doxx_in_the_box

doxx_in_the_box t1_j392fr9 wrote

> if ground stations are the bottleneck

You’re half way right and I think this is why Iridium is claiming speed - they’re reusing marketing material without specifying which conditions hold true.

Ground stations are the bottleneck in two situations:

  • example: customer is in Australia tracking a product on other side of planet. It needs to somehow get the data back to Australia.
  • example: a user wants to send an emergency message to another user, like using Garmin SOS device.

But with emergency SOS the ground station nearest you will be the one handling your request, so beaming across multiple satellites is pointless.

Also iridium has less total number of ground stations, so less coverage on earth, they just make up for it with better satellite-to-satellite coverage

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doxx_in_the_box t1_j38drfl wrote

I agree - but I’ve always heard Iridium is slower because of the processing time or whatever occurs when linking satellites. I could have misheard

But if you read Iridium’s statement they say: faster than globalstar because we don’t require ground stations. That part makes zero sense.

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doxx_in_the_box t1_j382rcr wrote

Apple doesn’t like having to bend over backwards making it more difficult to offer a unique solution. Globalstar was perfect because they were able to make it whatever they wanted, and have 85% of the network bandwidth for future development.

All I’m saying is what I’ve heard about Iridum, that it’s slower getting a message to ground, where SOS matters.

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doxx_in_the_box t1_j37uig7 wrote

Apple uses globalstar.

The confusing part is Iridium states it’ll be faster because “it does not require a ground station”, but everything I’ve heard about Iridium is the opposite that it takes like 10x longer to get a response, because they relay the message between satellites instead of just beaming it directly back to the ground (how globalstar does it)

They say going between satellites will make service faster but this makes zero sense since the emergency service is ON THE GROUND, eventually the signal needs to reach earth and back again.

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doxx_in_the_box t1_j0di3w5 wrote

For sure. I think Valve spent a lot to get this custom APU perfect for handheld and that’s not a resource they consider necessary to improve. It’s the bread and butter of this unit as they discuss in the article.

And with all the competition you’re always welcome to load steam OS on a different unit with more powerful graphics, also a win-win for Valve they just want to compete with the other game stores and they’re doing a fantastic job at it

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doxx_in_the_box t1_j0dgf82 wrote

You’re in luck (kinda)

> When I asked Yang and Griffais for the pain points they wanted to address in a sequel, they had nearly identical answers: screen and battery life.

No need for improved graphics IMO. They aren’t planning it either. It plays games excellently as-is and sips power. I get 4-5 hours battery on some games and 2 hours if it’s using high fidelity graphics, but super simple to just adjust settings on the fly and almost double that.

My SD isn’t loud with full cooling either, barely noticeable.

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