Is it like that just by touching it, or do you get that sensation when the thumb stick is pushed all the way forward (so the stem is in contact with the shell)?
If the former, then I don’t have any advice since I haven’t felt it myself.
If the latter, and it feels almost “grainy” or rough when moving it side to side while pushed all the way forward, then mine had the same issue. I fixed it by buying some cheap joystick protectors on amazon. Now they feel totally smooth at all times, it was just a rough edge on the shell rubbing against the joystick stem.
I can’t help but feel like Valve has somewhat dropped the ball by not releasing it yet, at least for other handheld manufacturers to use in their own devices. As it is, the Steam Deck is the only handheld PC that I know of that uses linux, and all the companies jumping on the bandwagon with competition are all using windows. It feels to me like Valve’s attempt at making linux the de facto standard handheld OS for gaming devices has slipped away by now, which is really unfortunate.
Of course, the Steam Deck is still the most popular handheld gaming PC (in large part I’m sure due to low cost and the convenience of SteamOS) so it’s not like it has been a failure at getting more gamers on linux, but I’d guess that if they released SteamOS 3 alongside the Steam Deck it would have made a much bigger dent in the market.