GammaOS Makes the RG405M So Much Better

[Music] hey everybody this is Russ from Metro gamecore there is a new custom firmware available for the ambernik rg405m and the ambernik rg505 and it's called gamma OS and that's what we'll be covering in this video here today and we're going to cover a bunch of different topics number one I'm going to show you how to install it onto your device if you happen to have one already and then I'm going to walk you through the updated features that are available with this custom software and by the end of this video I think you're going to be convinced of why it's probably a good idea to switch over basically all of the issues that I had from the software perspective for the rg505 and 405m have basically been fixed for example this operating system incorporates the custom GPU drivers that are available on the retroid pocket 3 plus which is going to give us a nice boost in performance but in addition there are also three new performance modes and at the lowest mode it's going to save a ton of battery life in addition this software up update will improve the quality of your screen and it fixes all the control issues that I had previously so this means that basically any Android game is going to be playable on this device in fact the improvements here are so good it leaves me questioning which device at this price point and power performance I like best the rg405m or the Retro pocket 3 plus and so we'll also wrap up the video discussing that point as well anyway we've got a lot of ground to cover here and I want to try to do it as fast as possible and so without any further delay let's go ahead and dive in oh okay to start I'm going to show you how to install this on your Amber Nick rg405m or rg505 device and all the instructions can be found on the gamma OS GitHub page which will be linked down below now when you get to that front page you have a couple options number one you can just go and directly download the release but you can also read the latest changelog and then also there are written instructions as well and in addition to the install instructions that we'll be doing here today there's also an upgrade instructions in case this gets updated in the future or if anything goes wrong with your installation or maybe you just want to go back to the stock operating system there are instructions for that as well either way I think you're going to be well covered if you do decide to go with gamma OS also bear in mind you will need a Windows PC to complete this installation however bear in mind that this process will wipe the internal storage on your device and also be sure to remove any SD cards before we get started too okay so now we're ready to go so let's go to the download page first now you actually have two different options there is the regular gamma OS and then one called gamma OS light the difference here is that the light version will not come with any Google services or the Play Store so if you want to keep your operating system as trim as possible that's the one you would choose and it's still going to come pre-loaded with the Aurora store if you do want to install apps that way for me personally I like to have the added benefit of Google services in the Play Store so we're going to go with that one in this video here anyway once you've made your decision just go to the Google Drive Link and then download this file it's going to be several gigs and while you're waiting for that download to finish you could go ahead and like And subscribe this video but then also we have one other piece of software we need to download to do that we're going to go to the written instructions again link down below and here we're going to find a link for ADB and fastboot tools and drivers so just go ahead and click on this link here it's going to take you to a separate GitHub page and within here we'll go to the releases link and then download the latest release in an exe file format and now that we have these two files downloaded we're ready to start installing the necessary drivers to make sure that everything works the first one is going to be the ADB and fastboot driver so go ahead and open up that exe file and you might get a warning here about being an unrecognized app just go ahead and click on more info and then down below select run anyway from there it's going to ask do you really want to open up this app and you're going to click Yemen I want to do it and so now we're in the setup window you can go ahead and accept the agreement and then scroll through all the prompts right here after that it's going to install ADB and fastboot plus plus now once you get to this window here that says that everything is done you want to go up and click that box that says install Universal ADB driver and once you have that selected you can go ahead and tap on the Finish button this is going to immediately take you through another series of prompts just go ahead and click next through each of these and at one point it is going to ask do you really want to install it and you know what to do anyway this should only take a minute or so to actually install and once it's done you can close it and you'll get these two command prompts showing up right here we don't need to actually do anything with these just yet so we can go ahead and close them out next we want to install the unisoc drivers which are available in the gamma OS file package that we already downloaded and this is going to be in a zip file format so you will have to extract it first now you can just use the native Windows extractor if you'd like but I'm in the habit of using 7-Zip so I'm going to use that instead either way this will take a minute to extract the file because it is pretty big it's something like three and a half gigs and once it's done you should see a folder named gamma OS that's where we're going to go inside and within here you'll find a subfolder called unisoc drivers go ahead and open that up and then choose the windows version that you're using if you're on Windows 11 you will also use Windows 10. now within that Windows folder you should find one that's called DP inst64. go ahead and open that one up again you'll get another confirmation here just go ahead and yeah man I want to do it now the prompts on this are pretty simple you're just going to hit next and then it'll take a moment and then you can press finish and that's it we have now installed all the drivers we need to be able to recognize our Android device when you plug it in just to be safe I would recommend at this point to restart your computer now while our computer is rebooting let's go ahead and go into our device here and enable developer options to do that open up the settings and scroll all the way down until you find the about handheld game console click on that and then again scroll all the way down until you see the build number to enable developer options what you have to do here is tap on this like five or six times anyway once you finish that it'll give you a prompt to say that you are now a developer you didn't have to go to school or anything and so now let's go into the developer options we're going to go back to the main settings menu and then go into this category here called system and here near the bottom you're now going to see an option called developer options go ahead and click on that and then scroll about halfway down until you find something that's called USB debugging and this is pretty easy all you have to do is turn it on it'll give you a confirmation window here just go ahead and tap on OK and that's it those are the only settings we have to change directly on the device we're now ready to plug this device into our computer now chances are you should just get a confirmation right here that says that USB debugging is connected and if you see that prompt you should be good to go however that very first time it may ask you to allow USB debugging if this happens to you just go ahead and click the always allow and then select allow now on our desktop we should have a new app installed from the previous drivers called ADB and fastboot plus plus go ahead and double click on that to bring this up up and it's going to be a command prompt window like this and within here you need to type these words ADB reboot bootloader and after that you can press enter and it should go to the next line of the command prompt meanwhile as soon as you press that enter button on the device it should go immediately black and restart however this time on the bottom left you should see some text that says fastboot mode and if you see that we are actually good to go to the next step anyway now that our device is in fastboot mode and connected to our PC it's time to go to a special web page and again this is all listed in that written guide which I'll have linked down below what you want to do here is once you've navigated to this page just click on the connect button from there you'll get another window pop up select the fastboot Gadget option and then click connect again that should make that window go away and then you'll have the option to unlock your device go ahead and click on that it'll start saying device status unlocking and then also on your device you should see a couple different text prompts right here talking about pushing volume up and down just go ahead and ignore all of those instead what you want to do is just tap on the home button one time and that'll be the confirmation you need to actually start this process here after a moment it'll say unlock Bootloader success and also on the website it'll change from unlocking to unlocked and here's a close-up here of what it's going to look like and congratulations you have now unlocked the bootloader on your Android device okay for the next step to work you have to close out of that window that we opened before so go ahead and close out of Google Chrome and then you should still have the ADB and fastboot plus plus window up if you did close this one as well go ahead and open it back up now here we want to type these words fastboot reboot fastboot and then go ahead and press the enter button and it'll reboot your device and it should be instantaneous so when I press enter right here you can see that it immediately goes and starts rebooting when it reboots you will see some warning text right here saying the bootloader is unlocked and after that you should now see the Android fastboot menu and once we're within here we're ready to go back to our computer first thing we can close out of the ADB window right here and we're going to go back to that gamma West folder that we were using previously now at this point we want to use one of two different batch files it's all going to to depend on which device you're using in this video I'm using the rg405m but if you have an rg505 then you're going to click on that one instead and that's the only real difference between these two devices when you go through this process anyway like I mentioned I have the 405m so I'm going to click on that one here when you first start it it's going to give you a 30 second prompt right here just to make sure that you clicked on the correct device first and so if you did accidentally click on the wrong one this is going to be your 30 second warning to close it out anyway after that's done it's going to start the flashing process this is going to take a while about five to ten minutes altogether and there's really nothing you can do on your end at this point so if you want to go grab a drink or maybe your favorite snack this would be a great time anyway once it's done it's going to let you know that everything is complete and then there's going to be a 60 second waiting period right here before it closes the window and you can always close it yourself if you'd like Anyway once the flashing is done we only have one more big step so let's go ahead and do that next and all we have to do is click on the erase user data batch file that's right here in the same folder this is also a very similar process where you're going to see a bunch of text here in the command prompt window and you may read some errors right here just go ahead and ignore all of those either way once this is done it's going to be the same thing a 60 second cooldown or you can close the window yourself and after that we're actually done using the computer that wasn't so hard was it anyway throughout this entire process nothing's going to actually happen on your device and once you're done with this process all you have to do is just tap on the power button and it'll go into a reboot and like I mentioned we're done with a computer at this point so you can unplug it if you'd like now that very first boot will take maybe two or three minutes altogether so just go ahead and kick back but you'll know everything is done once you see this window right here saying hi there and this is going to be your standard Android process from here on out and so I'm not going to walk you through this process because it's basically the same thing you would always have with a new Android device you know turning on your Wi-Fi accepting whatever agreements and so on anyway once you're done you'll see the lineage OS logo right here and you can tap on start and now it should boot directly into the digisho front end and this is one of the first great things about Gamma OS not only is it going to install this app and also make it the default front end but the developer is also pre-configured a lot of the settings for the more popular platforms so for example it's going to install retroarc for you as well as all the emulator cores and so it's kind of getting you already halfway there to start enjoying your favorite gains from there the setup is going to be exactly like you would expect so you'll add all your ROMs to an SD card and then you'll point Dai g-show to those and I have video guides for all that stuff I'll put it in the video description below so not only is the digital front-end pre-configured to be able to look for the correct emulator core but the retroar configurations have also been predetermined as well this means that your hotkeys will already be pre-configured and also it's implemented a Shader for the systems that benefit from it so for example here when playing NES you can see that the Mega Man 2 life bar is actually perfectly balanced and that's because gamma OS already comes with that Shader pre-configured in retroarch for you now of course if you want you can always change that out and add your own Shader instead but it is pretty cool that if you don't know how to do that it's already been done okay so next I want to compare some of the differences between gamma OS and the stock operating system and thankfully I have two different rg405m devices so I can do the comparisons one-on-one the first thing to compare is the over sharpening that is in the stock operating system panel and I think this is a subtle but significant difference in fact when I first owned the device I didn't even notice it myself I just thought that the 480p screen was just not very good but it turns out that ambernik has applied an over sharpening to the screen itself it's pretty subtle but if you look right here you can see a bit of blooming that's happening around these circles right here in the center of the screen you can see it's lighter at the edges than it is within the center if we look at those same three icons in the gamma West screen you can see right here we're getting none of that blooming and that blooming is a result of over sharpening the image and I think the best way to point this out is to break out my macro lens so you can really see it within the text and as you can see here there's just a bunch of weird artifacts that are happening around the text on a dark screen again this is something that with my naked eye I didn't really notice I just saw that it didn't look that great but again I thought it was because it was a 480p panel however here with gamma OS you can see that they've corrected that over sharpening and so now everything is more crystal clear and I have found that when not using a macro lens it also still looks very good either way at least I think you can see in this example here it is a night and day difference and it's a little bit harder to see the difference when you're looking at lighter images like right here but this again is with gamma OS so everything is nice and balanced if you look at that same text on the stock operating system you can see there are some artifactings around the text so again it's a pretty subtle difference but still pretty cool that they were able to add this another subtle Improvement is the refresh rate on the LCD panel on the rg405m on the stock operating system it's running at 61.2 Hertz and if you are sensitive to things like frame pacing this can cause issues when playing retro games now luckily on gamma OS they have reset it to a standard 60 hertz and so this should make retro games play perfectly now another big improvement with gamma Os are the controls and this is enabled through a hotkey by holding L1 R1 and L3 for a few seconds and this is going to toggle your face buttons between an Xbox or a switch layout for me personally I like the Xbox ab and XY pattern so that's what I'm going to use here so this is pretty handy but then also it saves between resets of the device unlike on the stock operating system in addition all the key mapping has been fixed and so because of that all these Android games will actually recognize all the button presses correctly for example Diablo Immortal was a game that does not run on stock operating system but as you can see it's running great here within gamma OS another great example is going to be streaming and Remote Play with both Xbox and PlayStation on the stock operating system it would not recognize the L2 and R2 buttons at all and those are really important buttons for most Xbox and Playstation games today well I'm happy to say that yes the L2 and R2 are now working correctly within Xbox Cloud streaming and other streaming apps and probably the coolest feature is that it tricks the device into thinking it's connected to a Bluetooth controller this means when you start up games like Call of Duty it's going to recognize that controller and allow you to choose it what this means is you can use native controls on this device unlike basically any other Android device on the market so I didn't have to do any sort of key mapping right here it literally just recognized all of my buttons and I can use them right like that now one thing that is still in the works for gamma OS is key mapping software so for example if you try to play a game that doesn't recognize Bluetooth controllers like genshin impact that currently isn't going to work because you don't have any key mapping software but that's also in the works but also it's pretty cool to be able to play Call of Duty mobile like this this is the first time I've been able to play this game natively on an Android device like this I can even turn on inverted controls it's pretty awesome and in addition basically any other Android game that you try to play is going to work all the controls are going to be recognized properly and so previously I didn't really think of the ambernik rg405m as a device I would want to play a lot of Android games on and this has completely changed that Paradigm next I want to talk about the performance modes you have available within gamma OS and for our example here we're going to use Yoshi's Island but also turn on fast forward so we can see the max frames per second right now I'm in the highest performance mode and you see we're getting an average of about 137 138 frames per second now to toggle performance mode we want to hold on to L1 R1 and R3 and the first toggle here is going to be into just the normal standard performance mode and as you can see here performance is going to dip a little bit down to about 122 frames per second and then finally we also have a power saving mode so we'll do the same toggle right here and you can see it's going to dip down to about 106 frames per second and that means the game's still definitely going to be playable but it's going to require less power altogether and this is a really neat feature because it allows you to dial in the settings to be able to maximize battery life and that power saving mode is pretty impressive not only will it play most games all the way up through PS1 pretty easily but you're going to find a huge Improvement in battery life for example on the rg405m previously I would get some pretty great battery life when playing lightweight games things like Game Boy or NES I could usually expect about an 8 Hour average which is really impressive however a bunch of people in the community have been doing testing and they found they're getting upwards of 21 hours of gameplay in the power saving mode so if you plan on using this device for lightweight games that's pretty incredible and the great thing here is that you can adjust the power profile depending on the system that you're playing for example with Dreamcast you can't really play games in power saving mode you're going to get an average of about 52 frames per second however if you toggle it onto Max performance mode you'll absolutely get all the frames you need but also the normal performance mode also gives you a full frame rate so this is kind of neat in the fact that you don't have to max out the performance to play the games that don't demand that much power so if you're going to be playing systems like Dreamcast Nintendo 64 and PlayStation Portable those are the settings I recommend additionally that Max performance mode is really impressive if you're trying to get the most power that you can for example here when playing Sega Saturn you usually will have a lot of frame skip in the harder to run games like die hard arcade but you can see up here at the top of the screen we're only getting a frame skip about one or two frames at any given time and that is much better than how it was on the original stock operating system this means you'll have a smoother gameplay experience when playing some of these harder games like Sega Saturn in addition when playing some of those harder to play systems using Max performance mode will will give you better performance than on the stock operating system here's a direct comparison right here with Mario Kart Double Dash now here I'm using the exact same version of dolphin the latest development build in addition I've turned off vbi skip so that way we will see some stuttering on both of these devices and finally I am using the exact same pal version ROM on both of these two emulators as well and on average I found a difference of about three to five frames per second between these two operating systems now realistically that's not a huge boost but what I have found is those are the frames per second that really matter when playing things like GameCube and PS2 now all of a sudden many of these games that used to have a little bit of stutter here and there are not really having any stutter at all in addition some of those games that were just a little bit too stuttery to be very playable are now a lot more playable if anything this reminds me a lot of the performance that you can expect on the retroid pocket 3 plus and that does make sense since gamma OS is using the updated experimental drivers from that device either way yes you will see some modest performance improvements if you try gamma OS over the stock operating system and while five frames per second doesn't sound like a lot when you're using a 50 hertz game that's a 10 Improvement and when it comes to the even harder to play systems things like Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo switch I also found here that many of these games did play better than before so really when it comes down to it I have found a ton of improvements with gamma OS with no real downsides other than the fact that they haven't developed a key mapper just yet and for me it's kind of surprising how these little changes in software performance improvements really make me like a device a lot more than before for example in the week that I've been testing gamma OS I've been playing the rg405m more than ever and that's because the software suite that's on here really does improve that experience for me in fact like I mentioned in the intro I've been enjoying it so much it's made me question which one I like better the rg405m or the retroid pocket 3 plus now before this past week I would have easily said the retroid pocket 3 plus just because there's so many nice things about this device I love the controls and the screen and the software on this little guy however because these two devices use the exact same chips set I wanted to do a quick comparison between these two especially in light of the fact that the rg405m has been greatly improved thanks to gamma OS so here's the way I see it if you were trying to decide between these two there's a couple factors you have to consider and we'll start with the retroid pocket 3 plus and discuss some of the benefits that come with this device number one the panel on this device is widescreen it's a 16x9 that means if you want to play widescreen systems like PlayStation Portable or Nintendo switch they're going to be a better fit here in addition if you want to play game streaming then the Retro pocket 3 plus screen is going to be better because it's 16x9 additionally this screen has a higher resolution that means you can upscale things like PlayStation 1 Dreamcast Nintendo 64 and PSP and so if you like having upscaled Graphics than the Retro pocket 3 plus is going to be your better fit additionally this device has stacked shoulders and triggers unlike the 405m so if you are going to be playing Trigger heavy games you know something like Within game streaming that'll be a good fit too additionally on the retroid pocket 3 plus the d-pad is up top and so if you're going to be focusing on playing d-pad centered games that might be a more natural fit and finally between these two devices only the retroid pocket 3 plus is capable of video out so if you do want to connect your device to a monitor then the Retro pocket 3 plus is going to be your only option here now the ambridic rj405m also has some nice advantages number one it has a native 4x3 screen so if you plan on playing 4x3 games this is a really nice and authentic fit in particular playing something like Nintendo 64 is really fun on this little machine additionally the form factor on the rg405m is a lot smaller and more pocketable and part of that has to do with the fact that it doesn't have stacked shoulder buttons instead it just kind of slides in and out of your pocket additionally the rg405m has some really nice components for example it has a nice feeling metal shell as well as Hall sensor analog sticks now the metal version of the Retro pocket 3 plus it just came out also has that option but it will be quite a bit more expensive than these two models it's going to be 180 before shipping in taxes and finally probably the biggest added benefit of gamma OS is the fact that we have this increased battery life when using it in power saving mode so if you're looking for a device to Simply play the classics I think that the 405m is a better fit and I love the fact that I don't have to charge this thing all the time I think when it comes down to it yes gamma OS has greatly improved the rg405m and for me it's easily the best retro device that ambernik has released to date I love the fact that it feels so premium in the hand but then is also nice and slim too if anything I would say the gamma West has now improved the software experience to match the nice Hardware that we have on the device itself so when it comes down to it yes I've been enjoying my rg405m a lot but I think the jury is still out whether or not I prefer this one over the retroid pocket 3 plus at the end of the day they are both really excellent devices and you're not going to go wrong by choosing either one or the other it's really going to come down to your Hardware preference do you want a wider high resolution screen or would you like something smaller and more compact anyway that's really about it for this video here what do you think about Gamma West let me know in the comments below as always thank you for watching and be sure to like And subscribe if you found this helpful and we will see you next time happy gaming thank you [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Retro Game Corps

Views: 253,004

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Id: BD0ab1gr4gM

Length: 22min 49sec (1369 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 09 2023