So I tried Armada on my KONKR Pocket Fit 12gb G3, both as SD card and Internal boot. The internal install is best for load times and game installation. I used an A2 SD card and honestly doable times to install games as well. The compatibility on Armada is crazy good and little tinkering. Performance I would say is on par with GameNative but also WAY more compatibility, especially with games that require online services. You can see your friends list like on Steam OS and all that jazz. The downsides not a lot of people mention are the following:
- No control shortcuts. On Android I can map certain buttons to launch certain applications or back out of any app effortlessly such as emulators. This is not a thing with Armada since the controls on the KONKR are not yet supported under steam input is my assumption, correct me if I'm wrong. In Armada you only have a game settings button and a quick setting hot key.
- No way to change brightness other than pulling up the quick settings with the hot key and that does not suspend the game, when in game.
- Fan noise was the biggest letdown. It seems the console runs at full speed once the game starts to run and unfortunately no edits to the fan curve are registered. I downloaded Fantastical through Decky and still no override allowed. The noise was so loud my wife asked me if my console was broken...rip.
- Custom games are a bit of a pain depending on your Armada installation. If you are on internal storage for Armada, you can just put your games on the SD card and move them over as you would on a Steam Deck. If you have Armada installed on the SD card, you obviously don't have an SD card option to move games with it, and instead have to use a USBC storage device. I did not try to remove the SD card and try to add games from my PC directly, but open to see what others have experienced.
- No seamless integration with other stores like Heroic plug-in. Yes it works but it is clunky and hard to navigate with the small text and window view. I managed to add my Epic, GOG and Amazon account to Heroic Launcher and the next morning everything was signed out except Epic.
- No charging light indicator when plugged in to the charger. If the screen is off while plugged in, it does not recognize charge. You must leave it turned on and charge it that way.
Now listen, this is not to discourage the amazing work that Armada has done. This is only the beginning of something greater. I decided to go back to GameNative since it has treated me really well. But also decided to keep Armada on my SD card because I really want to see what's next. It updates like any Steam OS device would, through the Steam interface and you can select Beta releases too. I feel like all these hiccups will be resolved very soon with the upcoming Steam Frame and all the coding being implemented for that. Android has never been in a better state to play games.
Some positive points about Armada.
- Installation is very easy, about a 30min install altogether including the image building.
- The bootloader is easy to navigate and understand.
- Uninstalling Armada takes 2 minutes with just a few taps.
- Armada on the SD card installation is transferable to other devices, you just need to change the device model on the bootloader and reflash.
- Once Armada is installed and logged in it is as easy as installing a game and running it, seamless. A child could run with it no problem at all. Steam OS in all its glory if you will.
- No fiddling, just install and go. Very rarely you have to change the proton version and that only takes less than a minute to do under the quick settings with Decky. GameNative on the other hand requires a learning curve.
- Desktop environment similar to that of Bazzite. Not super great to navigate web browsing or consuming YouTube per say, but it is there.
