The Steam Deck has been having a pretty good run. Not only has Valve managed to ship pre-orders at a feverish pace, the company has also managed to offer plenty of support on the software side of things. Today, the company has announced a new Steam Deck beta update, bringing improvements to the console when outputting to an external display or monitor. There are also a number of fixes addressing a variety of different issues, like SD card formatting failures, game controls, haptic events, and more.
These are the fix and improvements that Valve has listed with the beta update:
- Added external display output resolution and refresh rate selection UI in Display Settings (requires Steam Client Beta)
- Automatically avoid problematic resolutions like 4096x2160 or 30Hz modes on external displays
- Improved frame pacing when compositing (such as when FSR is enabled)
- Improved touch / de-touch detection speeds
- Fixed in-game camera control issues when using a physical mouse
- Fixed aspect ratio and resolution not properly switching in the Steam UI after reconnecting an external monitor
- Fixed a scenario where an SD Card format operation could fail
- Fixed an issue where frames could drop on external displays at lower refresh rates
- Fixed an issue where small touches would be ignored on edges of some trackpads
- Fixed unsolicited random haptic events
- Fixed boot tone volume to be equalized across models
- Modified USB descriptors to support controller navigation in EFI menu at boot
As you can see, there are a variety of fixes and improvements that have been made. Currently, this update is only available to those in the preview channel. If unfamiliar, the Steam Deck software update channel has three different options: stable, beta, and preview. The stable channel is probably the best option for most users, as it provides the latest stable release of the Steam Client and SteamOS. For those that are just a tad bit more adventurous, the beta channel offers the opportunity to test new features before they are made available to the general public. The beta channel gives access to the latest Steam Client beta and the latest stable version of SteamOS.
Finally, the most aggressive out of the three is the preview channel. The preview channel allows users to test system-level features and offers the Steam Client beta and SteamOS beta. If the current beta update seems something that you'd like to try out, pop into the preview channel and give it a shot. You can opt into the preview channel by heading to the Settings menu, navigating to System, then changing your Steam Update Channel. If you have yet to get your hands on a Steam Deck and you're curious about it, right now is the perfect time to pre-order one, as Valve is now fulfilling pre-orders for the final quarter of the year.
Source: Valve