Although we still don’t have any renders of the upcoming Anbernic RG552, pieces of information are leaking out slowly. The RG552 appears to be a way off yet, but lets have a look at what we might expect in this new handheld.
Firstly, the model number of this device tells us some things. A year or so ago a chart was posted on Tieba Baidu that attempted to explain the naming convention for Anbernic’s handhelds. Not everything from that lines up with the leaks about the RG552 though. Whilst the 5.5″ display has been confirmed, it doesn’t look as though the chip will be made by MediaTek – but it won’t be JZ4770 or RK3326 either.
LCD
The LCD is said to be a 5.5″ HD display with a ratio of 5:3. That’s somewhere between 4:3 and 16:9 in terms of width. We don’t know the resolution, but it has been referenced as being an High Definition display, and Max Zhou claims it has a resolution “over 1000”. Whether that’s height or width is unknown as yet.
The image below was posted on Tieba Baidu and is purportedly the LCD that will be used in the RG552.
Max has also said that it’s a cell phone display.
Since it’s a cell phone display and we know the aspect ratio, we can take a guess at the resolution based on this list of mobile screens that it might be 1280×768. That page is out of date, so it could be that there are common screens with a higher resolution and the same AR now. Given this info, it’s also possible that it’s a touchscreen, but no-one has confirmed it yet to my knowledge.
CHIPSET
Despite the buzz around RockChip’s new RK3566, the RG552 will apparently contain a much older chip known as the RK3399. First released back in 2013, the RK3399 is actually a more capable chip than the RK3566 but is more power hungry and runs hotter. A comparison below courtesy of gadgetversus.com.
| Processor | Rockchip RK3399 | Rockchip RK3566 |
|---|---|---|
| ISA | ARMv8-A (64-bit) | ARMv8.2-A (64-bit) |
| Microarchitecture | Cortex-A72, Cortex-A53 | Cortex-A55 |
| Release date | Q1 2016 | Q2 2020 |
| Lithography | 28 nm HKMG | 22 nm |
| Cores | 6 | 4 |
| Threads | 6 | 4 |
| Base frequency | 1.5 GHz | 1.8 GHz |
| Turbo frequency | 2.0 GHz | - |
| Energy cores | 4x ARM Cortex-A53 @ 1.5 GHz | - |
| High performance cores | 2x ARM Cortex-A72 @ 2.0 GHz | 4x ARM Cortex-A55 @ 1.8 GHz |
| Cache memory | 1.512 MB | 256 KB |
| Max memory capacity | 4 GB | 4 GB |
| Memory types | LPDDR3-1866, LPDDR4 SDRAM | DDR3, DDR3L, LPDDR3, DDR4, LPDDR4X |
| Max PCIe lanes | 4 | 1 |
| TDP | 7 W | 5 W |
| GPU integrated graphics | ARM Mali-T860 MP4 | ARM Mali-G52 MP2 |
| GPU execution units | 4 | 2 |
| GPU shading units | 64 | 32 |
| GPU base clock rate | 350 MHz | 850 MHz |
| GPU max clock rate | 700 MHz | 950 MHz |
| (Android 64-bit) Geekbench 4 single core | 1144 | 756 |
| (Android 64-bit) Geekbench 4 multi-core | 2776 | 1997 |
It has been rumoured that designing a console around this chip was first on the cards in 2020, but heat dissipation was an issue. It’s probable that the RG552 will require a fan to aid cooling.
There was a video released God of War for PSP running on this hardware at around 30FPS back in April. Up until now, this game hasn’t been possible on any Anbernic’s machines, or indeed any other budget devices.
There’s potential for some Gamecube emulation on this chip too. There is a single board computer named the Rock Pi 4 that contains this same chip and there are videos of Dolphin running some games at an acceptable speed on it. Of course, a lot depends on which OS Anbernic decide to use and how it is implemented.
OS
Whilst there is one shot of the UI doing the rounds, we don’t know yet what OS Anbernic intend to use on the RG552. It is speculated that it’ll either be Android, Batocera or RecalBox since all are available for this chip. If it’s Android, it’s possible Anbernic are developing their own launcher for it.
OTHER BITS
It has been said that the RG552 will have HDMI output, stereo speakers, dual analog sticks and dual MicroSD card slots. There are still many things we don’t know yet, including but not limited to the below:
- Price
- Release date
- Form factor
- Cell size / battery life
- OS
- RAM
I really wanted to wait until there were some renders of this device doing the rounds before posting it. The Anbernic RG552 looks to be a long way off yet, and the current chip shortages presumably aren’t helping either. However, the hype around this one is so strong I thought I might as well post about it. I’ll update this post as and when new info comes in.
The post What We Know About The Anbernic RG552 appeared first on Obscure Handhelds.