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Android launchbox overhead?


DaveC1964

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I have a small handheld device I wanted to use LB on.  It is not a beast by any means.  Will having LB installed and using it to launch impact performance such as frame rate etc?

Also does it need Google play services to run as the device does not have Google play installed.

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7 minutes ago, DaveC1964 said:

I have a small handheld device I wanted to use LB on.  It is not a beast by any means.  Will having LB installed and using it to launch impact performance such as frame rate etc?

Also does it need Google play services to run as the device does not have Google play installed.

No, it should not affect frame rates. Android "freezes" apps when they're in the background, for the most part. LaunchBox doesn't do anything in the background. It's possible that LaunchBox might take up some RAM, but Android is supposed to solve this issue automatically as well. It does not need Google Play services.

Regardless, though, LaunchBox does not necessarily run well on potato devices, so your mileage may vary, depending on the device. But it's free to try out. :)

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8 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

No, it should not affect frame rates. Android "freezes" apps when they're in the background, for the most part. LaunchBox doesn't do anything in the background. It's possible that LaunchBox might take up some RAM, but Android is supposed to solve this issue automatically as well. It does not need Google Play services.

Regardless, though, LaunchBox does not necessarily run well on potato devices, so your mileage may vary, depending on the device. But it's free to try out. :)

Ok thanks I was primarily interested in it for a frontend for Retroarch because honestly the UI for RA sucks.   

I have a permanent license for the Windows version are there any discounts for the android version if I have the other?

The "potato" I have only has 2 GB of RAM is that enough?

Edited by DaveC1964
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13 hours ago, DaveC1964 said:

Ok thanks I was primarily interested in it for a frontend for Retroarch because honestly the UI for RA sucks.   

I have a permanent license for the Windows version are there any discounts for the android version if I have the other?

The "potato" I have only has 2 GB of RAM is that enough?

You might need to grow a larger potato. ;)

It's worth a shot though. A lot depends on what theme you use and how image- and video-heavy it is.

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I tried it and it seems to work but not sure if it will choke when trying to parse more than 100 games.   I have it set to list with none of the fancy videos, animations,  etc.  I don't know how much memory that saves me.   No big deal as I want it to play games not watch videos anyway.  It is a little laggy when loading the game list but I guess it is because of the limited RAM.

A bigger potato would be fine but the small size is the attraction for this handheld device, it is hyper portable.   I can buy a bigger one but for now the tiny size is a nice thing and I can HDMI out if  I want a bigger screen.  I am using one of those Chinese handhelds (there are tons of them these days) called the "RG353M" it is anodized aluminum and really small with a retro friendly 4:3 screen.  It can emulate up to and including Dreamcast and N64 so it is not terrible.   I am not big on using phones as carrying around controller attachments is cumbersome and touch controls are poor. 

Maybe in the future would it be possible for a trimmed down "potato edition" with a small memory footprint?  Something like the full one you have now for an "editor and maintenance" and a small frontend only app that just is a game frontend with all of the editing, scraping, downloading etc, stripped out but uses the data you did with the editor.  Just a thought as like I said there are tons of these little portables and would be a big market to sell to.

(I just purchased the yearly license.  This should be good for now I can always upgrade in the future if this works out well.)

Edited by DaveC1964
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