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When I bought the Steam Deck a few years ago, I was skeptical. I was willing to risk buying only the cheapest version possible—a $400 handheld with a measly 64 GB of storage. Now, I know I love it. I've used it for hundreds of hours already, stuck with limited, slower storage. If I were to rectify this mistake, I'd have to buy a whole new console. Or at least, that's what other gadgets have trained me to believe. Not this time.
I have a long history of upgrading my devices myself, when I can. The desktop PC I use on a daily basis has been ship-of-Theseus'd from the same computer I built over 20 years ago—never fully replaced, but upgraded, piece by piece, over the years. During that time, it's increasingly become the exception to the rule. Until the Steam Deck came along.
Elusive Upgrades
I used to replace the battery in my early smartphones when they got old, breathing new life into dated hardware. Now, few phones allow this without cracking open the whole thing. My first MacBook had space on the bottom to upgrade its RAM. Now it’s baked right into the M-series processors. I wouldn’t be able to upgrade it, even if it weren’t difficult to access.
Which is maybe why I felt so happy to learn that my Steam Deck is, in fact, incredibly easy to upgrade. Resources like iFixit, which advocate for a user's right to repair their own devices, have guides that show how to do specific upgrades on different gadgets.
The guide for upgrading the Steam Deck's storage is refreshingly straightforward. Unscrew and remove the back panel, remove the board shield, pop out a cable, and unscrew the old storage. Put your new SSD in its place and reverse the process. Done.
It’s not quite as easy as replacing the battery on your TV's remote, but it was faster to add more storage than it was to reinstall Steam OS. All told, the process took maybe an hour. Instead of paying $130 extra for a different Steam Deck—or worse, buying a whole new one for $530—I paid $20 for a cheap SSD on eBay. Minus the cost of a decent hamburger and half the length of a typical video essay on YouTube later, I can now install more games on my Steam Deck, in less time and with shorter loading screens than I had before. This doesn’t have to be a novel experience.
Repair on the Horizon
It also might not be, for much longer. Earlier this year, the European Union voted to pass new regulations that will require smartphones to come equipped with user-replaceable batteries. Currently, trying to replace a battery on a recent iPhone requires specialty tools and technical know-how, and can still result in warnings that you’re not using “genuine” parts, even when using official Apple batteries.
By 2027, that kind of barrier to replacing a battery won’t be legal in the EU, though the knock-on effect will likely lead to manufacturers complying globally. We already saw a similar effect occur when the EU passed a law requiring all phones, tablets, and cameras sold in the region to have a USB-C port. It’s just more efficient to make one model that the company can sell everywhere.
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It’s one in a long series of recent right-to-repair wins. Earlier this year, Minnesota passed a right-to-repair law that built on similar legislation in Colorado and New York, requiring manufacturers to supply information, tools, and parts to any repair shop that asks for it. Right-to-repair advocates have set their sights on California next.
These laws benefit repair shops within their states the most, but once the information is out, it’s out. Documentation, guides, and techniques quickly travel across state lines (and the world), meaning everyone benefits. For now, manufacturers may be required to supply parts and tools to repair shops in only a few states, but it may soon become the kind of thing consumers everywhere demand and expect.
E-Waste Not
At this point, I could make the (correct) argument that being able to repair devices would be a win for the environment. It’s no secret that e-waste is a catastrophic problem for our planet and the people who live on it. Anything that can reduce how often we need to throw out entire gadgets to buy new ones is a win for the planet.
But, frankly, my desire to upgrade and repair my own gadgets is a lot more personal than that. I’ve grown used to the feeling of starting a ticking clock every time I buy a new device. As soon as I unwrap a new phone or laptop, it’s as powerful as it’s ever going to be, and it’s only downhill from there. It’s the exact opposite of how I feel about my desktop PC, which has only gotten better over the years.
I want to feel like I have a sense of control over when I upgrade. I want to have the option to improve a gadget I love, instead of swapping it out for something else entirely. If I were stuck with my Steam Deck’s original configuration, I would be doomed to slower games and burning through SD cards until I caved and bought a whole new device.
Of course, I understand some consolidation is inevitable. The system-on-a-chip style of processors has consumed everything except desktop PCs, and Apple’s even making headway on that front. There are tangible performance gains that come from putting everything in one chip, which might be worth the trade-off.
Some have argued that non-replaceable components are necessary for certain modern features, like water resistance. This could be true, even though there are repairable phones that have IP68 water- and dust-resistance while still allowing the user to replace the battery. But certain components like batteries and storage will always benefit from regular upgrades.
Personally, I don’t need a phone that’s 0.5 grams lighter and half a millimeter thinner than last year’s model. The comically large, nearly 7-inch displays barely fit in my pockets anyway. What I want is for my phone to be able to hold a charge when it’s more than two years old. I want gaming handhelds that I can upgrade to store gigantic new games. Mostly, I just want to buy fewer gadgets and improve more of the ones I have.
