After years of trying with gaming phones, hardware makers are trying to make the next big product category seem to be “Android gaming pads”. Basically, you’re throwing a Nintendo Switch into a copier, booting up Android on it, and hoping that users will choose content from Android games and a growing (shrinking?) collection of cloud gaming services. Logitech kicked off the G Cloud Gaming Handheld last month, and now Razer is throwing its hat into the ring with the new Razer Edge handheld. It was teased last month and fully unveiled over the weekend and actually has some interesting specs.
First, the main difference between the Razer and the Logitech PDA is that the Razer has active cooling. Razer didn’t show any internal images, but the 10mm-thick chassis and six vents on the back give the impression that there’s decent heat dissipation going on. Even if Razer puts a normal phone chip inside, the fan will probably make it outperform any phone thanks to the lack of need for instant throttling. Razer and Qualcomm claim that this is the world’s first device with the “Snapdragon G3x Gen 1 Gaming Platform”SoC, but this seems to be just marketing nonsense and not any new technical development.
Qualcomm’s page for the new G3x Gen 1 doesn’t include any technical details, which is a major red flag that says there’s nothing to brag about here. Razer only says that the chip is clocked at 3GHz. Unofficially, we can browse the Geekbench listings for some details. Chip code name “Lahaina”“means it should be a rebranded Snapdragon 888 SoC, Qualcomm’s flagship SoC for smartphones from 2020. It will be a 5nm chip with one 3GHz Cortex X1 core, three 2.42GHz Cortex A78 cores, and four 1.8GHz Cortex A55 cores. all clocks are sourced from Geekbench and they are all ok compared to the phone version, which means this chip didn’t even get a clock bump. Again, phone chips throttle very quickly, so a fan should give this product a decent stable gaming performance. which is not on the phone. It seems that Qualcomm simply did not want to admit that it was supplying a two-year-old chip in this device.
Unlike the Logitech tablet, the Razer Edge controllers are not permanently connected. In fact, Razer just built a regular tablet and added a Razer Kishi V2 Pro gamepad to the box. You get two analog sticks, ABXY face buttons, and six (!) shoulder buttons: digital L1/R1, analog L2/R2 triggers, and the unique “M1/M2″buttons, which are little protrusions next to the L2 trigger.
We doubt it’s a coincidence that Razer and Logitech came up with the same product idea a month apart. Wormtongue for both companies, likely Qualcomm: Reports last year indicated that the chipmaker was experimenting with Nintendo Switch-like Android devices, including demonstrating a “gaming reference device “to several partners. It appears that some OEMs have taken Qualcomm’s offer and decided to commercialize the product idea. With Qualcomm’s huge partner base, don’t be surprised if more of these devices show up. The Razer Edge will go on sale in the first quarter of 2023.