Preface#
In 2021, I was in the mood to buy a Windows 2-in-1 tablet, so I bought a Surface Go2. However, its performance was too weak and it overheated severely, so it has been left unused until now.
Currently, the keyboard is missing and USB 3.1 cannot be recognized, so I can only use 2.0. It is in a semi-scrap state.
The official repair service is ridiculously expensive (2000+), so I am researching whether I can revive it.
Exploration Process#
Rhythm Games#
As a rhythm game enthusiast, the first thing I considered was playing rhythm games on it.
Unfortunately, the touch response of this tablet is the worst I have ever experienced, without exception.
I have tried various methods, including but not limited to:
- Using Moonlight+Sunshine to stream and play maimai, but the latency was too high and the multi-touch inputs were not recognized properly, making it impossible to play.
- Using Brokenithm to play CHUNITHM, but the multi-touch inputs were still not recognized properly.
- Installing FydeOS to play mobile rhythm games, but all of them had significant latency and noticeable lag.
Therefore, playing rhythm games directly is not feasible.
Visual Novels#
Since rhythm games are not feasible, what about visual novels with lower system requirements?
The answer is still no.
The reason is that the screen of the Surface Go2 is not the standard 16:9 1080P, but rather a 3:2 1920x1280 resolution.
This causes some graphical issues when running certain visual novels, such as glitchy windows or the games not launching at all.
The only solution is to set the resolution to 1920x1080, but then you have to tolerate large black bars at the top and bottom of the screen.
Android#
You may have noticed that I mentioned a term earlier, FydeOS.
It is a system based on Chromium OS, which is compatible with the Android environment and highly integrated. There is also a version specifically adapted for the Surface series.
However, the performance of the Surface Go2 is still unsatisfactory.
FydeOS Changelog:
Due to the special nature of Microsoft Surface hardware, an experimental touch driver solution that is still under development can only be used. This may result in less sensitive touch recognition.
Due to the special nature of Microsoft Surface hardware, the following features are temporarily not supported on Surface devices:
Camera
PIN login on restart
Furthermore, due to the poor performance of the m3-8100y and UHD615, as well as driver issues and translation, running Android applications on the Surface Go2 is extremely inefficient and has serious overheating problems.
Therefore, using it as an Android tablet is not within our consideration.
It's unlikely that anyone would spend thousands of dollars to buy a Windows tablet and then run Android on it.
Nothing To Do#
That's all, this article concludes.
Summary#
In short, it's not suitable for anything, and overheating and lag are its top issues.
There's nothing more to summarize.
This article is synchronized and updated on Mix Space and originally published on xLog at https://rikka.im/posts/misc/surface-go2-relife-project