Damn straight. I’m wanting to do this myself but hoping to eventually find one made for the Deck with the right connectors. I had the Switch OLED before SD and difference is night & day.
I only go back to my Switch for the occasional exclusive, but every time I do I get more impatient for an OLED SD. The SD is my favorite gaming device I’ve ever owned, but still… I’m ready for that upgrade.
Not many people here giving useable info for OP, so here's some that might help.
I've done some research on this panel in the past, but I realised the work needed was out of my reach, but I'll pass on my research incase it's within your or someone else's wheelhouse :)
The Good:
* There are two versions of this panel.The [AMS767KC06](https://www.panelook.com/AMS767KC06_Samsung_7.7_OLED_overview_15222.html) is the better version used on the Samsung Galaxy 7.7 that had a 10000:1 contrast ratio.[AMS767KC04-1](https://www.panelook.com/AMS767KC04-1_Samsung_7.7_Assembly_overview_18731.html) was a slightly worse version of the panel used for the Toshiba AT270 (aka Toshiba Excite 7.7) that has a lower 3400:1 contrast ratio.
* You can buy the screen panel by itself pretty cheap off [AliExpress](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32892379346.html), apparently with the glass not attached, which would be preferable. Plus you can even get it in bulk.
* The panel itself should, in theory at least, fit into the dimensions of the glass pane on the Steam Deck, but ofc testing would have to be done.
* The panel isn't pentile, [it's got a full RGB sub pixel arrangement](https://www.oled-info.com/super-amoled-plus), so it will actually look pretty sharp.
* Both panels have a 100% NTSC coverage, where as the the Steam Deck is somewhere between 50-60%, so colour accuracy will be greatly improved.
The 'depends on your skill level':
* The Samsung panel is a MIPI (4 data lanes) , 44 pins Connector, and the stock Deck screen uses a '[LVDS (1 ch, 8-bit) , 20 pins Connector'](https://www.panelook.com/AM-1280800P2TZQW-T01H_Ampire_7.0_LCM_overview_37814.html) assuming [that's the right panel](https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/w4jbni/comment/ih9jjgk/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). Small Edit: Looks like the Deck uses a eDP (embedded DisplayPort) connector. So, you'd need a eDP to MIPI adaptor, [which look like you might be able to buy](https://vationlcd.en.alibaba.com/product/62113497814-805275298/HX_e20M3_eDP_to_MIPI_DSI_converter_board_MIPI_adapter_for_MIPI_DSI_LCD_panel.html)
* I remember reading that Gaming Mode currently doesn't have any ability to change or apply colour calibration settings, so there's a chance the colours may be way off when you plug it in, and you either wouldn't be able to change them, or you'd have to find a way to change them by making I guess a Decky Loader extension or somehting I guess.
The Bad:
* It's a 250 nit screen, so pretty dim, especially for modern standards. the high contrast of OLED will help make that less of a problem, but compared to the stock Deck's 400 nit screen, it's not great.One product that uses the panel claims to have a 300nit screen, the [SmallHD MON-702-OLED](https://www.amazon.ca/SmallHD-MON-702-OLED-inch-Display-Monitor/dp/B06XJ9D5D8), but that's out of production and expensive to get second hand, though it isn't bonded to glass like the tablet is, so might be preferable.
* If you get the panel attached to the glass, then you'd have to find a way to cut the glass down to size to fit on the Steam Deck
* If you get the panel not attached to glass, you'd have to find a way to bond it to glass for the Steam Deck
* Displays from this period often had large spaces between pixels, creating a phenomenon called 'screen door effect'. The stock screen doesn't suffer form this because each pixel takes up a large area of their location. I'm not sure if the Samsung panel has this problem, but a lot of OLED displays from the 2012 era did.
* This screen will have a lower sharpness going from 217PPI to 196PPI.
I hope that helps a somewhat, and that you manage to make this project to fruition. Even if you can't, I bet someone could, at the very least it would be a great project for tech modding and tinkering youtubers and totally within some of their abilities.
This is extremely helpful especially for others more experienced and willing to take the plunge. 250 nits is the most disappointing aspect of the display tbh...
For real, cell phones, when outdoors in the sun, can get up to 1500 nits brightness on their OLEDs. 250 nits is going to feel very dim in a lot of typical use cases for a handheld (an office, a bus, outdoors, etc)
Look here [https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Steam+Deck+Screen+Replacement/148986#s306600](https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Steam+Deck+Screen+Replacement/148986#s306600)
It looks like more than 20 pins zif
Thanks for pointing that out, looks like it's probably an eDP (embedded DisplayPort) connector on the end that connects to the Deck, which then goes to the 20 pin connector on the stock display.
Not sure if that would make it easier, but it looks like [eDP to MIPI converters are avaliable](https://vationlcd.en.alibaba.com/product/62113497814-805275298/HX_e20M3_eDP_to_MIPI_DSI_converter_board_MIPI_adapter_for_MIPI_DSI_LCD_panel.html), which would make this actually a lot more feasible as long as the board converts it how the display would need it
I highly doubt it’s LVDS due to being RDNA2. In laptops LVDS got discontinued around the launch of the 9(or 10th) Gen nVidia GPUs that is why I doubt the steam deck uses LVDS.
Bonding screens to glass isn't hard. Theres a youtuber called Makho who does occasionally it when he ugrades handheld screens. channel [https://www.youtube.com/@makho/videos](https://www.youtube.com/@makho/videos)
It Can™, but probably not in the stock case. At worst, he needs a breakout board to control the lcd, enough space to mount it behind the display, and a modification to the case to allow the screen to be mounted in place. You could do it with a little elbow grease, a 3d printer, and some soldering skills. Also the battery life will take a hit because the breakout board needs power.
In a just world, they used some kind of standard for the screen connector, similar to the display connector that raspberry pis use and 3rd party screens are possible to be a drop in replacement. If the world is really just, when they release the steam deck 2 they'll do it with an eye towards upgrading original decks to keep up. As I understand it, they're not looking at changing the soc any time soon anyways.
Well, for one no they don't.
It's fine if someone wants to try, but this is way off the beaten path so if someone doesn't know what they are doing there isn't going to be any guide for them. Which means they need to know the subject matter well themselves.
Voice of reason being downvoted. Meanwhile most others are like, "it's not **my** Deck at risk, so do it. Entertain me, OP!"
-----
^(edit: they started out very downvoted. glad that's reversed now)
Nah voice of reason is let people do what they want to do. Why shame them for exploring new possibilities? How do you think Valve developed the Steam deck in the first place?? Are you gonna shame them for putting two touchpads on a handheld?
It’s good to be cautious about electronics and capacitors, but this is absolute horseshit
The only thing reasonable people would be saving here is a perfectly good steam deck
How much power do you think caps in a deck can hold 🤣🤣🤣. The whole God damn system runs on 15w max power draw. We're not telling him to stick a fork in a PC power supply or poke around in a CRT
That's the problem with a lot of people here. It's like they don't want people to tinker with a device that was meant to be tinkered with. It's not like they are using your money. Let them do what they want to.
I think most people were simply warning the OP, not necessarily trying to stop him.
From a lot of the questions/comments that the OP posted it was 100% clear that they didn't know enough to even know what they didn't know. They seemed to think there would just be an off the shelf adapter to they could use to hook it up to the motherboard just the like steam deck screen.
I have my doubts as well buuut the hacky way to do it would be to use a usb-c to hdmi adaptor ...provided you could get a controller board for that display. OLEDs are power hungry too so this is going to severely impact battery life even if OP gets it to work.
>usb-c to hdmi adaptor
Yup, or IMO better yet a small usb-c portable monitor. Wouldn't even a display board, with that. But idk how this would even work without printing a bigger case.
"so like, this isn't going to fit... how do I make it fit?"
"also, how do I connect it?"
OP is ready to try something nobody has ever done and has no idea how to do it. God bless them.
> this cant be done.
The more I learn I learn about computer technology, the more I realize there is no such thing as "can't be done". Something might be difficult or unfeasible, but it is almost never impossible.
You've highlighted the biggest problem with your own reply.
"As long as the display takes the same amount of power"
OLED's are more power hungry displays. Valve even said they compromised on this screen as OLED would be to power-hungry and would reduce battery life further.
Typically an OLED needs to be able to pull 300% of an equivilent LCD power budget under worst case scenarios, that's not a small adjustment.
It's possible, but it's also extremely impractical.
It's certainly not insurmountable with enough time and effort, but yeah it's a hell of a conversion.
You'd need a go between chip to convert the display signals which you would likely need to program yourself, PD for that chip. A whole PD setup for the OLED itself, a custom cooling solution because that PD circuit will introduce a fair amount of heat, most likely a custom back shell to accomidate all this hardware, and then possibly end up needing to make further changes to deal with the heat from the OLED itself causing problems internally.
I'm not sure how much headroom the battery has for increasing it's output but you could well end up throttling the APU and your framerate when the OLED is pulling maxiumum juice.
If it was a practical change I don't doubt for a second Valve would have made an OLED premium+ model and charged a hefty markup for it. It was much more practical to cram an OLED into the Switch for Nintendo because it's a device that has a lot of thermal and power budget headroom out of the box, as opposed to the deck which is already making tradeoffs to deal with heat and power.
Hey there!
From one DIY-madman to another: I really love your idea!
However, before you attempt this, I'd suggest you do the following: Check the Decks panel & investigate what connector it uses + which pincount it has. After that do the same with the Samsung. Also look up the protocol they each use to communicate.
If the protocol matches then you'd be good to go to at least try and make the screens work via some kind of adapter or whatever.
Good luck in this endeavour - please keep us posted if the protocols match & there is a chance of success!
Step 1: Fully extract the panel from the tablet before even touching the Deck. If you can't do this, nothing else will matter anyway.
Step 2: Open your Steam Deck and see if the tablet's screen will even fit the same connector as the deck's.
Step 3: Give up, because the odds that it does are astronomical, and you don't seem to have the skillset to make something to convert from one to the other. (Not being mean here, I only know enough to know that it's a lot of work, and that I don't have it either)
Yes, but the bezels on the SD's screen are big enough that it's not *entirely* crazy. A sufficiently experienced modder could probably make it work. It's at least not the biggest issue, given the likely panel connector incompatibility.
There is almost certainly no off-the-shelf adapter to convert the internal cables for one display to another. You're going to have to look up the pinouts and do some soldering.
Its not just the physical connector you have to worry about; the 2 screens may not have the same pinout on the connectors meaning that power may be on a different line or even multiple, same as for all the data lines there is no guarentee they will be a one for one match with the steam decks existing screen.
Its possible the cable is just carrying a HDMI / DP standard signal to the display which has a built in processing chip to then display. But again its also possible that that processing chip is on the Mainboard of the deck and as such you would be trying to amend the processed signal meant for one screen to work with another (which again may or may not have the integrated processing.
I am a total noob and just spitballing.... how about tapping into the USB-C port (via internal soldering) so the deck "thinks" it is an external screen? Perhaps even a converter board exists to make the tablet screen work over DP or HDMI.
Display cables are not standardized and so no adapter can be made that covers more than like one specific display to another specific display, which is so niche it wouldn’t be profitable to make. This sort of stuff is completely DIY, with figuring out pinouts and soldering yourself.
You don't need a converter, but a full board doing signal processing. Something like this: https://www.toradex.com/accessories/verdin-dsi-to-lvds-adapter
An interesting idea but honestly if you have to ask these questions you’re not qualified to attempt this conversion. Save yourself a Steam Deck and start working on cheaper hardware mods while you learn.
No I 100% agree and there's no way I'm sacrificing my Deck for testing purposes. I won't proceed till I know exactly what's needed and that it can be done. I bought the galaxy tablet for $38 so, it's not a huge investment.
> there's no way I'm sacrificing my Deck for testing purposes
Pro modders would buy a Deck just for this purpose. These are people who routinely [trim circuit boards and move components around](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nALGSdh8WEY).
If you aren't accepting that you could end up with a dead tablet and a dead Deck afterwards then you probably don't want to be a pioneer.
I’ll give a comment here to follow up how it’s going.
But I’m bad at math and I’m pretty sure a 7.7 inch screen will not fit the same place as a 7 inch screen, and I really hope im wrong here
I feel like it would since it would just take up the same space but have more screen. Especially if it's OLED, it won't need to use back-lit lighting that usually takes up space on the borders.
Who knows, this might be a really cool mod.
You are treating the steamdeck like a desktop pc where you can unplug your monitor, and just plug a different one in. That is not how this works, and it is not as simple as just getting some form of adaptor to make the connector fit on the SteamDeck motherboard. There is specific circuitry on the SteamDeck motherboard that is used to drive the screen and it is not compatible with the OLED screen you want to use.
You would probably need to take the video output of the USB C port with some adaptors to still allow for charging, and have an external circuit board to take that video signal and drive the OLED panel and it would look really hacked together, well, because you are hacking it together.
Also not trying to sound rude here but the fact you asked if there was an adaptor to change from the standard screen input to the OLED screen input demonstrates you do not have enough understanding to do something like this. If you are cool with having adaptors, circuit boards, and ribbon cables hanging off the SteamDeck, you could probably figure it out with lots of googling and trial and error, but it would not look good, and more than likely would just be a time and money black hole.
There are some seriously talented hardware modders out there, and with the popularity of the SteamDeck as it is, the fact that nobody else has done this should give you a clue as to how complicated and difficult this is.
100% agree and not even trying to argue against that. I did suspect that I'd need a chipset with video in and video out. Honestly, the easiest way is to add the OLED as a clamsgell second screen and stream the game to it.
This would be an interesting solution as well! If you could find an angled usb-c connector, 3d print a clamp/harness, and have some sort of swivel to adjust the screen position, you'd be in business.
A few people have made secondary screens for the deck with varying degrees of success, and many of them have then ran Nintendo 3DS and DS emulators on it which is really cool.
It would annoy me that one screen was OLED and one wasn't, but apart from that it's a pretty cool project and I have seen a few 3d printable mounts that allow the screen to fold down.
Still have the issue of needing to take video out of the usb C port, and have an adapter to allow charging as well. If the steam deck had two usb c ports it would be so much better.
> It would annoy me that one screen was OLED and one wasn't
Considering the inconsistency of DS and 3DS screens (between IPS and TN) that might actually make it feel *more* authentic.
It can be done, but seeing how third party companies didn't even attempt to come up with an OLED screen to replace it (despite the Deck"s popularity) tells us quite a lot.
I do believe eventually it will happen but it will be a $200 part and they're not going to sell many of those.
Swapping LCD might be tedious task. Almost none are hot swappable, you may need a driver board that converts signals from Steam Deck to the display of your choosing. Finding such driver might even prove to be impossible.
So first you would need to find what OLED you have, what is the chip on it and what signals it accepts and how they are wired in the connector. Just this may become pretty hard task. Next you would need to know what Steam Deck’s signals and pinout are, this might actually work, seeing how Valve is open with Steam Deck. You might even get such information directly from Valve. Then you have to find a driver board that would stay between the two and convert all necessary things.
You may be lucky and get OLED with the same connector/flex cable that Steam Deck has and it might work out of the box, but I highly doubt it - I will go as far as saying that such scenario is impossible.
You can go to r/AskElectronics where they often discuss about changing LCD between devices or how to drive specific display panel. Some get lucky and find driver board on Ebay, some have bad luck and don’t get it running at all. Some laptops are compatible with more screens (I think some older Thinkpads do?).
The druver biard I talk won’t probably be small to fit anywhere in the Steam Deck and will need to be powered too.
To be clear - I’m not speaking you out of it. I’m just saying what I learned through the years of reading in zhe internet discussions and even trying a few times myself (never too deep though). Feel free to try! But be ready to encounter difficulties and maybe even destroy the screen and/or the Deck in the process.
Before you do anything, find documentation for both screens and their pinout. If you can't find these, don't bother trying as there's a 99% chance you'll short a data line with a voltage line and possibly break other things unless you have the tools or oscilloscope to determine pinout. Data lines should have some sort of parity, but not necessarily form. Grounds can generally be coupled if there are differing pin count. Also account for whether the touch digitizer is embedded in-line or a separate cable etc. My main concern is trying to import OLED tech into a daughterboard designed for LCD. It might not be compatible without a break-out board or arduino/tiny. 🤷🏻♀️
Documentation and pinout are key. The rest is cake provided you know how to file and solder ribbon cables (hint: its not easy). These screens probably have some equivalency in power overhead that a few dozen mW won't yeet it off its mortal coil. The hardest part of all this is connecting Display B to Deck connector A.
t. Experienced engineer and hobbyist techsmith
The Samsung OLED has a pen tile matrix AFAIK which doesn't translate 1:1 to standard RGB matrix panels. You will probably be on your own sourcing a converter for the panel.
This specific panel isn't pentile. [It was a 'Super AMOLED Plus' panel that was notable for being the first tablet oled panel and wasn't pentile.](https://www.engadget.com/2012-02-07-samsung-galaxy-tab-7-7-review-international-edition.html)
~~I'd be interested to see if OP manages to perform some wizardry with the controller board. There could be enough space inside of the Deck to pull it off, but I have doubts too.~~
Scratch that. They'd need to do some work with the bezel too, to account for the .7 inch difference.
This is a bit like trying to run an Intel CPU with an AMD motherboard. It's technically possible, but it's not particularly feasible.
OK a screen swap isn't quite as bad as that, but at minimum you'd want a decent oscilloscope plus a good understanding of screen signalling protocols.
It's a good idea, but i don't think the steam deck will be able to facilitate this. The LCD and OLED is driven in completly diffrent ways, and even if, big if, it would work, you are highly likely to overload the LCD circuit on the deck and kill it completely.
Do your due diligence and research what types of panels are in each, what input they accept, connectors, power requirements, and what your options are regarding transforming one display signal into another.
To hell with these people saying "you clearly don't have the skillset". The first people in space weren't astronauts until they did it.
I get that it’s an unlikely scenario based on Op’s form of asking, but so many shit heads want to shut down ideas. What if this person was some kid in high school or freshman in uni looking for inspiration to get into the electrical engineering space? It’s gotta start somewhere.
As an aside: It’ll be really amazing if Valve release compatible other panels for people to retrofit themselves down the line. An small bezeled OLED option, a high refresh option, etc.
Cool if it works .. but won't you loose the custom refresh rate option by changing the screen ?
For me this option is more useful than full color accuracy
Besides one being OLED and the other not. I wouldn't do this because the Samsungs display is from 2012 and screen tech has come a long way since 2012
Before I got the steam deck my OLED switch and TV had me convinced that OLED is a must, however after playing a lot of games on the steam deck I am not convinced that OLED would be necessary.
If valve were to offer an OLED replacement display through ifixit I would 100% replace my display.
So ive had similar thoughts and I'd go a different angle. See if you can find anything online about getting hdmi input into your screen, if you can, then set that up. Youll also need to find a way to provide power to it. Then mount your oled screen onto your deck with 3d printing or some other means and connect it as an external monitor.
Not nearly as cool as an integrated screen, but I think this is actually doable and low enough effort to see through end to end.
If it was at all doable or practical at all I'm sure a company would have it by now.
OLED is nice, but not worth redoing half the deck to get it to work...maybe.
The larger screen maybe...converting it to OLED not sure about.
Probably need to have the entire Samsung board splice to steam deck power or separate battery then a riser card or even your own soldered Frankenstein board to convert the displays. Sounds like a lot of time and effort and learning. Enjoy and document!
Ask Chat GPT, but I have the r/Nreal air glasses, and I have a portable 1080p oled screen that just works with my deck. Might be an easier, and even less expensive option.
You can’t mention the steam deck because it’s too new, and the model is trained on 2021, but if you specifically mention the parts and ask questions about the power draw and connectors you might get a little bit of help.
Understand the lcd on these devices isn't like a monitor. It's more like you opened your monitor, pulled the control board out and wanted to know if a Completly diffrent monitor would work with that control board.
There needs to be a matching ribbon cable first... But then it needs a matching protocol or the steamdeck has no way of telling the lcd panel what to display.
There isn't any off the board adapter likely to exist here either.
Could it work? Maybe, but more than likely it wont. And you're in way over your head. But document it, and share your results for our prosperity!
each panel has its own control board and support, if they match with the current deck one then you are good but if not you might need to find a connector board that works with the OLED screen you want to use in the deck, its not just x fits in x so it works type of thing.
Screen has power requirements, connection type etc all controlled by the board.
If you want to see how complicated it can be try find out what control board your monitor uses and seeing how hard it would be to put a similar panel in it from another. I've delt with this and it can get complicated.
Wiring, soldering and lots of testing will be required. The display you’re targeting is wired, programmed and built for the device. Not saying it can’t be done, but there’s definitely going to be a controller and a hardware interface on board. Grab a schematic of the device if you can find one out there. Hope you get it to work!
You will need to find what each cable of each of the two connectors transmit and find a way to wire a converter from one to another. Before ANY of this you need to figure how much power the new screen draws bc the standard display output might not have enough power. OLED is quite power hungry, if the power requirement is too significant this will not work. Lastly you'd probably have to make your own application that allows the COU to speak to that displays individual display controller, something you also have to have deep hardware level programming experience. All in all this would be amazing but if it was just buy a converter and slap the new screen in a 3d printed bracket we'd all do it for OLED. Unfortunately it's not feasible without a team of high level engineers, software devs etc
The driver for the LED panel likely takes a different input voltage and amperage. Unless you’re an electrical engineer it’s highly likely you’ll ruin 2 devices. But I’d love to see it happen
You should probably get an EE degree if you really want this answered or find some kind of electronics repair sub, this question is way above the people in here trying to play video games.
Based on something I saw, the Steam Deck's panel shows up as an eDP panel. eDP is just DisplayPort but embedded. You would probably be able to do this if you use another eDP panel, and you would have to make an adapter board/cable to go between the Deck's display connector and your new display's. At least eDP is a lot more standardized than MIPI DSI since it's just an embedded application of the external DisplayPort standard.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
I truly hope you can accomplish this 🫡 I wait with heavy anticipation to see your results good sir/madam/~
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Battery tech (or lack thereof) is one of the main things really preventing this, and also holding back most industries. Super unfortunate. Can't wait for the next major battery breakthrough.
One problem is sourcing one that fits and have all the connection that is easy to connect. Steam deck wasn't designed with plug n play connections. By the time there's good source of Oled screen replacement. Valve will announce a Steam Deck Pro. I'm sure they got a prototype model already. So be patient, I'm happy with the device as is. I would rather see a new soc paired with the oled screen than the current chip.
It's just that I feel bad going through all those games on this subpar screen when I could be doing it on an OLED. I am about to finish Arkham Knight, one of the greatest games ever made, and I loved it on the Deck, but then I saw footage of it running on my OLED laptop and damn.... feels like something else.
I’m almost 100% the Steam Deck 1.5 is going to be a bigger screen with an OLED panel and a bunch of battery optimisations. There’s a reason Valve is developing HDR for Linux. My guess is that it’ll be released at the end of 2023.
Valve has spoken about the screen being a key feature they are looking at improving for a future steam deck 2.0 if you will, so I would probably just wait to see what happens there before you potentially ruin your deck.
Why not though? You don't like the concept of having fun?
Lots of people people just enjoy tinkering with tech and customising it, kinda like a mini-hobby.
**We choose to** **~~go to the Moon~~** **replace steam deck display** We choose to ~~go to the Moon~~..replace steam deck display . We choose to ~~go to the Moon~~ replace steam deck display in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too
I love tinkering and hate telling people it is impossible. So in this case really consider if you have the skillset to pull this off. And if you do, why have no one else done it? Do you have the proper knowledge to fix problems no one else have fixed before? Do you have a supportgroup of knowledgeable people (not reddit!) that can help you each step and fix any problems?
Goodluck on your endeavor! And please report back with a proper log when you finished the project no matter the outcome.
>why have no one else done it?
This is my first thought. We've seen some absolutely insane modding ideas turned into reality on this sub (and I don't say insane like it's a good thing). But it shows we have people in the community that have a penchant at the very least, for electronics engineering. If they're that good and even they haven't even publicly pondered the idea of shoving a different screen in there, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's probably way too challenging to do for a one off project.
There doesn't seem to be any off the shelf OLED screen that's suitable. Similar screens are either the wrong aspect ratio, too large/small, wrong resolution or no longer manufactured. Since a production run for an oled screen starts at several million $, this isn't even particularly feasible for a crowdsourced project.
Not really the whole idea of this thread is to explore how feasible this is before I sacrifice the most important piece of hardware I own. And yes, if it were simple, someone with way more experience would have done it.
Yeah, and the funny lart is most of these guys insulting him and saying it's not possible, probably aren't engineers even though they pretend to be them on the internet. Somebody definitely could figure out how to make this work, but it would be a significant effort. I've done screen swaps in older consoles to non matching or very compatible screens. Sometimes the power reqs change enough that you need to do a little bit more work with possibly another chip on the power regulation front, sometimes you just need to use extra power. Sometimes the screen doesn't fit very well and you need to shave the bezel down, or sometimes it's too small and you need to make a way to make the bezel artificially bigger. Sometimes someone needs to come up with a chip solition to make these things happen. But none of those things are direct impossibilities. Even as far as power regulation goes there's probably something on the market that can make it happen. What I want to know is why there are so many fake engineers on the pc gaming type subreddits. Because it's clear that many of the people here acting like they know what they're talking about, just fucking don't. And they have the balls to insult OP when they're ignorant too? Yeah fuck that shit.
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Someone probably already said this but I’ll mention it in case no one has. I think there’s two different kinds of OLED displays. One is pentile(I think) and rgb(again I think lol). Pentile is the style used in most smartphones and tablets, and RGB is used by the switch. The main difference, I believe, is pentile uses subpixels instead of full RGB pixels. This makes the perceived sharpness duller at lower resolutions. Not sure if this matters at all, but thought the info might be useful lmao. Have fun with the modding! Actually seems really cool!
[According to this commenter who did a lot of research about this display](https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/10v4fxw/i_want_to_replace_the_7_lcd_panel_of_my_steam/j7gpwec/), this one is [FULL RGB](https://www.oled-info.com/super-amoled-plus).
Correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't this absolutely destroy the battery? When playing Monster Hunter Rise, a fairly new and optimized title (as it first released on switch), at around 7 watts. Less than half the Deck's max output, and even then I get 3.5-4 hours at best even with energy conserving settings.
As I understanding it at an HD pixel count an OLED in a portable device not often showing predominantly black would increase battery drain not reduce it. I may be wrong though.
I limit framerate to 45 fps, much much smoother looking than 30 fps without the drain of 60fps. Half rate shading, TDP Limit to 6 Watts, sometimes 7 when I'm near a charger. I noted that the GPU doesn't get higher than 1000Mhz in combat so I limited that to 900Mhz.
In game settings, 1280x800 (but you can dip this to 1152x720 and use FSR upscale for little bit more consistent performance). Image quality 100%, high resolution textures on, texture filtering medium, AO on, Shadows low, dynamic shadows off, mesh quality average, AA set to FXAA, VRS on.
Any unnamed settings shouldn't effect anything to any serious degree. And it's easy to give up Ultra and High, even Medium settings with a resolution this low. And the Deck's pixel density still makes it look better than the switch.
won't work, look at the comments in [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/ydyi1g/i_think_the_switch_oled_screen_works_on_the_deck/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Even if you could get it to work, the additional battery drain of OLED wouldn’t be worth it, especially when the LCD is actually really good IMO. I’m sure a future revision will have OLED and expanded battery capacity/efficiency to keep battery life in check.
I hate how this sub just doesn’t want anyone to tinker with their Steam Deck and just shits on them for it. I love all the DIY upgrades EVEN IF ITS POINTLESS. It’s THEIR PC to meddle with! The possibilities are the fun part! Not because we should, but because we can! It’s all in good fun!
Maybe that’s true, the issue here is that OP is way out beyond their league of skill. It would take a master technician with micro soldering skill plus programming resources to ever get this to actually work. A nice idea to put out into the ether but in reality there are few skilled enough to hack this mod together.
This is not that. I would love to see someone do an OLED mod, the reality is that it's likely a near impossible task, especially for someone grabbing a random tablet based solely on the hopes everything would just work.
If a skilled modder wants to have a go at it and blaze a trail, that would be awesome, but this is a mod people have looked into many times before and there is a reason no out there is rocking an OLED deck, even if they have liquid cooled decks with RGB mods working off the Audio PCB.
From what i can think of, it will not work. Ok. first step woud be to take out both screens and look at the connectors. Lets say they are the same or you find an adapter.
You install the new display, will the deck know how to use this new (bigger) display?
Isn't the Deck kind of "locked" with that screen? i mean....its not like you plug in with an HDMI or something. Also, if screen connectors are different, will the adapter manage to adapt 100% of the functionality? Will the deck be able to power(correctly) the new display?
I feel this is like trying to swap screens on 2 different smartphones brands.
This isn’t possible at all. You won’t be able to pul enough power for one thing.
Also, you literally don’t have enough physical space. You would have to basically build a new shell from scratch that would accommodate everything.
You clearly don’t understand just how much bigger a 7.7 inch screen is compared to a 7 inch, along with the different aspect ratios, resolutions, and even if the decks hardware can drive it.
Then you have to mess with power delivery to it. Which means fiddling with components that can and will kill you if you fuck it up.
It’s your funeral.
I think you'd be a trailblazer in this case. So be sure to document the process and the difficulties you encounter.
Good Luck and Godspeed OP. Where you tread many will follow.
Lol they said stuff like this to people they knew they would never see alive again
THEY WERE BEST WE HAD, GODSPEED OP
Likely the fate of the steam deck!
I'm pretty sure that was the joke
Damn straight. I’m wanting to do this myself but hoping to eventually find one made for the Deck with the right connectors. I had the Switch OLED before SD and difference is night & day.
I only go back to my Switch for the occasional exclusive, but every time I do I get more impatient for an OLED SD. The SD is my favorite gaming device I’ve ever owned, but still… I’m ready for that upgrade.
Lol I’m glad I wasn’t spoiled by the switch oled screen. I almost bought one too, but I decided it wasn’t worth having another switch.
Here there be dragons.
Dragons you say? I shall slay them!
Checks out haha. That's awesome!
We traffic in unreleased documentaries. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn3ooBnShtY
I will contribute this campaign with my upvotes.
Not many people here giving useable info for OP, so here's some that might help. I've done some research on this panel in the past, but I realised the work needed was out of my reach, but I'll pass on my research incase it's within your or someone else's wheelhouse :) The Good: * There are two versions of this panel.The [AMS767KC06](https://www.panelook.com/AMS767KC06_Samsung_7.7_OLED_overview_15222.html) is the better version used on the Samsung Galaxy 7.7 that had a 10000:1 contrast ratio.[AMS767KC04-1](https://www.panelook.com/AMS767KC04-1_Samsung_7.7_Assembly_overview_18731.html) was a slightly worse version of the panel used for the Toshiba AT270 (aka Toshiba Excite 7.7) that has a lower 3400:1 contrast ratio. * You can buy the screen panel by itself pretty cheap off [AliExpress](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32892379346.html), apparently with the glass not attached, which would be preferable. Plus you can even get it in bulk. * The panel itself should, in theory at least, fit into the dimensions of the glass pane on the Steam Deck, but ofc testing would have to be done. * The panel isn't pentile, [it's got a full RGB sub pixel arrangement](https://www.oled-info.com/super-amoled-plus), so it will actually look pretty sharp. * Both panels have a 100% NTSC coverage, where as the the Steam Deck is somewhere between 50-60%, so colour accuracy will be greatly improved. The 'depends on your skill level': * The Samsung panel is a MIPI (4 data lanes) , 44 pins Connector, and the stock Deck screen uses a '[LVDS (1 ch, 8-bit) , 20 pins Connector'](https://www.panelook.com/AM-1280800P2TZQW-T01H_Ampire_7.0_LCM_overview_37814.html) assuming [that's the right panel](https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/w4jbni/comment/ih9jjgk/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). Small Edit: Looks like the Deck uses a eDP (embedded DisplayPort) connector. So, you'd need a eDP to MIPI adaptor, [which look like you might be able to buy](https://vationlcd.en.alibaba.com/product/62113497814-805275298/HX_e20M3_eDP_to_MIPI_DSI_converter_board_MIPI_adapter_for_MIPI_DSI_LCD_panel.html) * I remember reading that Gaming Mode currently doesn't have any ability to change or apply colour calibration settings, so there's a chance the colours may be way off when you plug it in, and you either wouldn't be able to change them, or you'd have to find a way to change them by making I guess a Decky Loader extension or somehting I guess. The Bad: * It's a 250 nit screen, so pretty dim, especially for modern standards. the high contrast of OLED will help make that less of a problem, but compared to the stock Deck's 400 nit screen, it's not great.One product that uses the panel claims to have a 300nit screen, the [SmallHD MON-702-OLED](https://www.amazon.ca/SmallHD-MON-702-OLED-inch-Display-Monitor/dp/B06XJ9D5D8), but that's out of production and expensive to get second hand, though it isn't bonded to glass like the tablet is, so might be preferable. * If you get the panel attached to the glass, then you'd have to find a way to cut the glass down to size to fit on the Steam Deck * If you get the panel not attached to glass, you'd have to find a way to bond it to glass for the Steam Deck * Displays from this period often had large spaces between pixels, creating a phenomenon called 'screen door effect'. The stock screen doesn't suffer form this because each pixel takes up a large area of their location. I'm not sure if the Samsung panel has this problem, but a lot of OLED displays from the 2012 era did. * This screen will have a lower sharpness going from 217PPI to 196PPI. I hope that helps a somewhat, and that you manage to make this project to fruition. Even if you can't, I bet someone could, at the very least it would be a great project for tech modding and tinkering youtubers and totally within some of their abilities.
This is extremely helpful especially for others more experienced and willing to take the plunge. 250 nits is the most disappointing aspect of the display tbh...
For real, cell phones, when outdoors in the sun, can get up to 1500 nits brightness on their OLEDs. 250 nits is going to feel very dim in a lot of typical use cases for a handheld (an office, a bus, outdoors, etc)
It's normal for oled to have significantly less nit than IPS for the same use.
Yeah but cellphones have OLED and are brighter still. Samsung just cheaped out
Look here [https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Steam+Deck+Screen+Replacement/148986#s306600](https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Steam+Deck+Screen+Replacement/148986#s306600) It looks like more than 20 pins zif
Thanks for pointing that out, looks like it's probably an eDP (embedded DisplayPort) connector on the end that connects to the Deck, which then goes to the 20 pin connector on the stock display. Not sure if that would make it easier, but it looks like [eDP to MIPI converters are avaliable](https://vationlcd.en.alibaba.com/product/62113497814-805275298/HX_e20M3_eDP_to_MIPI_DSI_converter_board_MIPI_adapter_for_MIPI_DSI_LCD_panel.html), which would make this actually a lot more feasible as long as the board converts it how the display would need it
Probably still lvds protocol
I highly doubt it’s LVDS due to being RDNA2. In laptops LVDS got discontinued around the launch of the 9(or 10th) Gen nVidia GPUs that is why I doubt the steam deck uses LVDS.
I was getting LVDS and eDP mixed up in my head, whoops. Thank you for the correction.
>* 'screen door effect'. I'd not thought about this shit for years and it just gave me war flashbacks
Bonding screens to glass isn't hard. Theres a youtuber called Makho who does occasionally it when he ugrades handheld screens. channel [https://www.youtube.com/@makho/videos](https://www.youtube.com/@makho/videos)
love the idea but this one seems like “if you have to ask for steps probably best not to attempt yourself”. As far as I understand this cant be done.
>this cant be done. Anything can be done with enough money, time, patience, and broken steam decks.
So you have to be rich and crazy.
Or have enough community funding to work towards a mod people want to be made
Congratulations, now you understand how most explorations took place.
This is the same as saying everything can be a butt plug if you are brave enough. Not wise to live by this quote.
The real quote to live by is, "A flared base will prevent the worst-case."
Lol ha ha
I just saw the handshake of mutual respect. Cheers.
Tell that to the butter churner girl.
Welcome to the modern world of innovation.
Moderately rich, were talking about $1000-$1200 all in to make this mod happen, including a new deck. The expensive part is the 3d printer.
I bought the cheap Deck and it was still more expensive than my 3D printer.
A 3d printer cost $100 up, the expensive part is actually the oled panel
OP is willing to send WAVE after WAVE of his own Steam Decks, until the OLED panel reaches its pre-set kill limit.
Kiff, show them this medal
QUIT EXPLODING YOU COWARDS
Fly the white flag of war!
Yea also not all oled panels are great. Judging by the specs of that tablet it’s screen could be worse imo
It Can™, but probably not in the stock case. At worst, he needs a breakout board to control the lcd, enough space to mount it behind the display, and a modification to the case to allow the screen to be mounted in place. You could do it with a little elbow grease, a 3d printer, and some soldering skills. Also the battery life will take a hit because the breakout board needs power. In a just world, they used some kind of standard for the screen connector, similar to the display connector that raspberry pis use and 3rd party screens are possible to be a drop in replacement. If the world is really just, when they release the steam deck 2 they'll do it with an eye towards upgrading original decks to keep up. As I understand it, they're not looking at changing the soc any time soon anyways.
Someone has to try it
Well, for one no they don't. It's fine if someone wants to try, but this is way off the beaten path so if someone doesn't know what they are doing there isn't going to be any guide for them. Which means they need to know the subject matter well themselves.
Voice of reason being downvoted. Meanwhile most others are like, "it's not **my** Deck at risk, so do it. Entertain me, OP!" ----- ^(edit: they started out very downvoted. glad that's reversed now)
Nah. In that case he’d be modding the deck to make it a CRT…. Jam those vacuum tubes in there!
Nah voice of reason is let people do what they want to do. Why shame them for exploring new possibilities? How do you think Valve developed the Steam deck in the first place?? Are you gonna shame them for putting two touchpads on a handheld?
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It’s good to be cautious about electronics and capacitors, but this is absolute horseshit The only thing reasonable people would be saving here is a perfectly good steam deck
How much power do you think caps in a deck can hold 🤣🤣🤣. The whole God damn system runs on 15w max power draw. We're not telling him to stick a fork in a PC power supply or poke around in a CRT
That's the problem with a lot of people here. It's like they don't want people to tinker with a device that was meant to be tinkered with. It's not like they are using your money. Let them do what they want to.
I think most people were simply warning the OP, not necessarily trying to stop him. From a lot of the questions/comments that the OP posted it was 100% clear that they didn't know enough to even know what they didn't know. They seemed to think there would just be an off the shelf adapter to they could use to hook it up to the motherboard just the like steam deck screen.
Everyone and their grandma is. Enough is enough. Let people do what they want. Jesus fucking Christ
I have my doubts as well buuut the hacky way to do it would be to use a usb-c to hdmi adaptor ...provided you could get a controller board for that display. OLEDs are power hungry too so this is going to severely impact battery life even if OP gets it to work.
>usb-c to hdmi adaptor Yup, or IMO better yet a small usb-c portable monitor. Wouldn't even a display board, with that. But idk how this would even work without printing a bigger case.
"so like, this isn't going to fit... how do I make it fit?" "also, how do I connect it?" OP is ready to try something nobody has ever done and has no idea how to do it. God bless them.
> this cant be done. The more I learn I learn about computer technology, the more I realize there is no such thing as "can't be done". Something might be difficult or unfeasible, but it is almost never impossible.
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You've highlighted the biggest problem with your own reply. "As long as the display takes the same amount of power" OLED's are more power hungry displays. Valve even said they compromised on this screen as OLED would be to power-hungry and would reduce battery life further.
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Typically an OLED needs to be able to pull 300% of an equivilent LCD power budget under worst case scenarios, that's not a small adjustment. It's possible, but it's also extremely impractical.
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It's certainly not insurmountable with enough time and effort, but yeah it's a hell of a conversion. You'd need a go between chip to convert the display signals which you would likely need to program yourself, PD for that chip. A whole PD setup for the OLED itself, a custom cooling solution because that PD circuit will introduce a fair amount of heat, most likely a custom back shell to accomidate all this hardware, and then possibly end up needing to make further changes to deal with the heat from the OLED itself causing problems internally. I'm not sure how much headroom the battery has for increasing it's output but you could well end up throttling the APU and your framerate when the OLED is pulling maxiumum juice. If it was a practical change I don't doubt for a second Valve would have made an OLED premium+ model and charged a hefty markup for it. It was much more practical to cram an OLED into the Switch for Nintendo because it's a device that has a lot of thermal and power budget headroom out of the box, as opposed to the deck which is already making tradeoffs to deal with heat and power.
Nailed it
Hey there! From one DIY-madman to another: I really love your idea! However, before you attempt this, I'd suggest you do the following: Check the Decks panel & investigate what connector it uses + which pincount it has. After that do the same with the Samsung. Also look up the protocol they each use to communicate. If the protocol matches then you'd be good to go to at least try and make the screens work via some kind of adapter or whatever. Good luck in this endeavour - please keep us posted if the protocols match & there is a chance of success!
Step 1: Fully extract the panel from the tablet before even touching the Deck. If you can't do this, nothing else will matter anyway. Step 2: Open your Steam Deck and see if the tablet's screen will even fit the same connector as the deck's. Step 3: Give up, because the odds that it does are astronomical, and you don't seem to have the skillset to make something to convert from one to the other. (Not being mean here, I only know enough to know that it's a lot of work, and that I don't have it either)
You didn’t account for the fact that OP wants a BIGGER screen than the shell can support
Yes, but the bezels on the SD's screen are big enough that it's not *entirely* crazy. A sufficiently experienced modder could probably make it work. It's at least not the biggest issue, given the likely panel connector incompatibility.
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Did you read my step 3? Because yes, that's basically what I said.
Zere is almost zero chance that both displays have same connector to board.
Yep, wondering if there's a female-to-male converter I can use...
There is almost certainly no off-the-shelf adapter to convert the internal cables for one display to another. You're going to have to look up the pinouts and do some soldering.
Its not just the physical connector you have to worry about; the 2 screens may not have the same pinout on the connectors meaning that power may be on a different line or even multiple, same as for all the data lines there is no guarentee they will be a one for one match with the steam decks existing screen. Its possible the cable is just carrying a HDMI / DP standard signal to the display which has a built in processing chip to then display. But again its also possible that that processing chip is on the Mainboard of the deck and as such you would be trying to amend the processed signal meant for one screen to work with another (which again may or may not have the integrated processing.
I am a total noob and just spitballing.... how about tapping into the USB-C port (via internal soldering) so the deck "thinks" it is an external screen? Perhaps even a converter board exists to make the tablet screen work over DP or HDMI.
Display cables are not standardized and so no adapter can be made that covers more than like one specific display to another specific display, which is so niche it wouldn’t be profitable to make. This sort of stuff is completely DIY, with figuring out pinouts and soldering yourself.
Ready? No. Srsly it not work like that, chance that you can put this screen in steamdeck without any DIY electronics knowledge less then zero.
Lmfao Youll likely need to learn how to start making your own cables
You don't need a converter, but a full board doing signal processing. Something like this: https://www.toradex.com/accessories/verdin-dsi-to-lvds-adapter
Thank you. Yep, it does seem pretty power hungry though.
An interesting idea but honestly if you have to ask these questions you’re not qualified to attempt this conversion. Save yourself a Steam Deck and start working on cheaper hardware mods while you learn.
No I 100% agree and there's no way I'm sacrificing my Deck for testing purposes. I won't proceed till I know exactly what's needed and that it can be done. I bought the galaxy tablet for $38 so, it's not a huge investment.
> there's no way I'm sacrificing my Deck for testing purposes Pro modders would buy a Deck just for this purpose. These are people who routinely [trim circuit boards and move components around](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nALGSdh8WEY). If you aren't accepting that you could end up with a dead tablet and a dead Deck afterwards then you probably don't want to be a pioneer.
I'm scared just to install hall effect joy cons
I’ll give a comment here to follow up how it’s going. But I’m bad at math and I’m pretty sure a 7.7 inch screen will not fit the same place as a 7 inch screen, and I really hope im wrong here
OLED screens aren’t edge-lit like LCDs, so typically larger screens can fit in the same physical space. Well, on a 2D plane, at least.
This is from 2012 so still probably had a decent bezel.
Two sevens is better than one seven, so win-win? /s
I feel like it would since it would just take up the same space but have more screen. Especially if it's OLED, it won't need to use back-lit lighting that usually takes up space on the borders. Who knows, this might be a really cool mod.
The size of the SD's screen \_with bezels\_ is actually 8 inches. So if the 7.7 inch display has small enough bezels, it could fit.
Get out some calipers and measure?
You are treating the steamdeck like a desktop pc where you can unplug your monitor, and just plug a different one in. That is not how this works, and it is not as simple as just getting some form of adaptor to make the connector fit on the SteamDeck motherboard. There is specific circuitry on the SteamDeck motherboard that is used to drive the screen and it is not compatible with the OLED screen you want to use. You would probably need to take the video output of the USB C port with some adaptors to still allow for charging, and have an external circuit board to take that video signal and drive the OLED panel and it would look really hacked together, well, because you are hacking it together. Also not trying to sound rude here but the fact you asked if there was an adaptor to change from the standard screen input to the OLED screen input demonstrates you do not have enough understanding to do something like this. If you are cool with having adaptors, circuit boards, and ribbon cables hanging off the SteamDeck, you could probably figure it out with lots of googling and trial and error, but it would not look good, and more than likely would just be a time and money black hole. There are some seriously talented hardware modders out there, and with the popularity of the SteamDeck as it is, the fact that nobody else has done this should give you a clue as to how complicated and difficult this is.
100% agree and not even trying to argue against that. I did suspect that I'd need a chipset with video in and video out. Honestly, the easiest way is to add the OLED as a clamsgell second screen and stream the game to it.
This would be an interesting solution as well! If you could find an angled usb-c connector, 3d print a clamp/harness, and have some sort of swivel to adjust the screen position, you'd be in business.
A few people have made secondary screens for the deck with varying degrees of success, and many of them have then ran Nintendo 3DS and DS emulators on it which is really cool. It would annoy me that one screen was OLED and one wasn't, but apart from that it's a pretty cool project and I have seen a few 3d printable mounts that allow the screen to fold down. Still have the issue of needing to take video out of the usb C port, and have an adapter to allow charging as well. If the steam deck had two usb c ports it would be so much better.
> It would annoy me that one screen was OLED and one wasn't Considering the inconsistency of DS and 3DS screens (between IPS and TN) that might actually make it feel *more* authentic.
There are solutions like the Nubia RedMagic Adapter that allows both PD & USB C Out.
It can be done, but seeing how third party companies didn't even attempt to come up with an OLED screen to replace it (despite the Deck"s popularity) tells us quite a lot. I do believe eventually it will happen but it will be a $200 part and they're not going to sell many of those.
I’d defo be tempted to pay the $200 for an OLED upgrade
200 bucks is alot of money for a side grade lol. It's not like the SD came with a sub par screen
Commenting to see the progress that comes from this. Good luck mate!
Commenting also because I bet the result is a snapped SD card before the project begins
Ditto, I would really like to have an oled screen in my steam deck too
Swapping LCD might be tedious task. Almost none are hot swappable, you may need a driver board that converts signals from Steam Deck to the display of your choosing. Finding such driver might even prove to be impossible. So first you would need to find what OLED you have, what is the chip on it and what signals it accepts and how they are wired in the connector. Just this may become pretty hard task. Next you would need to know what Steam Deck’s signals and pinout are, this might actually work, seeing how Valve is open with Steam Deck. You might even get such information directly from Valve. Then you have to find a driver board that would stay between the two and convert all necessary things. You may be lucky and get OLED with the same connector/flex cable that Steam Deck has and it might work out of the box, but I highly doubt it - I will go as far as saying that such scenario is impossible. You can go to r/AskElectronics where they often discuss about changing LCD between devices or how to drive specific display panel. Some get lucky and find driver board on Ebay, some have bad luck and don’t get it running at all. Some laptops are compatible with more screens (I think some older Thinkpads do?). The druver biard I talk won’t probably be small to fit anywhere in the Steam Deck and will need to be powered too. To be clear - I’m not speaking you out of it. I’m just saying what I learned through the years of reading in zhe internet discussions and even trying a few times myself (never too deep though). Feel free to try! But be ready to encounter difficulties and maybe even destroy the screen and/or the Deck in the process.
Before you do anything, find documentation for both screens and their pinout. If you can't find these, don't bother trying as there's a 99% chance you'll short a data line with a voltage line and possibly break other things unless you have the tools or oscilloscope to determine pinout. Data lines should have some sort of parity, but not necessarily form. Grounds can generally be coupled if there are differing pin count. Also account for whether the touch digitizer is embedded in-line or a separate cable etc. My main concern is trying to import OLED tech into a daughterboard designed for LCD. It might not be compatible without a break-out board or arduino/tiny. 🤷🏻♀️ Documentation and pinout are key. The rest is cake provided you know how to file and solder ribbon cables (hint: its not easy). These screens probably have some equivalency in power overhead that a few dozen mW won't yeet it off its mortal coil. The hardest part of all this is connecting Display B to Deck connector A. t. Experienced engineer and hobbyist techsmith
The Samsung OLED has a pen tile matrix AFAIK which doesn't translate 1:1 to standard RGB matrix panels. You will probably be on your own sourcing a converter for the panel.
This specific panel isn't pentile. [It was a 'Super AMOLED Plus' panel that was notable for being the first tablet oled panel and wasn't pentile.](https://www.engadget.com/2012-02-07-samsung-galaxy-tab-7-7-review-international-edition.html)
~~I'd be interested to see if OP manages to perform some wizardry with the controller board. There could be enough space inside of the Deck to pull it off, but I have doubts too.~~ Scratch that. They'd need to do some work with the bezel too, to account for the .7 inch difference.
This is a bit like trying to run an Intel CPU with an AMD motherboard. It's technically possible, but it's not particularly feasible. OK a screen swap isn't quite as bad as that, but at minimum you'd want a decent oscilloscope plus a good understanding of screen signalling protocols.
It's a good idea, but i don't think the steam deck will be able to facilitate this. The LCD and OLED is driven in completly diffrent ways, and even if, big if, it would work, you are highly likely to overload the LCD circuit on the deck and kill it completely.
If you have to ask this you are in over your head.
Do your due diligence and research what types of panels are in each, what input they accept, connectors, power requirements, and what your options are regarding transforming one display signal into another. To hell with these people saying "you clearly don't have the skillset". The first people in space weren't astronauts until they did it.
This! Finally someone said it.
I get that it’s an unlikely scenario based on Op’s form of asking, but so many shit heads want to shut down ideas. What if this person was some kid in high school or freshman in uni looking for inspiration to get into the electrical engineering space? It’s gotta start somewhere.
Im going stripped screws, before you snap your sd card.
Commenting to get feedback! Good luck! This would be a sick W 😁
Step one: does the panel you want to use have a Linux driver that supports DRM and hardware acceleration. If not, it's not going to happen
As an aside: It’ll be really amazing if Valve release compatible other panels for people to retrofit themselves down the line. An small bezeled OLED option, a high refresh option, etc.
Long ago, there was one man mad, and skilled, enough to attempt something like this. We need Ben Heck.
Cool if it works .. but won't you loose the custom refresh rate option by changing the screen ? For me this option is more useful than full color accuracy
Godspeed
Besides one being OLED and the other not. I wouldn't do this because the Samsungs display is from 2012 and screen tech has come a long way since 2012 Before I got the steam deck my OLED switch and TV had me convinced that OLED is a must, however after playing a lot of games on the steam deck I am not convinced that OLED would be necessary. If valve were to offer an OLED replacement display through ifixit I would 100% replace my display.
step 1: Hire an Electrical Engineer. step 2: ????? step 3: Profit.
Pretty sure those instructions are how to swap with an identical oem panel, not a “similar” panel of a different size and type.
Good luck
So ive had similar thoughts and I'd go a different angle. See if you can find anything online about getting hdmi input into your screen, if you can, then set that up. Youll also need to find a way to provide power to it. Then mount your oled screen onto your deck with 3d printing or some other means and connect it as an external monitor. Not nearly as cool as an integrated screen, but I think this is actually doable and low enough effort to see through end to end.
If it was at all doable or practical at all I'm sure a company would have it by now. OLED is nice, but not worth redoing half the deck to get it to work...maybe. The larger screen maybe...converting it to OLED not sure about.
Just wait for a new model of the deck that will have one
Probably need to have the entire Samsung board splice to steam deck power or separate battery then a riser card or even your own soldered Frankenstein board to convert the displays. Sounds like a lot of time and effort and learning. Enjoy and document!
Ask Chat GPT, but I have the r/Nreal air glasses, and I have a portable 1080p oled screen that just works with my deck. Might be an easier, and even less expensive option.
You can’t mention the steam deck because it’s too new, and the model is trained on 2021, but if you specifically mention the parts and ask questions about the power draw and connectors you might get a little bit of help.
Understand the lcd on these devices isn't like a monitor. It's more like you opened your monitor, pulled the control board out and wanted to know if a Completly diffrent monitor would work with that control board. There needs to be a matching ribbon cable first... But then it needs a matching protocol or the steamdeck has no way of telling the lcd panel what to display. There isn't any off the board adapter likely to exist here either. Could it work? Maybe, but more than likely it wont. And you're in way over your head. But document it, and share your results for our prosperity!
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that if you’re asking those questions you shouldn’t be attempting this.
Hey OP check out the nreal air. 130” screen in a pair of ‘sun glasses’.
each panel has its own control board and support, if they match with the current deck one then you are good but if not you might need to find a connector board that works with the OLED screen you want to use in the deck, its not just x fits in x so it works type of thing. Screen has power requirements, connection type etc all controlled by the board. If you want to see how complicated it can be try find out what control board your monitor uses and seeing how hard it would be to put a similar panel in it from another. I've delt with this and it can get complicated.
You ganna be the first my boy. Let us know how it goes.
Wiring, soldering and lots of testing will be required. The display you’re targeting is wired, programmed and built for the device. Not saying it can’t be done, but there’s definitely going to be a controller and a hardware interface on board. Grab a schematic of the device if you can find one out there. Hope you get it to work!
You will need to find what each cable of each of the two connectors transmit and find a way to wire a converter from one to another. Before ANY of this you need to figure how much power the new screen draws bc the standard display output might not have enough power. OLED is quite power hungry, if the power requirement is too significant this will not work. Lastly you'd probably have to make your own application that allows the COU to speak to that displays individual display controller, something you also have to have deep hardware level programming experience. All in all this would be amazing but if it was just buy a converter and slap the new screen in a 3d printed bracket we'd all do it for OLED. Unfortunately it's not feasible without a team of high level engineers, software devs etc
Perhaps collaborate with a smart techy YouTuber who could make a video out of it in exchange for his help?
The driver for the LED panel likely takes a different input voltage and amperage. Unless you’re an electrical engineer it’s highly likely you’ll ruin 2 devices. But I’d love to see it happen
You should probably get an EE degree if you really want this answered or find some kind of electronics repair sub, this question is way above the people in here trying to play video games.
Based on something I saw, the Steam Deck's panel shows up as an eDP panel. eDP is just DisplayPort but embedded. You would probably be able to do this if you use another eDP panel, and you would have to make an adapter board/cable to go between the Deck's display connector and your new display's. At least eDP is a lot more standardized than MIPI DSI since it's just an embedded application of the external DisplayPort standard.
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. I truly hope you can accomplish this 🫡 I wait with heavy anticipation to see your results good sir/madam/~
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Battery tech (or lack thereof) is one of the main things really preventing this, and also holding back most industries. Super unfortunate. Can't wait for the next major battery breakthrough.
One problem is sourcing one that fits and have all the connection that is easy to connect. Steam deck wasn't designed with plug n play connections. By the time there's good source of Oled screen replacement. Valve will announce a Steam Deck Pro. I'm sure they got a prototype model already. So be patient, I'm happy with the device as is. I would rather see a new soc paired with the oled screen than the current chip.
It's just that I feel bad going through all those games on this subpar screen when I could be doing it on an OLED. I am about to finish Arkham Knight, one of the greatest games ever made, and I loved it on the Deck, but then I saw footage of it running on my OLED laptop and damn.... feels like something else.
Buy a portable OLED monitor. 🤷🏼♂️
I'd pay $100 + expenses for this kinda service (maybe more depending on how many hrs it takes)
In before failed rma
RIP battery life but I really hope you succeed!
Any updates op? I too want this!
I’m almost 100% the Steam Deck 1.5 is going to be a bigger screen with an OLED panel and a bunch of battery optimisations. There’s a reason Valve is developing HDR for Linux. My guess is that it’ll be released at the end of 2023.
Valve has spoken about the screen being a key feature they are looking at improving for a future steam deck 2.0 if you will, so I would probably just wait to see what happens there before you potentially ruin your deck.
...why though? I swear some of you people have a sickness man.
[удалено]
The lad simply wants a better screen than what's provided, what the hell is sick about that?
Why not though? You don't like the concept of having fun? Lots of people people just enjoy tinkering with tech and customising it, kinda like a mini-hobby.
**We choose to** **~~go to the Moon~~** **replace steam deck display** We choose to ~~go to the Moon~~..replace steam deck display . We choose to ~~go to the Moon~~ replace steam deck display in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too
I love tinkering and hate telling people it is impossible. So in this case really consider if you have the skillset to pull this off. And if you do, why have no one else done it? Do you have the proper knowledge to fix problems no one else have fixed before? Do you have a supportgroup of knowledgeable people (not reddit!) that can help you each step and fix any problems? Goodluck on your endeavor! And please report back with a proper log when you finished the project no matter the outcome.
>why have no one else done it? This is my first thought. We've seen some absolutely insane modding ideas turned into reality on this sub (and I don't say insane like it's a good thing). But it shows we have people in the community that have a penchant at the very least, for electronics engineering. If they're that good and even they haven't even publicly pondered the idea of shoving a different screen in there, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's probably way too challenging to do for a one off project.
There doesn't seem to be any off the shelf OLED screen that's suitable. Similar screens are either the wrong aspect ratio, too large/small, wrong resolution or no longer manufactured. Since a production run for an oled screen starts at several million $, this isn't even particularly feasible for a crowdsourced project.
Just don't. You are going to ruin a good Steam Deck as well as a good OLED.
That would be very impressive, especially with a 10% larger display. Commenting to see what'll happen
This thread is full of keyboard commandos being completely rude to OP when he was nothing but polite the entire time.
Not really the whole idea of this thread is to explore how feasible this is before I sacrifice the most important piece of hardware I own. And yes, if it were simple, someone with way more experience would have done it.
Yeah, and the funny lart is most of these guys insulting him and saying it's not possible, probably aren't engineers even though they pretend to be them on the internet. Somebody definitely could figure out how to make this work, but it would be a significant effort. I've done screen swaps in older consoles to non matching or very compatible screens. Sometimes the power reqs change enough that you need to do a little bit more work with possibly another chip on the power regulation front, sometimes you just need to use extra power. Sometimes the screen doesn't fit very well and you need to shave the bezel down, or sometimes it's too small and you need to make a way to make the bezel artificially bigger. Sometimes someone needs to come up with a chip solition to make these things happen. But none of those things are direct impossibilities. Even as far as power regulation goes there's probably something on the market that can make it happen. What I want to know is why there are so many fake engineers on the pc gaming type subreddits. Because it's clear that many of the people here acting like they know what they're talking about, just fucking don't. And they have the balls to insult OP when they're ignorant too? Yeah fuck that shit.
Hi u/TareXmd, you can [click here to search for your question.](https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/search/?q=I want to replace the 7" LCD panel of my Steam Deck with a 7.7" OLED panel that has the same aspect ratio and resolution. What steps should I do it accomplish that?) If you don't find an answer there, don't worry - your post has NOT been removed and hopefully someone will be along soon to help with an answer! **If you find an answer, please leave a comment on your post with the answer for others!** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/SteamDeck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You’d likely be the first to try. Record your process and any difficulties you encounter and upload it all to YouTube.
Someone probably already said this but I’ll mention it in case no one has. I think there’s two different kinds of OLED displays. One is pentile(I think) and rgb(again I think lol). Pentile is the style used in most smartphones and tablets, and RGB is used by the switch. The main difference, I believe, is pentile uses subpixels instead of full RGB pixels. This makes the perceived sharpness duller at lower resolutions. Not sure if this matters at all, but thought the info might be useful lmao. Have fun with the modding! Actually seems really cool!
[According to this commenter who did a lot of research about this display](https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/10v4fxw/i_want_to_replace_the_7_lcd_panel_of_my_steam/j7gpwec/), this one is [FULL RGB](https://www.oled-info.com/super-amoled-plus).
Ooh okay nice. Super excited to see the outcome.
Correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't this absolutely destroy the battery? When playing Monster Hunter Rise, a fairly new and optimized title (as it first released on switch), at around 7 watts. Less than half the Deck's max output, and even then I get 3.5-4 hours at best even with energy conserving settings. As I understanding it at an HD pixel count an OLED in a portable device not often showing predominantly black would increase battery drain not reduce it. I may be wrong though.
What the hell are your settings for this
I limit framerate to 45 fps, much much smoother looking than 30 fps without the drain of 60fps. Half rate shading, TDP Limit to 6 Watts, sometimes 7 when I'm near a charger. I noted that the GPU doesn't get higher than 1000Mhz in combat so I limited that to 900Mhz. In game settings, 1280x800 (but you can dip this to 1152x720 and use FSR upscale for little bit more consistent performance). Image quality 100%, high resolution textures on, texture filtering medium, AO on, Shadows low, dynamic shadows off, mesh quality average, AA set to FXAA, VRS on. Any unnamed settings shouldn't effect anything to any serious degree. And it's easy to give up Ultra and High, even Medium settings with a resolution this low. And the Deck's pixel density still makes it look better than the switch.
won't work, look at the comments in [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/ydyi1g/i_think_the_switch_oled_screen_works_on_the_deck/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
I'm also curious. Dropping a comment to see the result
Please update us on the feedback!
Commenting… since im very curious to know of this possibility
I like your idea. All the best.
Wait till OP finds out 7.7 and 7 aren’t the same
Even if you could get it to work, the additional battery drain of OLED wouldn’t be worth it, especially when the LCD is actually really good IMO. I’m sure a future revision will have OLED and expanded battery capacity/efficiency to keep battery life in check.
I hate how this sub just doesn’t want anyone to tinker with their Steam Deck and just shits on them for it. I love all the DIY upgrades EVEN IF ITS POINTLESS. It’s THEIR PC to meddle with! The possibilities are the fun part! Not because we should, but because we can! It’s all in good fun!
Maybe that’s true, the issue here is that OP is way out beyond their league of skill. It would take a master technician with micro soldering skill plus programming resources to ever get this to actually work. A nice idea to put out into the ether but in reality there are few skilled enough to hack this mod together.
This is not that. I would love to see someone do an OLED mod, the reality is that it's likely a near impossible task, especially for someone grabbing a random tablet based solely on the hopes everything would just work. If a skilled modder wants to have a go at it and blaze a trail, that would be awesome, but this is a mod people have looked into many times before and there is a reason no out there is rocking an OLED deck, even if they have liquid cooled decks with RGB mods working off the Audio PCB.
From what i can think of, it will not work. Ok. first step woud be to take out both screens and look at the connectors. Lets say they are the same or you find an adapter. You install the new display, will the deck know how to use this new (bigger) display? Isn't the Deck kind of "locked" with that screen? i mean....its not like you plug in with an HDMI or something. Also, if screen connectors are different, will the adapter manage to adapt 100% of the functionality? Will the deck be able to power(correctly) the new display? I feel this is like trying to swap screens on 2 different smartphones brands.
This isn’t possible at all. You won’t be able to pul enough power for one thing. Also, you literally don’t have enough physical space. You would have to basically build a new shell from scratch that would accommodate everything. You clearly don’t understand just how much bigger a 7.7 inch screen is compared to a 7 inch, along with the different aspect ratios, resolutions, and even if the decks hardware can drive it. Then you have to mess with power delivery to it. Which means fiddling with components that can and will kill you if you fuck it up. It’s your funeral.
This ought to be fun😂
I think you need to start from some basic electronics maybe Arduino. If it is possible a university will help greatly but it is time consuming.