Windows is a problem with Windows handhelds

It’s been about two weeks since Microsoft, a multi-trillion dollar company, shipped a $600 handheld “Xbox” that couldn’t be relied upon to sleep, wake, or charge while sleeping in my tests. Neither Microsoft nor ASUS would acknowledge that there is a problem with the White Xbox One or offer a timeline to fix it after repeated requests. Verge. (Asus tells me it needs more time to test.)

But if you want your white ASUS handheld to start working reliably, you can do Here’s what I did: I installed the latest build of Bazite, a Stamos-like, Linux-based operating system that works properly with gamepad controls, and slept like a dream. I didn’t need to hibernate or shut down once last weekend because I woke up during the hours. Slacksong And finally won the tough boss fight.

Did I mention that Bazite runs most of its Windows games? Pretty fast Compared to Windows?

I panned the Xbox Ally on October 15th for several reasons: It runs slower than a two-year-old Steam deck despite using the same chip efficiently. With Bazite, the same device runs 30 percent faster than Windows, and beats Steam Deck in all but one of my gaming benchmarks. Several reviews say that the Black Xbox One X, which doesn’t have as many sleep issues, gets a similar bazite speed boost.

It’s not just games that feel fast: Steam has a much more responsive interface without windows opening. It feels like a completely different handheld. With Bazite, I can use it like I use the Nintendo Switch, just press the power button whenever I want to pause a game, then pick up right where I left off hours or days later.

Initiating fast-paced games is quick to wake up from sleep. I also never had to touch the screen and leave a fingerprint, which still beats Microsoft’s latest attempt at gamepad-controlled Windows.

I won’t go into all the details because I don’t want to sound like a broken record – last December, I already wrote about how Bazite turned the former Rogue EleX (not to be confused with the Xbox EleX) into the best handheld of 2024. And again, I’ll admit that I’m not seeing any battery life advantage over the Bazeite over Windows – at times, I’ve also drawn a watt more than a watt.

But it is Such a rebuke of Windows Microsoft’s first “Xbox” handheld, a version of Windows that was supposed to reduce bloat and reduce performance and sleep modes built by a multi-trillion-dollar company, has been handily defeated by the efforts of a few Linux programmers standing on the shoulders of a nearly 300-person figure and a vast loyal following.

Bazite already, to put the white Xbox ally to sleep. There was a problem. When I installed it on October 19th, pressing the power button put the system into a state where it wouldn’t wake up. I needed a hard reset every time. But that’s because the developers of Bazite did not Still an Xbox ally. Two days after programmer Anthus received the hardware and consulted two contacts at AMD, the three of them fixed it — and he also got Xbox Ally’s programmable RGB joystick lights working in Linux.

To give you some idea of ​​how unreliable the vanilla Xbox Ally is right now, I tested two of them last week, one with “Advanced Standby Assist” and “Extreme Standby”, the other turned off. I applied every update available, checked their batteries regularly, and monitored them whenever they woke up.

Both would repeatedly wake everyone up on their own at seemingly random intervals, just sit at my desk, then generally put themselves back to sleep. The Deep Sleeper lost 10 percent of its battery life after 12 hours, the other lost 23 percent. (The latter required waking up twice in a row for the gamepad to continue working.)

But after another 12 hours, I found that both the handhelds had only 30% battery left. I’m not sure what happened to one, but the other apparently tried to apply Windows Update when it should have gone to sleep. Separately, I also noticed that both Windows units refuse to wake from sleep, requiring a hard reset before they come back to life. Some Redditors have also reported this issue with both versions of the Xbox One, as well as the surprise battery drain.

Microsoft declined our request for an interview about the future of Xbox One or a timeline on improvements, but VP of Windows Product Management Anshul Rawat provided this statement: Verge:

The Windows and Xbox teams are well aware of the challenges that a limited number of players have experienced and are actively working to improve sleep and wake reliability. We’ve identified a small set of issues and initial fixes will roll out soon. Optimizing Windows, the world’s most flexible OS, for different devices and screen sizes on PC and in the cloud is an ongoing journey. As we work with our partners to deliver a great experience on gaming handhelds, community feedback plays an important role in shaping these improvements for all players.

We’ve asked Microsoft what it means by “limited number of players” and “rolling soon.”

If I had bought an Xbox One myself, I’m not sure I would have waited for Microsoft to figure it out. At the very least, I’ll dual boot, occasionally switching back to Windows to get a new BIOS update.

There are many misconceptions about Linux gaming of late, such as that it offers fewer choices than Windows, doesn’t offer game stores other than Steam, doesn’t play as many games, doesn’t play those games as poorly by comparison. With a few exceptions—mostly with advanced anti-cheat solutions—they’re not true.

You can sideload games from the EPIC Games Store, from Batt.net, from Ubisoft and GOG, and more, and the efforts of the Linux community mean that many aging PC games that have problems running on Windows run just fine on Linux. ProvenB helps you check if your fuses are included.

Photos by Sean Hollister/The Verge

Correction: An earlier version of this story mischaracterized the handheld daemon as a handheld companion.