Am I the only one who would love another clamshell handheld from Nintendo? Instead of another Switch Lite kind of form factor, I would love a clamshell Switch 2 Mini. I wouldn't mind a chunkier, thicker body to accommodate the battery as well as proper control sticks. With a smaller screen closer to a V1 Switch, the size folded up would be wonderfully portable. However it might take a while to update the chip wafers to shrink the system on chip down a bit.
I'm not exactly sure how a clamshell design would make a Switch more portable. The main thing determining its physical shape are the circuit board, battery, and cooling. A clamshell setup might let you pull in the controls slightly, but I suspect whatever you gained from that you'd lose from the clamshell itself.
The advantage of a clamshell is that it covers the screen(s) and doesn't leave any controls sticking out that can snag on something.
There are some slimline cases for the Switch Lite that do that job by just covering the screen and the sticks, and little else, to make it somewhat pocketable. However, that's not really possible with the larger models, and especially the Switch 2.
Still, take a look at the GPD Win Mini and AYN Thor, if you want an idea of what a modern clamshell handheld could be.
Switch Lite with magnetic flip case is the last truly pocketable handheld. There are cases like that for NS OLED and NS2 but those systems are too big to pocket anyways so may as well use a carry case with spine handle. Plus that allows me, for example, to also have my Genki portable magnetic battery on hand for 6+ hours playtime (just snaps via magnetic ring adhered to back of NS2 and has little 4" right angle usb-c to right angle usb-c), official charger with cable, and charge grip for tabletop mode. Plus my case accommodates Switch 2 using Jsaux Joycon Grips, ensuring the most comfortable handheld experience on the go.
I keep my custom Switch Lite OLED with modchip in a magnetic flip case for slipping into my jacket pocket or rear left jeans pocket. It only gets like 2-3 hrs battery unless playing less demanding games (which can get 4 hrs), but for sitting in a waiting room or something and wanting an easy pocket friendly experience, it's perfect.
Psalms 22:16 (1,000 yrs before Christ)
They pierced My hands and feet
Isaiah 53:5 (700 yrs before Christ)
He was pierced for our transgressions
@BonzoBanana A sub-native image on the Switch 2 could be as low as 540p for a game like Star Wars Outlaws, that's primarily designed for more powerful home consoles.
For first-party games, sure, I doubt that there's much below 1080p at the moment, but the issue of having to scale both up and then down would be a real one if they were to introduce a 720p model, and the games that would suffer the most would be those big third-party ports.
Yes I guess I should have used render resolution or game engine resolution. The native resolution of the game engine is confusing with the native resolution of the display panel which changes with every different display device the Switch 2 is connected to. Although sub-native resolution also gets confusing when the Switch 2 may be connected to an older low resolution television with an adapter or just an early hdmi compatible tv. Render resolution> Upscaled resolution by GPU> Final upscaled/downscaled resolution to display device. The point is personally I see few issues with a Switch 2 lite having a 720p display panel, both negatives and positives basically. You can see with Switch emulation how easy it is to just up or downscale the rendering resolution. That's how games are written nowadays. Metroid Prime 4 looks amazing at 4K on a emulator, better than Switch 2. It's rendering at a resolution of a true 4K despite the original game on Switch 1 being 1080p or below. The patches needed are likely 5 minutes work nothing more for Nintendo. No logical reason to have a rendering resolution of 540p then upscale to 1080p and then downscale to 720p just render at 360p, AI upscale to 720p and then that is the final resolution too. You could end up with a more responsive game, less heat generated and longer battery runtime. Normal Switch 2 owners get to gloat that their version on portable has more detail. I still think the Switch 2 lite should have a docked mode though but purely for 720p graphics to an external display, nothing more than that. In fact it would be nice if it didn't switch at all it you had the option to duplicate the display to an external monitor. So the display could be on portable, tv or both simultaneously.
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Topic: Switch 2 Lite incoming. Thoughts?
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