Finally, after many leaks, and a tease last week the GoRetroid team has officially revealed the Retroid Pocket Flip.
The Retroid Pocket Flip is an upcoming clamshell handheld emulator made by the company behind the infamous Retroid Pocket 3+.
Previous leaks look very similar to the final product, indicating that the rumoured Retroid Pocket vertical GBC style leak could become a reality.
What’s new with the Retroid Pocket Flip?
Well, the mot obvious is design. It’s not often we see a new clamshell handheld being released, Powkiddy and GPD have tried it in the past, but its the first time we are seeing a hopefully “affordable” take on the design.
GoRetroid have a habit of under pricing their competition and packing their handhelds with enough power to make it a worthy investment.
The clamshell looks like it’s made of a high gloss plastic, and shuts flat with added grips around the screen to prevent wear and tear. The lid has a rounded aesthetic to it which I personally dig.
They seem to have kept with the trend and are using flared shoulder buttons for comfortability, alongside smaller R3/L3 buttons for you to map, indicating that this could have better performance than its older handhelds allowing it play the best Gamecube games and maybe the best PS2 games, but its too early to tell as they have not revealed specs as of yet.
The shoulder buttons raise out of the handhelds shell, this is likely to add comfortable ergonomics and allows them to add bigger buttons in general, so it won’t lay flat on a desk.
It features a USB-C port, a headphone jack, and a mini-HDMI port for you to connect it to a display. Hopefully it features bluetooth so that you can hook up a wireless controller too.
Because the lid needs to close, the analogue sticks are flat, and are set within the shell, also known as “sliders”, these aren’t the most comfortable sticks on the market, but it looks like we’re stuck with them as there’s no way around it, unless they twist and pop out somehow?
It’s likely GoRetroid will use the same buttons from their previous handhelds to use on the Retroid Pocket Flip, even if the images and video below looks different.
Their previous buttons worked well, but were a little small, so perhaps they will change it, who knows!
It looks like we have a start/select button on the chin, with a place to grip your screen to flip it open. Volume buttons are likely to be located on the side, along with a reset button, a headphone jack on the front and a TF card slot.
On the bottom you can get a closer look at the design, alongside a look at screw location and fans.
This Retroid Pocket Flip shows off a “limited edition 001” logo, indicating that there could be certain limited edition consoles that are potentially numbered for early birds?
Perhaps its just the red colour that is limited edition? This is the only variant they have shown, so it’s hard to tell what makes this version limited.
Overall I am impressed with how it looks, yes I know it’s a render and it’s likely to look a little different upon release, but in terms of design, this is all you need in a clamshell product.
I just hope they don’t release a Retroid Pocket Flip+ six weeks later like they did with the Retroid Pocket 3…
We will update this article with more information once we recieve it.
A 29 year old fella that’s had a Gameboy addiction ever since he was a child. Brandon is the founder of RetroDodo and created a YouTube channel with 240,000 subscribers dedicated to retro gaming products. He now wants to create the No.1 site to showcase the latest retro products from around the globe.
