Razer prepares its own rival to the Steam Deck. The problem is conceiving it as a smartphone

Those responsible for Verizon are taking their chests and have given some preliminary details about the Razer Edge 5G, a portable console that the manufacturer has developed in collaboration with Qualcomm and stands out for being “the first console in the world with 5G connectivity”.

That may be true if we are talking about a console, but we have a problem. The proposal is not too far from what we already have today with a 5G Android + Razer Kishi smartphone-type solution. The key is in 5G connectivity, but also another section.

Where is the native Steam support?

The Razer Edge 5G will be officially announced on October 15 at RazerCon. At Verizon, they highlighted how this console would allow you to play games in the cloud (for example, xCloud), but also games stored locally or streaming games from our console.

This ability to play games locally is a curious difference compared to proposals such as the Logitech G Cloud, specifically focused on the cloud, but the problem here is that in the Steam Deck with which it theoretically competes, we have access to Steam (and indirect to other stores such as Epic Games, GOG or Itch.io). Still, on the Razer console, it does not seem that we can play “locally” games that are not Android’s own.

And that’s where things don’t change that much: this is essentially a mobile with a controller permanently connected to it. The screen diagonal is likely to be extensive (we would bet at least seven inches), but we can achieve something very similar with our current mobile – even if it is 4G and not 5G – and a controller like the Razer Kishi.

The experience with this accessory wins many points in the mobile game, especially if we want to take advantage of it for fun in the cloud, but precisely for that reason – and because of the evolution of that idea – the appearance of this console seems almost repetitive.

It may be that the Razer Edge 5G has been confirmed to be based on the Qualcomm G3x platform. Last year we tested a prototype of a portable console that probably looks very similar to what Razer and Verizon propose together with this manufacturer.

It will be interesting to see to what extent this Razer Edge 5G poses a differential proposal compared to the mobile + controller combo and to a Steam Deck that has become one of the star products of the year.

One that lacks native 5G connectivity but that we can also connect to those networks via tethering. If the Razer Edge 5G price is more affordable, we may face a proposal with possibilities. If not… you will have it even more difficult.

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