this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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Steam Deck

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Valve’s next mystery gadget may be imminent (www.theverge.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Bluetooth I understand and makes perfect sense in a controller. Is a very common way to connect a human interface device wirelessly. It is a direct connection and can be very lower power and doesn't need to transfer alot of data. Not only did the Steam controller support Bluetooth like you mentioned but i believe the recent Xbox and PS5 controllers support Bluetooth as well. I think even the Nintendo Wii controllers were Bluetooth.

WiFi doesn't make much sense in a controller when Bluetooth already exists. Unless the controller has features that would benefit using WiFI over Bluetooth.

For example I could see maybe an advantage in a steam steaming/steam remote play situation. Instead of a controller going Bluetooth to local device and that local device passing the commands to the remote device, the controller could talk directly over the network to the remote device saving some latency for a more responsive experience. But I don't know why they would pick 5GHz that is more of a higher bandwidth application as far as i understand. You don't need that for sending basic controller commands 2.4GHz would be more than enough. Maybe it has something to do with Latency if your 2.4GHz network is congested you could to go with the less congested 5GHz frequency.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Proprietary wifi connections perform better significantly than Bluetooth. Bluetooth's performance blows.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can they still call it WiFi if it is a proprietary version of WiFi?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Eh. I'm not sure the implementation details and how high or low level their alterations are. Do they establish connections similarly and just not expose the details and packet formats to end users, or is it completely redone?

But either way, Bluetooth is pretty mediocre for just about anything, and the only way to get good results is to own both sides of the connection, with a console or with a dongle.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@conciselyverbose @ylai @Aurenkin @Catsrules @anon232 we need to support libre and open source things here.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Bluetooth isn't any more "open". And more importantly, it's a horseshit standard with all of bad stability, bad latency, and bad performance.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah that is a good reason.

And looking at the documentation it just saids it uses the frequency band of WiFi not that it uses WiFI. https://www.rra.go.kr/ko/license/A_b_popup.do?app_no=202317210000256753

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Specific low-power wireless devices (wireless devices for wireless access systems including wireless LAN (5150-5350 MHz, 5470-5850 MHz frequency band))