An open-source app called DroidDeck is letting Snapdragon-powered Android devices run Valve's Steam client and Windows PC games on the device itself, with no streaming from a PC or the cloud involved. As VideoCardz reports, YouTuber ETA Prime tested it on a RedMagic 11 Pro with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and 16 GB of memory, where Cyberpunk 2077 ran at around 60 FPS on medium settings. Skyrim Special Edition hit a similar figure at 720p, while Hogwarts Legacy was tougher on the phone and sat around 40 FPS even with lower settings and FSR.

Other solutions like Steam Link stream games from another PC, whereas DroidDeck runs them on the device itself. It loads Valve's ARM64 Linux Steam client in Big Picture mode as a regular Android app, and Windows games go through Valve's ARM64 Proton with x86 translation. Projects like Armada instead replace Android with SteamOS entirely, and DroidDeck needs neither that nor root access. It also handles GPU driver switching, AMD FSR and Snapdragon GSR upscaling, and frame generation through Lossless Scaling.

The popular third-party upscaling tool, Lossless Scaling, previously exclusive to Windows, has been ported to Linux with the release of the open-source lsfg-vk project. Developed by PancakeTAS, lsfg-vk utilizes Vulkan and the DXVK translation layer to bring the frame generation feature of the paid Windows application to Linux desktops and handheld devices, such as the Steam Deck. Until now, Linux gamers relied on FidelityFX Super Resolution frame generation only in titles where it was natively available. The lsfg-vk promises to extend artificial intermediate frames to nearly any game. Rather than depend on in-game integration, lsfg-vk intercepts DirectX 11 calls and reimplements the Lossless Scaling pipeline on top of Vulkan.

Rather than directly porting DX11 to Vulkan, the developer used DXVK to present a DX11 interface on Linux and hooked every shader load, allowing a bit-for-bit comparison between the original DXBC shaders and their SPIR-V counterparts. With shader fidelity verified, a combination of IDA-based static analysis, custom C++ utilities to log DX11 commands, and careful file-by-file comparisons in WinMerge enabled reconstruction of the entire rendering pipeline on Linux. Finally, RenderDoc traces of Vulkan calls guided the implementation of a native Vulkan pipeline, complete with the required synchronization primitives. Additionally, automation scripts and a statically linked subset of DXVK allow users to install the project and enable frame generation simply by setting a single environment variable.

The developer of the Lossless Scaling utility has released version 3.1, introducing both visual enhancements and significant performance improvements, up to 2x in "Performance Mode" depending on hardware and settings. Although there may be a slight dip in image fidelity, users with older graphics cards or integrated solutions will appreciate the ability to boost frame rates without lowering resolution. In addition to this new mode, the v3.1 update improves timestamp filtering for sharper details during rapid motion and refines border handling to eliminate jagged edges. Ghosting and object flicker have been reduced, and smarter interface detection keeps menus and heads-up displays stable under scaling. Frame generation is powered by LSFG, while scaling options include LS1, AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution, NVIDIA Image Scaling, Integer Scaling, Nearest Neighbor, xBR, Anime4K, Sharp Bilinear and Bicubic CAS.

Version 3.1 also expands localization support to include Finnish, Georgian, Greek, Norwegian, Slovak, and even the constructed language Toki Pona, reflecting the tool's growing international audience. Developed and maintained by a single creator, Lossless Scaling competes directly with proprietary upscalers, such as NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR, without requiring dedicated machine-learning hardware and is offered at a one-time price of $6.99. Its built-in algorithms are tailored to different content types: LS1 or AMD FSR is recommended for modern games, Integer Scaling or xBR works best for pixel-art titles, and Anime4K excels with cartoons or anime. For optimal results, users should cap their game at a stable frame rate to provide the utility with sufficient resources to operate and run their titles in windowed mode on Windows 10 version 1903 or later.