Results from the device compatibility survey
Hi!
We wish to thank everyone that participated in the device compatibility survey, we received 222 responses which we think was a very good outcome! A number of new devices were added to the compatibility list, which you can find here:
https://gitlab.com/es-de/emulationstation-de/-/blob/master/ANDROID.md?ref_type=heads#device-compatibility
We received a handful of reports of Android 9 devices and 32-bit devices not working as well, but we have not included those in the list as they don't fulfill the basic requirements for ES-DE which is 64-bit Android 10 or later. There were however some non-supported devices that we are not certain whether they are using a 32-bit OS or not so we did include those (for the time being at least).
We also received a number of comments, and although the overwhelming majority were positive and confirmed that ES-DE is working fine, there were some requests and issues reported. We'll try to answer the most common ones here:
Issue: When launching a game there's only a black screen - This is not a device compatibility problem but an emulator problem. The most common reason is that the RetroArch version from the Google Play store has been installed. This release is very old and doesn't work correctly on a number of devices. Installing the latest 64-bit version from the RetroArch website should resolve the problem (and you need to install the cores you want to use from inside RetroArch of course)
Request: Defining multiple ROM directories - Splitting up the game system directories across multiple storage devices is supported but it's not recommended as it breaks portability and the ability to easily migrate your ES-DE setup across different devices and operating systems. It's also tedious to setup. It's doable though and is described in the ES-DE Android documentation
Request: Add support for Yaba Sanshiro 2 - This has already been added and is coming in the next release. But the emulator developer only added basic support with a recent update, so although .chd files now work fine when launching games from ES-DE there is still no support for .bin/.cue files. We have asked the developer to add support for these file types as well but as far as we know it's not been implemented yet
Issue: Redream not working on the Odin 2 when launched from ES-DE - This is due to a bug in the Odin 2 firmware/OS image and has been reported to Ayn a number of weeks ago. We have recently received confirmation from Ayn that the bug report has been forwarded to their developers, but we don't know if or when it will be resolved
Request: Add support for Tate/vertical mode - This is already supported, to enable it use the setting "Rotate Screen" in the "Other Settings" menu. Be aware though that not many themes will look good with screen rotation enabled. This will hopefully improve in the future as more themes get updated with support for vertical layouts
Request: Add ability to use the Android soft keyboard to for example paste text into ES-DE using the touch interface - This is possible already if disabling the "Enable virtual keyboard" setting in the "UI Settings" menu. There is a however a bug in the SDL library that introduces rendering issues if combining this with controller input. But you can use it without any issues if you only use touch input with ES-DE. The problem has been reported to the SDL developers some weeks ago but it's not been resolved yet
Issue - Can't run games in RetroArch on recent Android releases when mounting the ROMs directory under /mnt/media_rw/ - This is a RetroArch limitation, it has not been updated for current Android releases and is using an old storage access method. An update to RetroArch is therefore needed before this can be accomplished (i.e. it's not an ES-DE issue)
Please join our Discord server if you need support, we will not be able to help directly here in Patreon:
https://discord.gg/EVVX4DqWAP
Comments (38)
First off i wanna say thanks for the hard work on getting ES android where its at today it been messing with it alot all day today and alot of stuff works good with the lastest retroarche x64 but there also some things that dont work. for example, under alternative emulators, colecovision default core doesnt work, swan-station core doesnt work and beetle psx. the dolphin core for NGC doesnt work either just black screen then RA crashes to have to force exit. wii games loads with dolphin core but the speed of the game is almost not playable. atomiswave doesnt seem to work either, now i do understand theres some options for standalone like MMJ but those never worked at for speed for me, the full speed that worked for me was Dolphin Ishiruka, and Ishiruka-3DS. can you add those to the list?
Hi! If you need support then please join our Discord server: https://discord.gg/42jqqNcHf9 You can also request features there.
I want install it on my Xiaomi MiTv P1 and can't install :( Please add suport for android TV's Thanks for your great work :)
As far as I know almost all Google TV/Android TV devices are 32-bit and these are not supported by ES-DE. The only TV device that I'm aware of being supported is the Nvidia Shield as that is a custom 64-bit Android TV OS.
Is there and easy way to use standalone emulators? It works great with RetroArch but can't use a single standalone emulator. I've tried everything on forums, YouTube, tutorials but it just doesn't work. Tried renaming folders to match exactly what es-ds needs, tried uninstalling and deleting everything and reinstalling again, I made sure the emulators had the correct rom paths configured, etc and just get black screens and error messages like "can't access path name for: content://com.android.externalstorage.documents/tree/primary%3AROMs%2Fsnes/document/primary%3AROMs%2Fsnes%2FAladdin%20(USA).zip" I've spent like 5 hours now trying everything and I don't know if it is even possible to use standalone emulators or is a non working feature that will be implemented in the future. Can you help me please?
I'm sorry to hear that you are having difficulties with getting standalone emulators to work, I recommend joining our Discord server if you need support. There are many people there that are running standalone emulators with ES-DE so it should be possible to figure out what is wrong with your setup. Here's an invitation link: https://discord.gg/EVVX4DqWAP
Excellent, I had the retroarch black screen issue on my RP3+, but now all sorted 👍
Just paid up to install this on a Xiaomi mi lite 12. The APK doesn't install for me 😔
Not sure what could be the problem, this is a modern 64-bit device running a current Android release as far as I can tell? You could try joining our Discord server as it's easier to troubleshoot there: https://discord.gg/EVVX4DqWAP
Thank you for your time . I'm using es.de for all the smaller rom systems and daijisho for the for multi directory capabilities. Just not a fan of themeson daijisho. Love vertical rotary wheel themes . Oh well thank you.
Good to see your comment on changing games directory locations. The problem I'm finding is that I have multiple cards with different system roms on them and therefore need multiple locations access to be stored for the same system . So es de can find roms no matter what memory card is currently installed. Hope that makes sense . Is it possible to add extra locations for the same system in the xml file or only one. ?
Yes that's more problematic due to the way that Android works. On other systems like the Steam Deck and Windows handhelds this works seamlessly but due to Android using a unique identifier for the card it's a problem. I'm not aware of any solution to this unfortunately.
I submitted that my RG Arc works with ESDE but it’s not on the list.
I can't find that in the survey result so something must have gone wrong with the submission! So it's an Anbernic RG Arc running Android 11?
Is it possible to have background music per system in main menu? Thank you very much
Not yet, but this functionality is on the roadmap for a future release!
Great to hear the news about Yaba Sanshiro!
Dolphin MMJR2 is loading into menu, instead of directly game. A few things I would like: Show clock and battery Screen settings (color saturation for example) OTA update "Samba" network service (so I can transfer roms/saves/edit configs via wifi) And PLEASE, make it be the android home launcher.
Some old emulators behave inconsistently across different devices and Android versions, like displaying the UI instead of launching a game, probably because they simply haven't been updated for modern Android releases. Make sure the permissions are correct in the emulator though. Clock and battery indicators is a planned feature, screen settings I'm doubtful of though, that sounds like a OS setting rather than an application setting. Built-in updates will probably not happen due to it being a paid app. Hopefully I can publish on some app stores in the future though in addition to Patreon. Network support will be very problematic as Google has removed the option to mount shares in-tree in recent Android versions. SMB shares work fine on the Nvidia Shield though when using ES-DE due to that device supporting SMB share mounting via StorageManager. Setting ES-DE as the home app is planned for a future release.
tried this front end on my switch and I'm having issues getting past the rom searching screen during initial start up
I don't own a Switch so I can't really help you but you could try joining our Discord server, people have posted screenshots there of ES-DE running on the Switch so it does definitely work.
The retroarch black screen issue is due to multiple installs of different versions from Google play. Clearing the cache should stop the black screen issue . This worked for me
Good to know!
Please add these features that are available on ES from Batocera: - Start on a specific system (not on gamelist, on the system selection screen) - The ability to hide systems and individual games
Individual games can already be hidden from the metadata editor though.
Add a shortcut to android apps
Native Android app support is planned for a future release.
Add support SAMSUNG tab A 2017
That's unfortunately impossible as it seems to run Android 9. Android 10 is the minimum supported Android release as some of the libraries that ES-DE depends on can't be built for such old Android versions.
Add support ro Nethex SX2
It's already supported, although it's named AetherSX2 in ES-DE as that's the name of the original emulator.
Hey I submitted for the Samsung Galaxy Tab A 10.5 2018 (SM-T590) and quickly checked the hardware and software specs, first CPU-Z recognized a snapdragon 625 which is totally wrong, but DevCheck recognized the 450 correctly and it seems even though it supports 64-bit Samsung decided to use a 32-bit ROM on it!
For some time some manufacturers did use a 32-bit OS even though the device had a 64-bit processor. I actually just removed the Tab A 10.5 from the compatibility list as since you mentioned it's for sure using a 32-bit OS. This basically never happens any longer though as almost all new devices have more than 4GB or RAM. Except Android TV devices, those are a bit odd.
Gotta love the community coming together for a common good!
Good job. But until now we still in limbo about the future updates of the app. As nothing concrete has been tested and most people having the sub will expire very soon. You should at leat do a test email echo to check if people receiving this as afterwards we won't have this direct communication on the channel. Also I have suggested to make a private only discord for the members to have an alternative option to get the updates from there. You could name it ESDE+
I have done test transmissions from listmonk and it works, but I have not tested to send emails to the thousands of people as that would just be spamming. So I don't agree that you are in limbo. You can also join our Discord server, we are in there every day essentially. We are also investigating how integrations with Discord could be done but we have not found a solution yet as the Patreon bot will revoke access to anyone that is no longer a paying member, so I'm not sure if this is easily doable.
Ahaha I wonder whether I was the only Oneplus Open user to submit it - did not see any others before me. Good to see the list is overwhelmingly positive / working!
Yes you were the only person reporting that specific device!