How intriguing that both PowKiddy and Anbernic have decided to release new, low power handhelds whilst simultaneously teasing us with way more powerful devices. And how coincidental that they’ve both opted for the nostalgia aesthetic, sporting the Maroon and Gold of the Famicom controller. Behold, the PowKiddy Q20 Mini.

The cynic in me would say that both companies are scrambling to bring in some income whilst they work out the kinks with their upcoming flagships. But whatever’s going on, here we have yet another cheap, low power handheld to tide us over while we wait.

The PowKiddy Q20 Mini was rather abruptly brought on to the market a couple of days ago. It seems to be another AllWinner F1C100S based device which would put it in the same category as the Q90, V90 and PocketGo.

SPECS

Its tiny 2.4″ LCD sits inside a shell just 11.8cm wide. At 320×240, it’s not as high res as the panel Anbernic chose for their similar device. It’s also possible that the device will ship with the same screen tearing issues that other F1C100S devices have. Thankfully, there are community fixes for those other devices which minimise the effect, and I’m sure the same fix will be made available for the Q20 Mini too if needed.

The 1200mah battery claims up to 4 hours battery life, and you can charge it via a USB-C port on the top. All software and ROMs can be loaded via a microSD card slot on the top of the device, and a single set of shoulder buttons adorns the top corners. Strangely, all the buttons are labelled on the promo material except for the two buttons either side of the screen. Any guesses?

AVAILABILITY

The Q20 Mini comes in at a reasonable $40. If you’re in love with the aesthetic, or on the lookout for a cheap low power device this might be interesting to you. Personally I like the PocketGo the most from this class of handhelds, but if the build quality is good enough this one might be a good choice too.

The PowKiddy Q20 Mini comes in two colour schemes and is available on the official PowKiddy store at AliExpress now.

The post Here, Have Another One – The PowKiddy Q20 Mini appeared first on Obscure Handhelds.

The successor to GPD’s XD Plus has been a long time in the making. For a while there it seemed GPD had moved on to new pastures with their Windows based mini laptops and gaming devices. But here we are, the handheld once rumoured to be the XD2 has been officially announced, and will be known as the GPD XP.

MODULARITY AND CONTROLS

The GPD XP’s most novel feature is perhaps the modularity of the controller. As rumoured last year, the controller on the right hand side is detachable, and the reason for this seems to be for better support of MOBA style games. MOBAs are apparently often played using the touchscreen on the right side for camera controls. The modular slimline controller allows easy reach to the screen, as well as providing five additional action buttons. Alternatively, a blanking plate allows full use of the right side of the screen including any on screen buttons. Thank you to The Phawx for the explanation, I am old and haven’t a clue.

Of course, the GPD XP also has a conventional controller option, providing an additional analog stick, ABXY and start/select buttons. For Android gaming, the built in mapping software allows you to configure the physical controls to replicate inputs ordinarily done by touch. This mechanism for configuring physical controls for Android is well established already, and GPD implemented similar software into their GPD XD and G5A.

LCD AND EMULATION

At first glance, the GPD XP looks a lot like a mobile phone slotted into a snug fitting controller. The superfluous hole punch front facing camera certainly adds to that aesthetic, as does that crazy wide LCD. We know that the LCD is 6.81″, and looking at some phones with the same size screen it seems likely to be a 20:9 aspect ratio. Not all games machines make good emulation machines, and we already know that Android MOBA gamers are one of the target demographics for this handheld. For games such as those, having a wider screen is perhaps very beneficial, allowing a wider view of the action around you.

For emulation though, 20:9 is a really unfortunate choice. In traditional 4:3 aspect games, only 60% of the LCD would be used. This would leave 20% blanked out on the right and left side of the image. Even the few emulated systems with a 16:9 mode (PSP and some GameCube for example) would need black bars to display correctly.

Given that, it looks as though the GPD XP isn’t really designed with emulation in mind. Rather for native Android gaming and in particular FPS and MOBA type games. It’s a shame, even a 16:9 screen could have helped to bridge the disparity between these two gaming worlds. However, if you’re part of the target demographic then this form factor is probably quite enticing.

GPD XP SPECS

The GPD XP is due to run on the MediaTek Helio G95 SoC. This is an octacore processor and is far more powerful than the RK3326 found in the majority of current handhelds. Equipped with 6GB of RAM and a 7000mAh battery, the GPD XP can apparently run for up to 12 hours. It is worth noting that this CPU is probably not as powerful as those due in the KT-R1 and Odin. Whether either of those ever see the light of day is another matter!

Some more roughly translated specs, including the apparent inclusion of active cooling in the image below.

And in table form if you prefer.

PRICE AND RELEASE DATE

The GPD XD is due to go on pre-sale through an as yet unknown channel in September 2021. The price hasn’t been announced yet, but don’t expect RK3326 prices. I will update this article when more info is available.

The post Who Is The GPD XP Really For? appeared first on Obscure Handhelds.

As we wait in limbo for the first new generation handhelds to be released, Miyoo have decided to throw their hat in the ring with one of their own. The Miyoo P60 looks to be another fairly powerful Android based device coming soon.

Although not a very well known name in the West, we have seen a few handhelds manufactured by Miyoo already. The BittBoy/PocketGo and RK2020 line of handhelds were all manufactured by them. Whilst they have a very mixed track record, it’s fair to say that their most recent device, the Pocket Go S30, is a vast improvement on some of their earlier hardware. Whether that will translate into the Miyoo P60 too is anyone’s guess yet.

At the moment it doesn’t seem that the P60 will be branded with the BittBoy or PocketGO names. It could be that Miyoo are going out alone this time around.

MIYOO P60 SPECS

The Miyoo P60 will apparently run on the MediaTek Helio P60 (aka MTK6771?). This is a moderately powerful chip found in a handful of budget mobile phones. One of the spec sheets for the Miyoo P60 lists 32GB storage and 3GB of RAM bundled into a Samsung eMCP package. Graphics acceleration is taken care of by a Mali G72 running at 800Mhz. The G72 supports Vulkan 1.1 which will help in some more demanding emulators such as Dolphin.

Whilst the Helio P60 can only be described as moderately powerful, it offers much better performance than the RK3326. With 8 cores running at up to 2Ghz, it’s likely we’ll be able to get some GameCube emulation out of it.

The LCD is listed as a 4″ IPS touch screen panel but resolution is currently unknown. Additional storage is taken care of via microSD and the 4000mAh cell can be charged over USB-C. The leaked spec sheet lists support for both 2.4GHz and 5GHz WiFi networks, but Bluetooth isn’t mentioned.

Dual analog sticks are present the front of the unit, and it looks like we have R1/R2/L1/L2 on top. On the right hand side appears to be an analog volume wheel. The bottom right hand corner seems to be where the status LEDs are, disguised as a speaker grill.

The overall size of the Miyoo P60 is 163x67x18mm which would make it slightly wider than the RG351P. Given the larger screen, this seems to make sense.

MIYOO P60 PRICE AND RELEASE DATE

Currently both unknown, I will update this post when more information becomes available. For what it’s worth I think if anyone’s going to have a crack at the low cost market then Miyoo could be the ones to do it. I only hope that their hardware and Android build are good enough. Miyoo have at the very least built some prototype units already, so I expect we won’t be waiting too long for it to show up.

While we wait for more details, you can check out this video showing the Nokia X5 (same hardware) running a selection of GameCube ROMs, with some good results.

The post Can The Miyoo P60 Give Us More Power At A Lower Price? appeared first on Obscure Handhelds.

Anbernic have finally created a landscape RK3326 handheld with a 4:3 aspect ratio display. The Anbernic RG351MP has been rumoured since at least June and was considered to be cancelled, but is now confirmed and may even be available later this month.

It’s a bit frustrating that it took so long to do the blindingly obvious. The biggest complaint with the majority of RK3326 machines has been the weird aspect ratio and awkward screen resolutions. Most of systems that this chip can emulate support a 4:3 aspect ratio, yet it’s taken almost 2 years to get a landscape machine with a matching screen.

However, Anbernic have finally stepped up and delivered the goods. In much the same way as the RG350M consolidated everything good about every JZ4770 machine into one handheld, it looks as though the RG351MP (Metal Pro, apparently) sets out to do the same. There is a caveat though, and it means this might not be the last RK3326 handheld we’ll see from Anbernic.

ANBERNIC RG351MP SPECS

There’s nothing ground breaking about the RG351MP, rather it looks to be an iterative product that fixes one major gripe in the majority of previous landscape machines. The shell is very similar to (although potentially smaller than) the RG350M, which was my favourite of all the JZ4770 handhelds. Chunky and hefty but with a undeniable level of quality about it, this metal shell will apparently come in three colours for the RG351MP. The standard matte black version as expected, alongside “Ocean Blue” and “Mint Green” versions will be available on release.

The internals remain almost the same as all our other RK3326 machines including the RG351P, GameForce and Odroid-Go Super. The real difference comes with the addition of a 640*480 display, providing a 4:3 aspect ratio panel for the first time in this form factor. OCA laminated? Not sure yet but I would think so.

As is often the way though, it’s one step forward and one step back. Unlike the RG351M and RG351V, the RG351MP will apparently not have an internal WiFi chip. The cynic in me says they’ll release an RG351PP (Plastic Pro?) later on down the line and with WiFi onboard, but who really knows what their reasoning is.

PRICE AND AVAILABILITY

However, the RG351MP could draw a nice line under the RK3326 machines and may well end up being the one to have in this category. I can see people selling their RG351M and RG351P for one of these, and to be honest I might be one of them. Keep an eye on their AliExpress store and website for it if you’re interested.

The post Anbernic RG351MP – One Last Hurrah For The RK3326? appeared first on Obscure Handhelds.

It’s been a long time since Powkiddy first teased their powerful upgrade to 2019’s X18. Pre-orders have finally gone live for the Powkiddy X18S with devices due to start shipping in a few days time.

It’s a new era for handheld gaming, and there’s a long list of upcoming machines powered by a host of different SoCs this time. (Check the menu top right on desktop to see them). One of those is the Unisoc Tiger T618, a mid range octa core processor with two fast ARM Cortex A75 cores at up to 2 GHz, and six power efficient ARM Cortex A55 cores at up to 1.8 GHz.

Whilst this chip doesn’t fare too well against the Snapdragon 845 in the upcoming Odin from AYN, it does pack a punch. It’ll allow for very good PSP emulation, with a smattering of GameCube games being playable too.

We’ve known that the X18S was coming for almost a year but it has been delayed multiple times. The chip shortage woes probably played a part in this, but as things begin to ease up we’ll hopefully see a steady influx of new machines in the coming months.

The PowKiddy X18S is one of the first off the block. It’s the natural successor to their black clamshell X18 from 2019. It is built in what looks to be the same shell as its predecessor, albeit with a white and grey colour scheme this time around. The handheld will run Android 11, though some of the earlier promotional material is careful to point out that the Play store won’t be available out of the box.

POWKIDDY X18S SPECS

I am cautiously optimistic about the success of this machine. On paper it does a lot of things right, I love the clamshell form factor and we’re getting a powerful SoC running a current Android version with the X18S.

But the Android build of their previous X18 was a mess, and it took a long time for developers to manage to clean it up. I hope that the delays in releasing this machine may have allowed the factory to optimise the OS for the X18S. We’re just going to have to wait and see.

The PowKiddy X18S ships in the next few days from the official store on AliExpress. With a list price of $172.99 it’s by no means a impulse purchase for a lot of us, but if early reviews are good I might bite. There’s a coupon available at the link below with takes $5 off the list price.

The post The New Powkiddy X18S Promises GameCube In Your Pocket appeared first on Obscure Handhelds.

If you love the original GBA form factor like I do, feast your eyes on this! The Retro Dreamer G4A is a Raspberry Pi4 based handheld all neatly wrapped up in a Game Boy Advance shell. The G4A has some awesome new additions too, let’s have a look.

If you’ve had asked a year ago I would have guessed that the market would be absolutely swamped with CM4 based handhelds by now. For some reason though, the platform hasn’t really taken off in handheld form yet. In fact aside from the portrait mode LCL-CM4 I can’t really think of any that are available right now. Sure the GPi case and PiBoy offer the same performance, but they utilise the full RPi4 board rather than the compute module.

So it’s great to see that we finally have a landscape CM4 based handheld on the horizon, and what’s more it comes in one of my favourite shells.

WHAT IS THE RETRO DREAMER G4A?

At it’s heart, the hardware on offer here is a custom circuit board engineered to accept a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4. It’s been designed to fit inside the shell of the original GBA, with some slight modifications required to accommodate all the new bits.

Based on the Pi4s ability to play systems with more buttons than the GBA, the Retro Dreamer G4A also adds additional face buttons as well as some R2/L2 buttons round back. The device ships with a 3″ 640*480 display, although not all of that real estate is used. The original GBA has a 2.9″ display, so the image is scaled in to accommodate the smaller aperture.

A very nice side effect of using the GBA shell is that the batteries are replaceable. Requiring 2x user replaceable 14500 Li-Ion cells to power it means you can take a stack of pre-charged cells out with you and just swap them over when needed. No more dying Li-Po cells to worry about! I really wish other manufacturers would adopt this approach.

The G4A also comes with a custom GBA cartridge which contains the OS and, optionally, a WiFi module. The cartridge houses a microSD card, to which you can load your OS of choice.

Currently I am aware of ports of Batocera, EmuELEC and Lakka being worked on for this handheld. Of course Retro Pie will run on here as well.

Slaminger from techtoytinker is developing for this device too, which is a huge positive for anyone interested in getting one. As of yesterday he has a stable RetroArch 1.9.10 build running, with around 90 systems ported over. N64, Dreamcast and Saturn are all currently working on the G4A!

IS IT A DIY KIT?

The Retro Dreamer G4A is the work of Eddie from myretrogamecase.com. It’s not his first device, having released a CM3 version with 3.5″ screen already. This version only came as a prebuilt unit, because of the complexity of modifications required to build it.

The G4A is apparently a much easier device to assemble yourself, and at its cheapest the G4A does ship in kit form. This means you’ll be providing your own shell, buttons and CM4 module. The kit version allows you to decide whether to install an analog stick or not, and whether you want the L2/R2 buttons. If you want them, you can make the modifications to your shell and install them, otherwise just leave them out. It also means you can use any combination of front and back shell colours and buttons too. The choice of high quality cheap GBA shells is quite astounding these days!

There will be a detailed instructional guide available for DIYers to make the required modifications when the handheld ships. However there is a prebuilt option available too, which obviously costs a little more. The available colours haven’t been announced yet, but at the end of the campaign you’ll be able to choose before it is built and sent out.

The supplied GBA cartridge also comes in two forms, with and without WiFi. The WiFi version costs more, but will allow you to easily scrape boxart for your ROMs, as well as use stuff like retro achievements.

RETRO DREAMER G4A KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN

The G4A is now live on Kickstarter, and has already surpassed the first stretch goal. Some Youtubers have also received review units already, so it looks like all systems are go for this exciting new handheld.

Devices are due to start shipping out in December, with some variants shipping early 2022. If you’re planning to make a pledge, be sure to read the options carefully. As far as I understand it, only the prebuilt units come with a CM4 module.

The post The Retro Dreamer G4A Is A Supercharged Game Boy Advance appeared first on Obscure Handhelds.

As we know, Miyoo already has one new handheld up its sleeve. But evidently one isn’t enough! Short videos of the tiny Miyoo Mini have been doing the rounds on Baidu for a month or so now. Let’s have a look at this dinky little handheld.

If the P60 is going to be Miyoo’s flagship handheld, then The Miyoo Mini could be its little sidekick. The Miyoo Mini is a portrait oriented device, and although the full specs aren’t known yet, it does have a couple of interesting features.

MIYOO MINI SPECS

To cut to the chase, we don’t know what chip the Miyoo Mini will have yet. I have been told that it is close to that of the PocketGo S30, which either means it’s going to be powered by the same AllWinner A33 chip, or something similar. A source in contact with the factory told me that the performance is “similar to the AllWinner V3S“. A strange comparison considering we haven’t had any handhelds using this chip before.

But we can infer from these details that the Mini won’t be a flagship handheld. Its limits are likely be a very small handful of Dreamcast, PSP and N64 games. Most systems below these should offer competent performance if the rumoured specs are to be believed.

MIYOO MINI FEATURES

Although the specs are far from ground breaking, one of the Miyoo Mini’s nicer features is the LCD screen. On such a tiny little machine it’s very nice to see that the LCD is occupying so much of the upper half real estate.

The 2.8″ LCD is surrounded by very narrow bezels which almost touch the edges of the shell. And despite its small size, that screen is supposedly going to be a 640*480 panel too. Although 2.8″ is in the “too small” territory for many, it gives you some idea on the overall size of the handheld. It’s really small, and will be very portable.

The Miyoo Mini’s other standout feature is the stock OS. I was initially told that the Mini will dual boot an OS “like the S30” with Retroarch. From the leaked videos so far, we can see for sure that Retroarch is running on this machine. It looks as though the menu button takes you directly from game into the Retroarch settings. Whether the dual boot aspect will make it into retail units remains to be seen.

On the back of the unit we can see R1/R2 and L1/L2 triggers. They’re placed at a roughly 45 degree angle and to be honest they look like they could be quite serviceable. L2/R2 look to be raised slightly further from the shell than L1/R1 which should make them easier to hit. Also on the back it looks like there is a removable battery compartment. A rare sight these days, but a welcome one.

On the left edge of the Miyoo Mini we get a glimpse of an analog volume wheel.

BITTBOY UPGRADE?

The Bittboy and Pocket Go line of handhelds were (mostly?) all manufactured by Miyoo. The BittBoy and Pocket Go monikers were used for the western market, but in this case (and that of the P60) neither of those names are going to be attached to this product. Either the BittBoy/Pocket Go team have moved on, or Miyoo have decided they want to go it alone. Either way it should be known that Miyoo have a patchy track record of delivering products with a high quality of manufacture. Their previous device though, the Pocket Go S30, is probably the best quality product they have made yet.

It’s also worth noting that Miyoo do appear to be listening to their customers. I made a poll regarding Android and dual boot before their S30 was released, and the overall consensus was in favour of both. I do know that they saw the results of that poll, and for what it’s worth they are releasing an Android device. The Miyoo Mini is also at the very least rumoured to be a dual boot machine, so kudos to them for that.

MIYOO MINI RELEASE DATE AND PRICE

Word on the Chinese forums is that the Miyoo Mini will be available very soon, although no date has been given yet. As for the price? Historically Miyoo (Bittboy/Pocket Go) devices are very reasonably priced, and given that this one is not a flagship product we can expect a price to match. It all hinges on exactly which SoC they actually went with though, only time will tell.

The below is a collection of all available clips found on Baidu and Bilibili compiled into one youtube video. The video is not monetised.

The post The Tiny Miyoo Mini With Its Even Tinier Bezels appeared first on Obscure Handhelds.

Images recently surfaced of another new handheld due to be released under the PowKiddy banner. The Powkiddy Max2, sometimes referred to as the RGB10 Max2 remains shrouded in mystery for the time being.

The below images are all we have of the upcoming PowKiddy Max2 right now. I have contacted PowKiddy on AliExpress, and others on the RG Handhelds discord have done the same, to try and get some info on the hardware. We’ve all had the same response: the hardware is secret for now.

the Max2 name hints at this being a successor to the RGB10 Max, which depending on your outlook either means the same hardware in a new shell, or new hardware in a new shell.

If I’m honest the shell looks great, and I think they could possibly get away with one more RK3326 device because of it. Given the recent release of the X18S it does seem unlikely that they’re about to release another flagship type product. However it’s likely that the X18S has been ready for months, just awaiting the required components for mass production. They could potentially have been sourcing another flagship in the meantime.

The stacked shoulder buttons in particular look really nice, and the controller portion of the design looks very comfortable too. I am hoping another flagship is in the works, but deep down I think it’s unlikely. One eagle eyed discord user spotted that the I/O on the top edge of the device lines up with those of the RGB10 Max, which could mean it’s the same board layout. It also appears to be running EmuELEC, just like the majority of RK3326 devices do out of the box.

Given the meagre amount of information currently available, what do you think? Place your bets below.

I will endeavour to update this post as more info surfaces.

The post Will The Powkiddy MAX2 Surprise Us? appeared first on Obscure Handhelds.

Moorechip are about to release a bona fide upgrade to the RP2 utilising the same beautiful shell. If you’re already an RP2 owner, the Retroid Pocket 2+ upgrade might be exactly what you’re looking for.

The Retroid Pocket 2 was marred by a couple of issues, mostly down to design decisions rather than a lack of manufacturing ability. Running Android on that MT6580 processor with just 1GB RAM was always going to be a big ask, and pairing it with a non-touch enabled panel was an unfortunate decision too.

Along with a weird digital slider on the right side we ended up with a handheld that could have been great but ended up being OKish. But Moorechip look to be fixing this in the RP2+, and your old hardware doesn’t necessarily go to waste either.

RETROID POCKET 2+ UPGRADE

The Retroid Pocket 2+ will be available to buy as a prebuilt device, but there will also be a drop in replacement kit available for your original RP2 as well. This kit will upgrade your original RP2 with the RP2+ motherboard. Taki has already provided a video of what the kit comprises, as well as how to install it.

Interestingly this kit apparently won’t come with a touchscreen panel by default, but is available as an additional extra. The prebuilt RP2+ will ship with a touchscreen already installed though. The board upgrade looks pretty straight forward, but it remains to be seen what is involved in replacing the LCD.

The prebuilt Retroid Pocket 2+ will contain the same 640*480 resolution panel as its predecessor, but will be capacitive touch enabled. It’s also been mentioned that the “digital” slider on the right hand side is actually analog, just that the old hardware wasn’t configured to interpret it as such. Hopefully the new hardware will remedy this too.

The upgrade kit also ships with an acrylic case for your old RP2 motherboard. Bundled with it is a daughter board that allows you to power the RP2 motherboard from a USB cable. Plugged into your TV, your old hardware finds a new lease of life as an Android emulator box. In a world of throwaway electronics and e-waste I find this a really nice idea.

RETROID POCKET 2+ RELEASE DATE AND PRICE

Whilst the new chip itself is currently under wraps, we can see from Taki’s recent videos that performance is much improved over the old hardware.

It looks as though both the upgrade kit and the prebuilt RP2+ units will be available starting the 29th October. The upgrade kit will retail at $65, and the prebuilt Retroid Pocket 2+ devices will apparently be $99. For the performance we should get out of this device that price seems very competitive. On paper it looks like a worthy successor to the RK3326 based machines. I can see the Retroid Pocket 2+ being very successful and I can’t wait to get hold of one.

_{the featured image is a mockup based on the rp2. colours for rp2+ are not yet known. I guess we’ll find out on the 29th!}

The post Can The Retroid Pocket 2+ Right The Wrongs Of Its Predecessor? appeared first on Obscure Handhelds.

Analogue have been around since about 2012, they’re a company that specialise in re-creating classic consoles from scratch with the use of FPGAs instead of emulation. Their claim is that their machines support 100% of the console’s library (via original cartridge) with no inaccuracies, lag or other glitches. The Analogue Pocket is their take on the GBA and it looks fantastic.

It’s been two years since Analogue announced their FPGA based GBA clone, the Analogue Pocket. The world has changed a lot in those two years, and a combination of unfortunate factors has meant that the first lot of pre-orders are still due to start shipping out. But it looks like Analogue have a handle on things. They’re now confident enough to re-open preorders a second time for those still eager.

Sporting a similar design to the RG351V and RG300, the Analogue Pocket promises full input compatibility for GBA with the addition of 2 shoulder buttons on the back side of the unit.

If you’re wondering what the purpose of four face buttons is, the addition of a secondary FPGA for use by developers goes some way to explain it. The additional FPGA will allow programmers to recreate the hardware from another device, further broadening the scope of this machine.

You may also wonder how they plan to scale images correctly on this 3.5″ display. The Game Boy has a resolution of 160×144 and the GBA has a resolution of 240×160. Well, they’ve taken the “kill a fly with a shotgun” approach and bundled an insanely high 1600×1440 resolution display. That means that Game Boy will scale exactly 10x and although the GBA won’t integer scale into this resolution, the super high pixel density should mean that it’ll look fantastic never the less. Alternatively they may choose to scale GBA 6x such that it occupies a 1440×960 portion of the display.

ANALOGUE POCKET PRE-ORDERS

The first Pocket orders are due to start shipping soon, and if you missed that first set of pre-orders then prime your f5 key for the 14th of this month. Analogue have stated that orders from this 2nd round will ship anywhere between Q1 2022 and 2023! It looks as though you’ll have to wait to find out if you were fast enough for the Q1 2022 delivery, Analogue have stated fulfilment groups will be confirmed a few days later.

The price of the Pocket has also increased from $200 to $219. Supply chain issues and component shortages are to blame for this increase, but given the sheer amount of people clamouring for one of these I doubt it’ll have any effect on pre-order numbers on the 14th.

Check out their announcement for more info.

The post Analogue Will Reopen Pocket Preorders On December 14th appeared first on Obscure Handhelds.

It’s not all about raw power, as is evident by the buzz around Miyoo’s latest handheld. The Miyoo Mini is an evolution of the original BittBoy, and it’s a big step up for Miyoo in quite a few ways. Let’s take a look at what the Miyoo Mini has to offer.

I pre-ordered the Miyoo Mini on day one. For $52 it promises a lot for a very reasonable price. I’ve always had a soft spot for super pocketable gadgets, and this one fits the bill size-wise. Its compact size, along with the almost bezel-less high res panel and a previously unseen SoC make it quite appealing.

My shipment started moving on day two, and arrived at a distribution centre about 150 miles away from my place by the fifth day. It sat there for a week apparently waiting to clear customs, and finally arrived at my house after about 2 weeks.

The fun began when I opened the package to find that despite ordering a single white unit, I had been shipped two grey ones. After discovering that jutleys (rghandhelds.com) only received one unit instead of two, and having a chat with a very amiable Miyoo rep on AliExpress, we sorted things out. I was compensated to the tune of $10 to send him one of my units. Miyoo only opened their store in November and this is their first logistics challenge, so some teething problems are understandable.

I must admit their initial response was quite fitting and really cracked me up.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Miyoo’s previous handhelds have all been released under the BittBoy, Pocket Go and occasionally Wolsen brand in the West. This time though, for a reason that’s not entirely clear but which does inspire some confidence, they’ve applied the Miyoo brand to the product. Perhaps to distance themselves from some of their previous products, who knows.

The Miyoo Mini is a very small, budget friendly handheld with a 2.8″ LCD dominating the top half of the device. It is not micro in size, but it’s about as small as practically possible without sacrificing too much in the way of usability. It’s about 107g with the battery, and the battery itself weighs 32g. Obviously analog sticks have had to go, but there is a very nice L2/R2 implementation on the back of the unit.

The Miyoo Mini comes boxed up nicely in rigid cardboard box. There’s a landfill card reader, USB-C cable and instruction booklet in there too. It immediately feels like a quality product, the plastic moulding and general fit and finish are extremely good. The plastic texture is very fine matte, and the shell itself completely rejects any fingerprints.

It seems that Miyoo are quickly rising up to Anbernic level of craftmanship. The PocketGo S30 was also a nicely made device (with some caveats) and the Miyoo Mini is a far cry from the cheap feeling Bittboy from a few years ago. If you remember back to Anbernic’s first devices such as the RS97 and RG300, the build quality of their subsequent handhelds was much better. It feels like Miyoo are on a similar trajectory here.

MIYOO MINI LCD

The Miyoo Mini is advertised as having an IPS display, but it’s immediately obvious that if it is IPS it’s not quite as good as some rivals. The viewing angles, whilst fairly wide, quickly wash out unless you’re looking at it dead on. Colours don’t quite pop either, it seems like the contrast has been dialled down a bit. Word is that it’s the same panel as the BlackBerry 9900, so it is at least 10 years old.

Let’s not be too hard on it though. The reality is that we have a 2.8″ 640×480 bezel-less LCD in this device, and whilst it’s not mind blowing, it’s perfectly acceptable. It’s not OCA laminated, but the LCD sits extremely close to the lens. And crucially there is no noticeable ghosting or screen tearing. The colour temperature is good too, with no obvious weight towards either red, green or blue. The colours look very natural to my eyes, if lacking some vibrancy overall. I can’t figure out if the screen lens is plastic or glass but there is zero flex to it. I’m fairly sure it’s glass.

CONTROLS

My biggest worry with this device was the buttons. Some previous Miyoo handhelds have had unacceptably poor conductive membranes which fail to register inputs some of the time. The Miyoo Mini comes with a built in input checker, and I am pleased to report that all of the buttons on my unit register 100% of the time at any pressure level. Not only that, but the dpad is nothing short of amazing. It never registers a false diagonal, and it’s very similar to Anbernic’s RG280V implementation, albeit with a slightly lower pivot. Unlike the RG280V, it has more rounded edges which overall makes the Miyoo Mini dpad even better in my opinion.

Start and Select buttons are made of hard plastic, rather than the rubber finish you might expect from their Game Boy aesthetic. ABXY are perfect, pushing down with a noticeable but soft click. Round the back, the R2/L2 triggers sit slightly proud of R/L, making it easy to find them without looking. For adult hands it is much easier to hit R2/L2 than R/L. Compared to the RG280V, the Miyoo Mini is a more comfortable device to play overall, however hitting L/R is more difficult for me.

SOC AND LINUX SUPPORT

As previously mentioned, the Miyoo Mini contains a SoC not seen before in a handheld device. It’s a Sigmastar SSD202D, which is a Cortex-A7 dual core chip running at 1.2Ghz. Paired with just 128MB of DDR3 RAM and no GPU for 3D acceleration, it is no powerhouse.

It’s probably a bit more powerful than the JZ4770, and some of the included emulators offer similar performance. Having said that, the SSD202D is built on a 22 or 28nm process, compared to the 65nm of the JZ4770. This should mean better efficiency and potentially a longer battery life.

There is ongoing work to bring mainline Linux support to these chips. Whilst I could pretend to understand what’s required for this to happen, I don’t. As far as I understand, the biggest hurdle is lack of kernel sources, and a significant reverse engineering effort is ongoing due to that.

HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE CONFIG

The Miyoo Mini has its firmware stored on a NAND chip soldered to the motherboard. Emulators, ROMs, Applications, Images, Retroarch cores etc are all stored on a removable microSD card and are writable via a PC. Unfortunately for us, the USB port on the device is for charging only. There are no data lines connected, so it is not possible to view, read or write to the NAND via a PC. Developer shauninman has ported a version of Commander to the device which allows you to look at the contents of the NAND. Be careful if you’re poking around in there. It’s not yet known if all of the NAND contents are protected/read only. There is a chance that if you remove or edit the wrong file you could brick your device.

There are UART solder points on the side of the motherboard which may provide a way to recover from a bodged upgrade or corrupted NAND in future.

It’s very unfortunate that Miyoo didn’t connect any data lines to the USB port. From what I understand this would have made the process of updating and tinkering much easier. Presumably it would be much safer too.

SOFTWARE UPDATE

Performing a system update is apparently fraught with danger. It requires dropping a file on the root of the SD card and powering on the device !!using the USB cable!! before saying a quick prayer that it doesn’t brick your device. This has happened at least once. Reading the discord server is looks as though others have also had problems. Miyoo have released some update images that may fix a bricked device, but thankfully I haven’t needed to use them. Once the handheld is showing the battery charging screen, the update is done. It can take a few minutes. Unplug the USB cable and remove the update file from the SD card.

The latest update also contains a zip file for your SD card that you must unzip after updating and before your first power on. Re-insert the SD card and power on normally. It is recommended to use a high quality SD card rather than the supplied one, although I haven’t had any problems. Miyoo also recommend using a 5v USB wall plug, rather than a PC. These are the steps I followed, if this bricks your device I am not responsible!

If you’re unsure, please refer to the Miyoo instructions and make of them what you can. To me they’re as clear as mud thanks to Google’s translation.

THE OPERATING SYSTEM

Before we look at this, it’s probably worth noting that some eagle eyed code hunters have identified the OS as being strikingly similar to the stock OS on the TrimUI. It’s likely that the same software developers have provided Miyoo with the software for the Miyoo Mini. It appears to be largely the same OS albeit with a different skin.

STOCK LAUNCHER

This is where things start to get a bit messy. The stock launcher is a grid based system that allows you to select one of 13 pre-configured emulators. All of the usual suspects are present. These emulators are a mixture of standalone emulators such as picodrive and gambatte, and RA cores such as mGBA and Beetle. All of these have what is called a “Native Menu” accessible by hitting the menu button just underneath the screen. For the RetroArch cores the menu is a subset of RetroArch options, and the standalone emulators use the usual familiar menu.

Unfortunately making any meaningful changes to the settings of these emulators is hit and miss, with some crashing out to the main menu (SNES9x4D) and others simply refusing to accept changes you have made. For systems such as GBA, whilst the aspect ratio is correct there is a strange pixel filter applied to the image which is not possible to remove at all through the menu options. For some systems the image is scaled correctly but appears soft. This is possibly due to the image being rendered at 320×240 and then scaled to 640×480 using bilinear filtering.

A lot of these systems have an audio lag, with Snes9x4d and mGBA being particularly noticeable. Audio crackling is also an issue sometimes. Developers have potentially attributed this to a sample rate configuration problem which will hopefully be addressed in future.

RETROARCH LAUNCHER

Stock launcher aside, there is another custom menu for launching games directly which utilises native RetroArch menus. Out of the box both launchers point to different ROM locations, but this can be fixed on a desktop by editing the ROM path for each of the RetroArch cores inside RApp\<system>\config.json. Simply change /RRoms/<rom_path> to /Roms/<rom_path> for each core and save the file. The <rom_path> will have a different name between launchers, so look it up on your SD card first.

The RetroArch launcher comes with its own set of problems though. Only a few of the core options stick once saved. In some cases you’re stuck with the way they were preconfigured, and in most cases they could do with tweaking. For example, GBA is rendered at full screen in RetroArch rather than 3:2. Although that weird pixel grid effect is not present, you cannot correct the AR.

There’s a folder on the SD card called “buckup” which contains other RetroArch cores that don’t appear by default. You can copy and paste this out into the main directory and they’ll appear on the launcher. Similarly, for systems you’re not interested in you can cut and paste them into the buckup directory to hide them.

The aforementioned audio crackling and lag is also present in systems in RetroArch too.

All in all, for people that just want to pick up and play and aren’t too concerned with tinkering, overlays or aspect ratios then the stock launcher is quite nice. Performance differs between launchers in some emulators, but for the most part it does OK for the provided systems. I expect that most people reading this post are probably not in that category of gamers though. For us, the stock software is frustratingly unfinished.

CUSTOM FIRMWARE

As of December 2021 we don’t currently have a replacement for the supplied OS from Miyoo. Developers such as eggs and shauninman are working on this though. I suspect that in a few months the user experience for the Miyoo Mini will be vastly improved.

Shauninman is the developer that brought MinUI to the TrimUI, and is working on an evolution to that frontend named Union. MinUI brought many benefits to the TrimUI, including the ability to tinker with each emulators settings. From what I gather, Union is a rewrite of this work and will add features such as being able to choose from one of two different emulators for each system. You can check MinUI for the TrimUI here but have patience while he works on bringing Union to the Miyoo Mini. On a side note, he recently posted a link to this very useful aspect ratio calculator, so you can see the relationship between the LCD on your handheld and the system you’re emulating.

TriforceX is also said to be working on custom firmware for the Miyoo Mini. Currently there is not a lot to see at the github, but you can visit this page to retrieve a dump of the original firmware if needed. The firmware update provided by Miyoo is also hosted on this page. For those interested, there are a couple of super high resolution images of the PCB here too.

EXTRAS, BATTERY AND SPEAKER

The stock frontend also contains an Apps section, preloaded with OpenBor and a Chinese RPG whose name I can’t recall. This is also the section where you could add Commander if you want to poke around in the NAND.

The Miyoo Mini is powered by a ~1900mah replaceable battery of which replacements are plentiful. Battery life is between 5 and 6 hours which is excellent for a device of its size. The battery actually adds a substantial amount to the overall weight of the device.

The mono speaker is loud but shrill, and the volume is controlled by an analog wheel on the left side. The speaker does emit an almost inaudible pink noise hiss when on full volume. If you use the Settings to dim the screen there is also a whining noise from the speaker. This doesn’t appear to be affected by volume level, it’s just there. With brightness on full and the volume at a reasonable level I cannot hear any hiss or whine unless I put my ear to the speaker.

PERFORMANCE

I am confident that performance of this handheld will improve when custom firmware is released. It should be said though that in some cases it’s not as good as the JZ4770 yet, despite having a similarly powerful SoC. Overall the RetroArch cores perform better than those from the standard “Game” menu. If you can look past the inability to change RetroArch settings right now, you’ll probably have a better experience here.

This isn’t always the case, difficult to emulate titles such as Bloody Roar 2 for the PS1 seem to run well in the stock PCSX Rearmed emulator with frameskip set to Auto. Better than in the RetroArch core. However, it’s possible that better performance could be squeezed out of RetroArch with the ability to save configuration changes.

You can expect slight audio lag and crackle in most games, but I am less troubled by that than I am the incorrect scaling and AR.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Miyoo have excelled in the hardware department for this handheld, with one major oversight. They’ve set out to create a capable low budget device with a previously unused SoC and have succeeded. For $52 you are getting a highly pocketable, fairly comfortable mini handheld with a good high res panel. The controls are well thought out with a clever shoulder button implementation and excellent dpad. The overall build quality is superb, Miyoo have just about reached Anbernic levels of manufacture with this device.

But unless a surefire way to unbrick a failed update is provided, there are potentially going to be unhappy customers. I can look past the janky day one firmware, but the archaic update mechanism is beyond stupid.

For enthusiasts and tinkerers, the stock software lets it down right now. The reason Anbernic’s software is so polished is because community developers have done the majority of the work. With this new SoC and unfortunate NAND/MicroSD card configuration, it is going to take a while before we get the software improvements that will make this handheld really shine. As I wrap up this review, Miyoo have released a second update for the Miyoo Mini. This now includes Shauninman’s Commander program as well as some new cores and updated icons. Two official updates in as many weeks, quite commendable at least.

Stock of this handheld is very erratic. It seems that Miyoo underestimated the demand and are struggling to keep up. There are re-sellers on AliExpress that have it, but they are charging more than the $52 that Miyoo are asking. If you’re after one of these, keep your eye on the official store.

The post Great But Flawed, The Miyoo Mini Review appeared first on Obscure Handhelds.

Rumours that Anbernic would be releasing their own Windows powered handheld have been rife for a while, but we now have some solid proof. A video surfaced a couple of days ago showing off what will potentially be the Anbernic WIN600 handheld.

Whilst specs are currently absent, we can learn a few things from the limited information we do have. My eyes must be too old to make it out, but apparently if you squint hard enough you can see the model number WIN600 printed on the back of the unit at around 21 seconds.

This nomenclature implies that the handheld will probably contain a 6″ panel, but resolution is not currently known.

Looking around the device, there is active cooling by way of a fan mounted in the back of the unit. Air is drawn in from the back and exhausted through five large apertures on the top edge.

Also on the top edge is a USB 3.0 port and what looks to be a USB-C port. Presumeably this will be used for charging and possibly also video output.

CONTROLS

Stacked shoulder buttons adorn each side of the top edge. From the way they look it doesn’t seem as though they’re analog. If this is true it is the first obvious downside when comparing to the GPD Win 3, Steam Deck and the 2021 Aya Neo, which all have analog triggers.

The right hand side of the unit appears to show two buttons. The RG552 has its power button in the same location, and some people have reported accidentally putting the device to sleep whilst using it.

I hope that Anbernic either decide to move this placement, or recess the button far enough so that this doesn’t happen.

Old renders of the Anbernic WIN600 Windows handheld show that the buttons on this side are actually toggles for keyboard/mouse inputs and overlays. However, the old renders also show that the power button and volume are located on the other side of the device, which could potentially create the same issue. We don’t know how final those early renders were, so best to hold back judgment yet.

Without handling the unit in person it’s difficult to say, but looking at the renders and the leaked video it seems the analog sticks are very low down. Additionally, wouldn’t it make more sense on a powerful device such as this to have the analogs at the top rather than the bottom? Maybe on the left side at least. Time will tell how comfortable it is to use, but I have my doubts at the moment.

RELEASE DATE, SPECS AND PRICE

Price, release date and final specs of the Anbernic WIN600 Windows Handheld are yet unknown. It may be that Anbernic decide to release a few different variants at different price points. One thing is for sure though, it either needs to rival the power of its competitiors, or be much cheaper. The price of the RG552 came as a bit of a shock to many considering its lack of power. We’ll have to wait and see if Anbernic have learned a lesson from that!

The post Video of the Anbernic WIN600 Windows Handheld PC In The Wild appeared first on Obscure Handhelds.

The launch of last year’s GPD XP was mostly met with bemusement and frustration. So many unnecessary features, a lack lustre SoC and a high price relegated the device to a very niche market of gamers. But GPD haven’t given up on the XP line just yet, having just announced the GPD XP Plus.

It’s safe to say that the XP was a failure for GPD. Less than a year into its life, it looks to have been discontinued by the company. Their official site links to a dead AliExpress product page, and searching AliExpress for other sellers reveals very little.

GPD XP PLUS

But unless this is all an early April fools joke, GPD appear to want to keep the XP product line alive. They’ve just announced a new revision, now called the GPD XP Plus. If you were GPD, what changes would you make to the product? A normal width screen perhaps? Removal of that hole punch camera in the bottom left of the LCD? Get rid of the superfluous modular controllers? Maybe even a return to the clamshell design that so many people have begged them for. Any of the things that the internet said were weird and wrong about the product would be a great start.

Unfortunately we’re mostly out of luck, as GPD aren’t listening. The only notable upgrade is the SoC, now powered by a Dimensity 1200 (benchmarks page) from Mediatek. The GPD XP Plus looks to be a massive upgrade in raw power compared to the Helio G95 in the first revision, but unless I’m looking in the wrong places, nobody seems to care all that much. Their Twitter and Reddit announcements have hardly set the world alight.

I must admit, I would feel a bit sorry for them if it weren’t for 2 points. Firstly, they do know how to design and market products, their mini laptops and Windows gaming devices are usually very popular. There is demand for Android based gaming handhelds, they just need listen to their customers and build something that they want. And secondly, their behaviour towards AYN was incredibly unprofessional, allegedly accusing them of using second hand SD845 SoCs from reclaimed African cell phones in their Odin. Apparently a baseless accusation designed to damage their sales.

GPD XP PLUS SPECS

The GPD XP Plus was initially due to use a brand new gaming oriented chip from Qualcomm named the G3x. This is the same chip used in Razer’s handheld gaming developer kit. For reasons vaguely outlined by a GPD rep, they changed their minds and went with the Dimensity 1200 instead.

Along with the change in SoC, there will be some other minor improvements in the way of UFS 3.1 storage, faster charging and WiFi 6. It also looks to support video output via the USB-C port.

On paper this SoC looks to be pushing boundaries in terms of raw power. I can’t help but think that under different circumstances this might have been a big hit for GPD. As it stands, unless I am missing something, everyone is too busy playing with their Odin to care. If they pull off a miracle with the price, perhaps it will draw some attention, but another $350 device is not likely to turn many heads.

_{via liliputing, reddit, twitter}

The post GPD Announces Their New GPD XP Plus With A Faster SoC, But Nobody Seems To Care appeared first on Obscure Handhelds.

The Anbernic RG503 has made its debut in the form of some leaked images and specs. The RG503 looks to be a low to mid tier device with a couple of nice features, and a couple of apparent oversights too.

The RG503 is a definite move away from the aesthetic we’re used to from Anbernic. Gone is the smooth cornered rectangular look, instead opting for a shell reminiscent of another handheld from yesteryear. The recessed display and ridged lines remind me of the PAP KIII Plus, which was also an Anbernic product (before they were known as Anbernic).

RG503 SPEC

Front and centre of the Anbernic RG503 is probably its nicest feature, a 5″ 960*544 resolution OLED panel. Ring any bells? Yep, it’s totally possible that it’s the same panel as found in the PS Vita PCH-1000 model. Those screens are plentiful and cheap so it would make sense to use them. More so given how much nostalgia people have for the bright and vibrant OLED panel in that early Vita model.

Under the hood is another surprise by way of the SoC. The RockChip RK3566 is relatively new and contains a quad core A55 chip running at up to 2GHz. Released in 2020 as a mid tier SoC, it is likely very cheap and in good supply by now. It’s the first time we see the RK3566 in any handheld device, although it has been seen in a few Android TV boxes already. It isn’t going to push any boundaries, sitting somewhere between the RK3326 (too many to list) and RK3399 (RG552) in performance. For some idea, take a look at the benchmarks page here.

These renders of the top and bottom of the device show all the usual IO, including dual MicroSD slots and USB-C for charging and OTG. There’s also a HDMI output this time, something that wasn’t supported on RK3326 devices.

RG503 OPERATING SYSTEM

Early reports suggested that the RG503 would dual boot Android 11 and Anbernic’s own EmuELEC build. But Steve’s new video on the Tech Toy Tinker Company channel shows his dev unit with only 1GB of RAM. It may be possible to run Android on that spec, but it’s really pushing it. Those RK3566 TV boxes usually come with 8GB, and whilst that might be overkill, 1GB is paltry. Also Steve’s video makes no mention of Android as one of the supplied OS. He does mention JELOS as the OS he and developer fewtarius are working on bringing to the device. JELOS is already supported on a few of Anbernic’s other handhelds and shows promise as the new standard in future.

Perhaps retail units will come with more RAM and an Android build as default. We will have to wait and see.

The Anbernic RG503 will apparently also come with 5GHz WiFi and Bluetooth 4.2 onboard, as advertised in this short (unofficial?) promo clip.

The RG503 is due to be released any time soon, and you’ll find it at all the usual places. Pricing is not yet known, but I would expect to see it around the $130 – $150 mark. It’s a difficult one to get excited about, especially considering the existance of the Retroid Pocket 2+ which is a far more powerful machine at a very reasonable $100. But that big and beautiful OLED panel is going to turn some heads, so at the right price it may be a hit.

The post The Anbernic RG503 Showcases Another New SoC and OLED Screen appeared first on Obscure Handhelds.

Experimental Pi are a manufacturer of DIY Raspberry Pi powered handhelds and arcades. They were responsible for the PiBoy DMG back in 2020, and now they’re back with the PiBoy XRS DIY handheld.

The PiBoy XRS is one of two handhelds that were leaked last year when two unlisted pages were discovered on the Experimental Pi website. The listings were both taken down for a while, but one of them quickly returned and more recently was made available to pre-order.

A quick look at the one that didn’t make it. The CM4x was due to be built on the Compute Module version of the RPi4.

It may be that the dire supply shortages of the CM4 modules killed the handheld off before it was even announced. The CM4x renders showed it with 1:1 aspect ratio display. An unusual choice, but makes some sense if you’re into portrait mode arcade shmups such as Dodonpachi and Ikaruga. Perhaps once supply of the CM4 becomes stable Experimental Pi will launch this device proper.

PIBOY XRS

The PiBoy XRS however, did live to see the light of day. The main difference between these two machines is that the XRS runs off of a full size RPi4 SBC. This render of the top of the XRS shows that the RPi4 USB and ethernet ports are exposed. The kit ships with a blanking plate to stop them getting full of fluff and dust.

The XRS has dual analog sticks, stacked shoulder buttons and a 3.5″ 640*480 display. The battery is listed as 4500mAh, which might seem excessive but is definitely required in a device like this.

The bottom of the unit houses the headphone jack, USB-C charge port and HDMI output.

The PiBoy XRS also has active cooling built in, you can see the intakes on the back of the unit. The RPi4 certainly doesn’t sip power and combined with a fan that large LiPo will be required for a decent play time between charges.

The PiBoy XRS DIY handheld is available to pre-order now for $150. Whilst it says shipping soon there is no definitive date listed yet. If you’re interested in one of these be aware that you will need to provide your own Raspberry Pi board. They are slightly easier to source than the CM4 modules but often have their prices inflated when in stock, so hunt around.

The post The PiBoy XRS Is A DIY Raspberry Pi Powered Handheld Kit Shipping Soon appeared first on Obscure Handhelds.

Anbernic have upended their design language to bring us the RG503. Sporting a big and vibrant 5″ OLED and a new SoC, lets take a look at what they’ve created.

Anbernic’s flasghip RG552 was only released at the turn of the year, so to see another 5″ handheld released so soon is interesting. Whilst the 552 is a reasonable device, there’s no denying that it is power hungry, hot and expensive. The Anbernic RG503 however is more efficient, does not require active cooling and is also cheaper. And what’s more, it boasts the same OLED display found in the Vita PCH-1000. The folks at keepretro.com kindly sent me this unit, so let’s have a look at it.

ANBERNIC RG503 SPECIFICATIONS

The similarities between the RG503 and RG552 begin and end at the 5″ panel (actually the RG552 is slightly larger than 5″, and the RG503 slightly smaller).

The Anbernic RG503 is powered by a RockChip SoC previously unseen in any handheld devices. Released in late 2020, the RK3566 is a quad core Cortex A55 running at about 1.8Ghz. Coupled with a Mali G52 GPU it is a capable mid tier SoC that won’t be blowing any minds in 2022.

There are quite a few Android TV boxes on the market with this chip already, but one stark difference between those and the RG503 lies in the RAM config. The RK3566 supports up to 8GB of RAM, but at some point during development Anbernic decided that this device was not worth it. Bundled with just 1GB of memory, the RG503 is unlikely to ever run Android satisfactorily, and does not ship with Android installed.

The unit supports 5GHz WiFi networks and Bluetooth 4.2 and has a mini HDMI output on top. It charges via one of the 2 USB-C ports and OTG is supported through the other. There’s also a 3.5mm headphone jack on top.

The RG503 contains a slightly mean 3500mAh cell which from my week with the device seems to provide about 4 hours of gameplay.

CONTROLS

By now a familiar sight, the dual analog layout is standard fair for Anbernic. The sticks themselves feel great, with a wide range of movement and an L3/R3 function when clicked. They do require some thumb athletics to use and would be way more comfortable if they were further in and higher up.

The d-pad is unmistakably Anbernic, it feels nice and is responsive. I’ve always liked Anbernic’s d-pads even if they do tend to differ every so slightly from unit to unit. The grating reported by Taki is not a problem on my d-pad. However, it was apparent on the ABXY buttons when I first started using the device.

Plastic or paint dust has accrued on the easterly side of X and A, and there was occasional quietly audible grating during the first few hours of usage. But over time this has subsided, and I don’t notice the buttons grating or grinding any more.

Four linear shoulder buttons adorn the top edge of the device in typical Anbernic style. They’re clicky and a little loud, but fine. I have quite big hands and it’s uncomfortable to press L2/R2 with the tips of my fingers, but if I lie my fingers flat across the top so they overhang the triggers I can still hit them all reliably and semi-comfortably. L2/R2 are raised slightly higher than L1/R2 which makes it easy to feel them out blind.

The bottom edge of the device houses 2 speaker grills, 2 microSD slots, a reset button and an F (function) button. This serves as the hotkey and is placed in a very awkward place for making quick saves mid game. There’s no way of reaching it without taking one thumb completely off the controls. Also, the placement is so close to reset that you need to pay attention when you do. At one point I thought some hotkey shortcuts were crashing the system to desktop, but I realised I was occasionally hitting reset by accident. Doh. I guess it’s possible to remap it, but that kinda defeats the point in having a dedicated hotkey button.

OLED

It’s big, it’s beautiful and the contrast is really good. The viewing angles are great from every extreme angle and the pixel density is good enough. The colour temperature is on the colder side, but not so much that it’s very noticeable unless you do a side by side comparison. I hate cold white light in all its forms, but this panel doesn’t really bother me in that regard.

It is bright enough, although comparisons show that it’s not as bright as some of its LCD siblings. I did notice that even with the panel at 100% brightness, when you hit the power button to put the unit to sleep the screen momentarily gets a couple of levels brighter. I wonder if with some software tweaks it would be possible to squeeze a little more brightness out of it?

With a resolution of 960*544, the panel has an awkward resolution for anything more than 2x integer scaling on most systems. That basically means a 480px vertical resolution for a lot of systems, unless you can live with non-integer scaling. To be honest non-integer scaling isn’t so bad even with this mediocre pixel density. I still have nightmares about GBA on those 320*240 displays, it’s nowhere near as bad as that. And if it bothers you, most older systems can handle bilinear filtering without taking a hit on FPS.

• In the Game selection menu hit select
• Scroll to Advanced System Options
• Set smooth games to “On” to enable Bilinear Filtering
• Set Integer scaling to on/off to toggle using the full height of the display

DESIGN AND BUILD QUALITY

If you’ve got nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Or so the saying goes. I have no idea what the thinking was behind this shell redesign. To me Anbernic had pretty much nailed “the look” for their handhelds. Aside from the RG300X every one of their landscape devices since the RG350 is unmistakably Anbernic.

Opinion is divided and beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that, but I am not keen. Aside from the disadvantages of having a recessed screen (hard to clean in the corners and egdes), I am not even sure if I’m looking at a glass lens or if I’m looking directly at the bare panel. And that shell shape that kind of bulges out at the bottom, it’s just not very pretty. Their standard shell is far more attractive and no less usable. In fact the way the screen is assembled on their usual shell design, with the glass lens flush to the case, is far superior. There’s nothing wrong with the quality of the plastic or overall assembly though really. It feels solid and has a suitable heft to it without being too heavy.

The back of the unit has two additional bulges on each side where your unused fingers naturally lie. There’s a textured grip of sorts moulded into the plastic which feels nice and serves the purpose it’s there for.

OS AND PERFORMANCE

The Anbernic RG503 ships with their own build of Batocera, complete with thousands ROMs onboard a secondary 64GB MicroSD card (on my unit at least). To be honest I hadn’t noticed they’d switched from EmuELEC until it was pointed out to me.

Performance of the stock OS is not great. Few emulators are configured to use the aspect ratio supplied by the core, so that’s the first thing you’re going to have to do. Saturn performance is awful and Dreamcast and N64 lacklustre out of the box.

• In the Game selection menu for emulator hit select
• Scroll to Advanced System Options
• Set aspect ratio to “Core provided”

I naively loaded Burning Rangers (a notoriously hard to emulate Saturn game) which is unsurprisingly a slideshow. However Daytona USA, Radiant Silvergun and Galactic Attack all play pretty poorly too. For some reason in Sega Rally the F hotkey doesn’t register at all so you have to reset to quit. I know Saturn is a harder to emulate system in general and maybe I’m asking too much. Maybe with some more tweaking I could eek a playable FPS out of some games, but Anbernic should have done that before they shipped it out.

Dreamcast fairs better with many games running in the high 50s. Ikaruga feels buttery smooth after dealing with Saturn and Soul Calibur runs well too.

Mario Kart 64 on N64 runs as perfectly as I’ve ever seen it, however the analog stick could do with some deadzone tweaking to feel right. RR64 stutters in the mid to high 40s with crackly audio in every core I’ve tried. Yoshi’s Island on SNES runs at a solid 60FPS with any combination of filtering and shaders that I have tried.

I think it’s fair to say that whilst the RK3566 is more powerful than the RK3326, that extra boost is not fully realised on the RG503 yet. As is often the case though, this will improve with time.

ALTERNATIVE OPERATING SYSTEMS

Work is ongoing to bring JELOS to the RG503. This may be released as early as next week, but we’ll just have to be patient. We can probably also expect ports of ArkOS and RetroArena to the RG503 in due time.

The RK3566 has not had these OS ported to it in the past, so the developers need time to work out the bugs and bring us a stable and full featured OS. I would expect to see much better performance in most emulators once these systems have matured.

WRAP UP

Out of the box it’s hard to love the RG503, but it does have a promising future. There’s no denying that it’s wonderful to have that big vibrant OLED panel, and together with a gamut of mostly well executed controls the Anbernic RG503 is primed and ready. All that is lacking is a well polished OS with optimised emulators.

Going from the RK3326, the RK3566 isn’t going to add any new systems to its toolbelt. With the right support though, we can expect to iron out some of the wrinkles present in RK3326 handhelds. It’s a shame that Anbernic couldn’t demonstrate this out of the box, but we’re all used to that now.

Looks aside, I think the RG503 is going to be OK for those wanting a larger screen on an almost budget device. At around $130 shipped it is more expensive than those RK3326 systems but I think that is justified at this time in its life. The boost in power coupled with that lovely OLED panel is probably worth the extra cost for people that value those features. I do think that this performance level of handheld should be closer to the $100 mark though.

If the Anbernic RG503 tickles your pickle, it is available at all good retailers now. Acker from keepretro has provided a discount code which you can use to take $10 off the price. Simply enter rg503 at the checkout to apply it. This brings it to $129.99 shipped which is about as cheap as I’ve seen it anywhere, and $20 cheaper than the official Anbernic outlets.

Some or all of the links on this page are affiliated, which means I will receive a couple of dollars if you make a purchase from one of them. It doesn’t cost you anything more and helps to keep this site online. Thank you

The post The Anbernic RG503 Needs Love To Reach Its Potential appeared first on Obscure Handhelds.

What I would give to be a fly on the wall at Anbernic’s R&D meetings. The constant crawling iteration and arbitrary hardware and design choices are quite fascinating to me. Don’t get me wrong – cynical headline aside, the Anbernic RG353P seems alright, but the mind boggles at how they arrived at this product.

First things first, the Anbernic RG353P might look familiar to you. That’s because it’s quite similar to the PocketGO S30 shell design from early 2021. Any likeness is skin deep though, and the PocketGo S30 was not an Anbernic product. In fact the Anbernic RG353P is the second successive device from the company that strays from their usual shell design, favouring instead a shell reminiscent of the SNES controller.

ANBERNIC RG353P SPECS

The device that Anbernic released prior to this was the RG503, an RK3356 based machine running Anbernic’s own Batocera build. The RG353P looks like it’ll contain this same chip, but there’s one big difference on the SoC. Whereas the RG503 only has 1GB of RAM, the RG353P has 2GB.

This means that the RG353P will be able to run Android somewhat comfortably, and indeed it does ship with a dual boot configuration with Android 11 as an option.

What confuses me about Anbernic’s two RK3566 offerings is why they gimped the handheld with the big beautiful high resolution panel. The 5″ OLED in the RG503 would have suited Android’s touch controls perfectly, but by stuffing 1GB of RAM in it they ruled that out. Now they’ve done what they should have done to begin with, but used yet another weird looking shell and a tiny 3.5″ screen!

Of course, deep down we all probably know the real reason. It’s so that their next RK3566 iteration can bring back that lovely big panel AND run Android. But then they’ll probably forget WiFi or something ridiculous. It’s hard to know how many of these decisions are purposefully made. Either they do this intentionally to extend the product lifespan of their chosen SoC and draw as much money out of buyers as possible, or they do it because they’re not thinking straight. Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity and all that, but I’m really not sure.

ANBERNIC RG353P CONTROLS

Having said all of that, the RG353P does bring something new that people have been asking of Anbernic for a long time. Stacked shoulder buttons! Maybe they reverse engineered the stacked shoulder buttons from the S30 but regardless, it’s nice to see that they’ve finally done it.

The front of the device has the usual gamut of controls including dual analog, ABXY, start, select and a dpad. Additionally, there is a dedicated Function button to the left, and the power button on the right side. A little too close to ABXY perhaps, hard to tell. To boot into your OS of choice, you can set the default boot option in Batocera, and override it by holding F when powering up.

The top of the RG353P contains two USB-C ports, a volume rocker, a reset button and an HDMI port. The bottom contains two MicroSD slots, two speaker grills and a headphone port. Android will reside on the internal 32GB eMMC and Batocera (presumeably) on a microSD. I guess the second MicroSD card will contain your ROMs for both systems.

The back of the device has two circular rubber pads, which I am going to guess offer very little in terms of comfort or grip.

RELEASE DATE AND PRICE

Mercifully, it will cost less than their previous RK3566 device at $129.99 on launch. There is a page up on the Anbernic website for it already, and you’ll be able to pre-order on the 18th. Of course, we can expect the price to drop significantly within the first month or so.

The Anbernic RG353P comes in two colours, SNES grey and a a transparent dark grey. Who’s gona bite?

^{non-affiliated link}

The post And The Latest Hardware Combination Pulled From The Hat Is Called… The Anbernic RG353P! appeared first on Obscure Handhelds.

The KT R1c handheld has had a very turbulent couple of years in development, with many unforeseen obstacles and multiple hardware revisions. But things have started picking up pace in the past couple of weeks and many aspects of the KT R1c are now finalised.

It started back in November 2020 over on the Chinese forums. A user named niluanxy posted a long preamble about a device he was working on called the R1. Over the course of a few posts, we learned that this handheld was going to be quite different from anything available at the time. Of course November 2020 was a long time ago, and we now have the likes of the Odin, GPD XP+ and even the RG353P competing in a similar field. But the KT R1c stands alone in that it is the work of one man with a vision.

This device started life as the KT R1, and it was once planned for there to be two versions. I believe initially the plan was for a flagship R1 and a lesser powerful R1c. Over time though, focus shifted and as hardware availability changed the R1 was put on the back burner in favour of the R1c. But hardware specs of the KT R1c have changed over time as well, and the final product looks to be something completely new in the handheld world.

KT R1c SPECS

The KT R1c is still due to be released with multiple SKUs. Predictably, RAM and internal storage are among the variants as we often see with other devices. But interestingly, niluanxy has also spoken of a variant concerning the dpad/analog stick position. If there’s one way to stop people whinging about dpad location it is to give them the choice, I suppose!

Over its development lifespan niluanxy has settled on multiple different SoC choices for the KT R1(c), only to later discover that they were not available anymore or prohibitively expensive. Amlogic S922x was the original choice but a Unisoc T618, Snapdragon 845 and Unisoc T610 were also shortlisted at various points. Thankfully though, it looks like the brains of the device have finally been cemented. The KT R1c will (probably) be powered by a brand new SoC, the MediaTek Helio G99, aka the MT6789V.

The Helio G99 comprises 2x Arm Cortex-A76 cores up to 2.2GHz, and 6x Arm Cortex-A55 up to 2.0GHz. It’s paired with a Arm Mali-G57 MC2 GPU. This SoC is so new that currently there are no benchmarks available on GeekBench. It is pegged by MediaTek as a powerful gaming SoC, so on paper it seems like a reasonable choice. According to niluanxy, performance of this chip is better than the Unisoc T618 found in the PowKiddy X18S.

^{*4G comms only available on the 6GB RAM version and above
*35W fast charge only available on the 6GB RAM version and above}

Other features such as GPS, ambient light sensor, distance sensor, electronic compass, gravity sensor, NFC, six-axis gyroscope are subject to cost at a later date. The 6GB model will apparently include all of these, whereas the lower models may only include some.

LCD

The KT R1c is set to use a 4.5 inch 1620*1080 IPS panel, with a ratio of 3:2. The perfect GBA ratio, but usually not so great for other systems. However, that ridiculously high resolution panel will do wonders for image scaling. We will have to put up with some narrow black bars in both 16:9 and 4:3 emulated systems though.

The panel has 5 point capacitive touch and a 120hz refresh rate. Niluanxy himself has stated that the screen is the same as the ones used in the BlackBerry KeyOne.

KT R1c OPERATING SYSTEM

The KT R1c handheld will run Android 12 out of the box. Back in february there was a short video shown of a custom launcher in development for the KT R1c. Whether or not this will still ship with the device is not know yet.

ROADMAP, LAUNCH DATE AND PRICE

Earlier this year Niluanxy launched a simple website with a timeline of development dating back to the beginning of 2022. Although this project has been going on way longer than that, things are finally moving at pace and much of the doubt around hardware specs has been resolved now.

The PCB design is in testing by MediaTek and the shell is also completed.

Niluanxy has purchased at least some of the processors from MediaTek already, so it does look like this device is past the point of no return now.

Pricing in China begins at around $150, presumeably for the model with 64GB storage and 3GB RAM. That price will probably translate to more like $170-$180 shipped. Obviously the models with more storage and RAM will cost much more too. Assuming this SoC rivals the likes of the Dimensity 900, 1200 and Snapdragon 845 in GPD’s and Ayn’s offerings then I think this price is OK.

The KT R1c will be launched on IndieGoGo in around a month, with shipping to follow. It’ll also be available to buy directly on his website at some point (although whether that’s the same site I linked above I don’t know).

The KT R1c handheld is the dream of one talented man working with a factory in China to get this device brought to life. Although this is his first foray into handheld manufacture, he does have a project under his belt already. The GPD Win2 aftermarket cooler was engineered and manufactured by him, and successfully funded on IndieGoGo last year.

THOUGHTS

I will always back the guy that goes it alone and tries to do something that no-one else is doing. Whilst this market is getting crowded now, the KT R1c represents more than just another gaming machine. I cannot imagine the blood, sweat and tears he must have shed to get this far, and it really looks like it’s reaching the final leg now.

On a more objective note, I think the 4.5″ screen is a great size for a device like this. I find the Odin a little too large, the RG353P way too small for Android gaming and the GPD XP+ is just insanely wide for some reason. This looks to be a nicely compact device but with a large enough screen that doesn’t waste any space in the shell. I am looking forward to seeing the benchmarks for the MT6789V.

I wish niluanxy all the best with his endeavour, and I’ll be keeping my eyes open for the IndieGoGo campaign soon.

The post What We Know About the KT R1c Handheld appeared first on Obscure Handhelds.

Things are hotting up in the Windows handheld space. Anbernic are set to launch their first Windows machine any day now, and Ayn have a slew of Windows machines in the pipeline too. The Ayn Loki Zero is the newest member of the Loki family, and looks to be competing directly with Anbernic’s Win600.

Just a day or two after Anbernic confirmed the specs of their Win600, Ayn quietly added another member to the Loki family of Windows handhelds on their website. Coincidentally or not, the specs of the Ayn Loki Zero are very familiar.

AYN LOKI ZERO SPECS AND PRICE

Powered by the same AMD 3050e as Anbernic’s Win600, the Ayn Loki Zero also contains a similar 6″ 720p IPS panel to the Win600. There are some differences in the configuration though, and these go some way to allowing for the $200 base price.

Unlike the Win600, the Loki Zero only comes with a single 4GB stick of RAM included. Most would argue that 4GB is the absolute minimum to run Windows 10 comfortably. In many cases this will be a huge barrier to running more demanding games. Unlike the Win600 though, the motherboard in the Loki Zero supports dual channel memory. For an additional $13 you can add a second 4GB module to your order, which will very likely allow the Loki Zero to outperform the Win600 due to this dual channel configuration.

This brings the device cost up to $212. But wait, there’s more. Whilst the Win600 comes with a 128GB or 256GB M.2 SSD drive installed, the Loki Zero comes with a slower 64GB eMMC by default. For an extra $22 you can add a 128GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD, or source and fit your own at a later date. The Ayn Loki Zero also contains a microSD slot so you can add additional storage to the device.

With these additional modules, the price increases to $234 before shipping. The cheapest shipping option for me to the UK is DHL at $53. All of a sudden that $199 handheld is $287, and that’s assuming you get away without having to pay import taxes on it. Whilst Anbernic have yet to officially announce the price of their Win600, various leaks have suggested that the pre-order price will be around $375.

WIN600 OR LOKI ZERO?

Assuming for a moment that the Anbernic price leak is accurate, Ayn’s offering is by far the better option on paper. Not only are you getting dual channel memory, but also a better controller layout (opinion) and additional storage in the form of a MicroSD slot. The Loki Zero also has RGB LEDs, if that’s your thing. And to top it off, it costs almost $100 less.

Of course unless you like a gamble, it would make sense to wait and see. 2022 is seeing Windows machines being announced at a blistering pace, and they’re all essentially competing with the power and price tag of the Steam Deck. It’ll be fun watching it all unfold.

The Loki Zero should in Q4, and the prices listed here are for pre-orders. Available to pre-order now from ayntec.com

The post Ayn Loki Zero: Ayn Takes On Anbernic With Their Own Affordable Windows Handheld appeared first on Obscure Handhelds.

The Retroid Pocket 3 is the successor to Retroid’s budget oriented RP2+ from 2021. With a high-res widescreen and Android 11 you’d be forgiven for expecting a high price tag, but at $119 it sits nicely in the low-mid tier bracket. So what’s the catch?

Retroid have got a knack for developing good looking handhelds with an almost impulse purchase price tag. The Retroid Pocket 3 has been on the horizon for months, and we’ve sat patiently waiting for something that offered a little bit more than the slightly underwhelming 2+ did.

Whilst the 2+ had a few things going for it, it was hindered by a small screen, less than perfect controls and an entry level Android capable SoC.

RETROID POCKET 3 SPECS

The good news is that the Retroid Pocket 3 replaces that small panel with a widescreen touch enabled 4.7″ 16:9 display. The slightly strange resolution of 1334*750 can be explained by the fact that many iPhones up to the iPhone 9 used this size and resolution, so the panels are probably cheap and plentiful right now.

The bad news is that the Retroid Pocket 3 uses that same Unisoc T310 SoC as found in the RP2+. Whilst Retroid claim a 20-30% performance increase from the 2+ due to a newer Android implementation, it’s not guaranteed that this will translate to a noticeable real world difference in emulators. It speaks volumes that the performance gains graphic shown on the Retroid site compare the RP3 to the RP2, not the more recent RP2+.

There are two variants of the Retroid Pocket 3 though, for an extra $10 you can grab the 3GB model. That’s 1GB extra than the base model and the RP2+. This may actually make a difference, however it’s worth noting that the Android 11 system uses more RAM than Android 9. Again, it remains to be seen how this translates in the real world.

CONTROLS

Looking at the front of the device you’d be forgiven for wondering where the start and select buttons have gone. In their infinite wisdom, the Retroid engineers have actually put these on top of the device next to R1/R2. RetroArch Hotkeys be gone.

The Retroid Pocket 3 comes with a similar L1/R1/L2/R2 implementation as the RP2+, but also adds clickable analogue sticks for L3/R3. As well as a newly updated launcher, which was actually one of the nicer features of the RP2+, the RP3 has all the usual I/O including HDMI, microSD, BT5.0, 5Ghz WiFi and 3.5mm audio jack. The device is powered by a 4000mAh cell which is the same capacity as the one in the RP2+. Given the higher demands of Android 11 and higher resolution panel, battery life may be slightly shorter than the RP2+.

The 3GB model comes in at $129 and with $15 shipping to the UK puts the price tag at $144. There are a few colours to choose from, pretty much the same colours available when the RP2+ went up for pre-order and the addition of a white/grey model. Shipping starts towards the end of August and I’m sure our favourite YouTubers will have reviews out soon.

The post The Retroid Pocket 3 is Here appeared first on Obscure Handhelds.