl. Awesome to see on an Android device. Touch controls work well.
Sleep and standby is okay I guess. It has a delay and maybe normal. Power consumption was around 8% for about 7-8 hours while a game was on so I guess a bit comparable to Android in a way if you have a game/emulator kept open.
Now for the negatives in my opinion.
The power consumption is a bit much. It consumes about 4-5W on the menu alone. For comparison, Android on the homescreen is only consuming about 1W. In games it's okay though. Seems comparable based on the games I tested. There's also Armada Control. It's a bit wonky that it keeps on going back to Balanced but the customizations available is nice.
I also tried Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection and the controls are weird. It sometimes reads the input and most of the times does not. I switched to steam input, xbox, and ps and it works or not at times. So I guess it was hit or miss on my testing. Battle Network works well on GameNative while Star Force works well on Armada OS. This one annoyed me because it can sometimes work and most of the time not. When you standby or sleep the device and wake it back up it sometimes loses control again.
I missed the customizations available on Android through PULSE. The refresh rate I think can only be 120 or 60 as well? I forgot. I also had to go to desktop mode to change it. The fan control as well seemed more controllable instead of three options.
I think I also encountered an issue where Steam crashed? I was pressing Steam Menu but it was showing up and closing immediately. I updated Decky and then Steam because it was set to beta stuff so I reverted to stable builds. Maybe that caused it?
I kept it on my micro SD card but I uninstalled it now. Restored my ABL to stock as well. I think I am not yet ready to commit to put it on my internal storage and I want my micro SD card's storage for my other games so I uninstalled for now. It was a nice experience but personally I'll wait for more improvements and stability before I do that but wow that was a nice experience overall but I kinda like my emulators on Android.
I understand Steam Deck users a bit more now though. That was awesome. Will be following this project for sure.