There’s a lot in the pipeline I’ve been working on over the past few weeks: From writing projects, overhauling my professional websites and revamping my personal ones, and preparing several new products for review (more on that soon), I’ve hardly had the time for a blog post.

Today is just a shortie; as I just launched my new Overlay Database, where I’ll now be hosting my fancy RetroArch bezels. For those not in the know, I design and make these for all kinds of resolutions and consoles, and take requests for anything that might be missing. It started as just a couple overlays for the Brick’s XGA display, but over the past few months it was getting to the point that I couldn’t even navigate the GitHub’s cramped README anymore.

So, I spent the last couple weeks theorizing and designing Overlay Database to keep everything in one snug home, fit with filters and toggles to find exactly what you’re looking for, free of hassle. You can download both the .png and .cfg files for any overlay with a click, and everything is pre-configured!

I was really excited to get this all working. Hopefully in the future I’ll be able to squeeze another hundred overlays or so onto here!

Coming up I’ve got a handful of projects that I’m really excited to share more on. I’ll be out-of-state for a couple weeks in August, though, so it might be another dry spell between posts. I hope the wait ends up being worth it!

Until then, enjoy!

If you’d like me to review a product, email me: me@jaw.fyi

I’m not one to get hopeful when it comes to anything that goes on in the DMV, but I think the last couple weeks are finally making me want to believe in Washington, as far as the game of basketball is concerned. But seeing the moves the Wizards have been making during this offseason has me thinking they might be getting ready to unload the clip.

Not every choice is the one I would have made: DeAndre Ayton did not prove he’s a competent starting center last season in L.A., nor am I super comfortable with just how much money is being paid to two superstars who are notoriously always dressed in anything except their team’s jersey when sitting on the bench. Despite that, the fact that the Wizards are actually signing players with playoff experience, and seemingly keeping them, excites me beyond comparison.

I’ve not been a basketball watcher for a very long time: It was my brother who got me into the game when I watched his middle and high school games when he was younger. He’s still my favorite player of all time, and that likely won’t ever change now that he’s playing on an NCAA D2 team. The exposure to the game, though, led me to root for several NBA teams (and even teams in other countries)…just not for my home team.

I’m from West Virginia, not D.C.. I’ve not even lived in the surrounding areas like Baltimore where the Bullets were originally based, but technically speaking, the Wizards are still my “home team” as they remain the closest NBA team to my physical location. I had to watch the Celtics when I wanted to actually see a team win, but I’ve always wanted to see my team be a winning one.

After the tanking debacle of last season, the changes that were implemented seem to be positively impacting the Wizards, at least from my standpoint. Getting the no.1 pick in the draft, which became AJ Dybantsa, was an amazing swan-song of D.C.’s tanking era that has seemed to last so damn long. But now that it’s not going to be a viable strategy anymore, I’m hoping that now is the time I’ll finally be able to proudly wear a Washington jersey.

When the Wizards acquired Anthony Davis from Dallas before the deadline last season, I think almost everyone (including me!) assumed that he was, like so many other “Wizards,” just here to serve as a trade piece. I still think that about D’Angelo Russell, in all fairness, but it seems that AD is destined to suit up after all. Last season was less of a situation of keeping your marketable goods from getting damaged, like so many genuinely good players to come through have been. The contract is still a holdover from the Lakers, which is likely much higher than he’d command on most teams that don’t have LeBron James on them. But he’s a once-and-a-lifetime player, regardless of his medical history, and Will Dawkins seems serious about playing him.

The Trae Young contract was a little bit iffy to some, with the number he actually got in the signing a little high for some people’s liking. I agreed, initially, but am willing to put up with it if he can prove to be injury-resistant…or as least less injured than AD. But any championship team needs an experienced playmaker like him; if he’s able to gel with the rest of the gang the bottom stretch of the next season, I think he’ll more than prove his $212M worth.

Even as short of a time as I’ve been into basketball, I can recall players I genuinely enjoyed watching play, or that ended up proving themselves on playoff teams later on. Marcus Smart has had a sort of resurgence since his injury and subsequent purgatory in Memphis, and Kristaps Porziņģis ended up winning a chip with Boston in that very same trade. On the same hand, we’ve had some real stinkers in red, white, and blue. The Kuzma era was nearly unwatchable. But like any other high-profile trade target, they were all on their ways soon enough, to new teams and new teammates.

Today, Khris Middleton was signed-and-traded back to the Wizards from the Mavs, where he was originally part of the package for AD last deadline. His games as a Wizard weren’t remarkable, largely because the team itself had absolutely nothing to offer Middleton. He and CJ McCollum (architect of the awful CBA which has ruined so many past championship teams) were stars in their own right on that otherwise pathetic roster. Khris was lower on the scoring totem pole than CJ, and certainly lower than his averages when he was a Buck during their championship run in 2021, but he’s still a real player with the experience to make a difference on this new-look Wizards.

CJ McCollum was an incredible Wizard throughout his short tenure, and someone I wish we had back after his performance with the Hawks.

All of these signings together, combined with getting Dybantsa at no.1, make the Wizards seem like they might be trying to compete for the first time in a while.

To put it into perspective, let me compare what the starting 5 looked like last season opener:

This October, we may well be looking at this lineup:

That’s a different team altogether. There’s still some want for depth at the 2, as other than Trae, most of the guards are younger and still inexperienced. Coulibaly has been the one I’ve been wanting to succeed, however. I think he has the chops.

They’ve even added some depth in the coaching position. Pat Ewing just signed on to be an assistant coach, and that kind of input is something you really can’t put a direct number on. I’m incredibly excited for what’s to come with this crew.

All of that said, there’s still three and a half months before any of these current Wizards can trot out onto the court. Any of them could be on their way to a new team by then…but any of them could turn a profit in trade for Washington. Having seen these many moves and the upward-trending direction the Wizards have been headed, I’m going to put some trust in Will Dawkins for the time being. I hope to be sitting in Capital One Arena, come April, May…and maybe even June?

If you’d like me to review a product, email me: me@jaw.fyi

Nearly two years ago now, Retroid released the ill-fated Pocket Mini: A handheld originally launched with what was supposed to be a 3.7” 960p OLED panel, but that was soon outed to actually be the now-common LG Wing’s 1240x1080 3.92” panel, covered with bezels to create a faux 4:3 screen that did not play well with shaders and other graphical effects. The community figured out soon enough what had happened, and they were not happy about it.

The Pocket Mini V1 panel, showing part of the screen covered with an artificial bezel. (Image credit: YveltalGriffin on BitBuilt)

Retroid’s response was initially to deny the issues, or to suggest that they were driver-related, despite knowing full well what was going on. That was obviously not the right response to make at the time, but after the bad publicity from their initial replies, the company buckled down and genuinely fixed the issue. The Pocket Mini V2 came out shortly thereafter, with the fully-exposed LG Wing panel at its regular resolution, offered to customers with the original Mini for free. The original was discontinued entirely in favor of the new version, and that was that, for now.

Another thing that Retroid promised was the development of an exclusive, brand-new 4:3 OLED panel. You see, the reason the LG Wing panel thing happened to begin with is because there’s actually no regular-sized 4:3 OLED panel on the market yet. The only reason the Wing panel gets used so much is because LG happened to design their final phone with a weird sliding form factor that made a 31:27 panel necessary. OLED development is an incredibly costly process, which is why the CEO of Retroid declared that they were taking a second mortgage on their home in order to fund its initial R&D cost.

For the next year and a half, this mythical project became known as the “mortgage screen,” and was subject to many rumors as to its validity or reality. Retroid recovered from the trust shock, eventually. Then, they revealed the Retroid Pocket Nova just a couple weeks ago.

The problem is, I don’t care about it at all.

The idea is a great one at face-value: A 4:3 OLED panel! It’s a brand new innovation; nobody has ever made a custom OLED screen yet (even if Anbernic’s custom 4.7” LCD panel is stellar without AMOLED), and the device it’s in is touting a super-powerful QCS8550 (Snapdragon 8 Gen 2?). The problem is that the device itself is entirely boring to me.

4.5” for a 4:3 panel is a great size for a couch handheld. It’s also amazing for 4:3 content, and practically nothing else. I’d rather play on the RP6 or AYN Thor if I wanted 16:9 content, and for 2D content I don’t need something half as powerful as the 8 Gen 2. Switch emulation at 4:3 sounds like a bore, as someone who tinkered with it on their RG477V, even with the benefits of OLED. I’d have preferred a genuine 3.7” panel with minimal bezels meant for the pocket, rather than something I can’t even put in my backpack without snagging the sticks on.

Another issue lies in the plastic body. I’m a fan of devices that feel like they’re made for adults, rather than emulating bulky, toy-like constructions like everyone is raving about now. There’s this huge movement by an incredibly vocal minority against all-glass fronts on handhelds that has been led by influencers like Russ from Retro Game Corps., which has managed to make its way all the way back to Retroid themselves. The Nova is kind of a consequence of that, and is indicative of a backwards trend that is really disappointing to me.

After the total meltdown of the AYANEO Pocket Micro 2 situation, and the seeming disappearance of the other premium-construction handhelds like the GKD 350H Ultra and Yoo Y1, it seems like the glass-and-metal chapter of handheld history might be due to close. I just hope these companies keep my pockets in mind for the future.

If you’d like me to review a product, email me: me@jaw.fyi

Just a couple weeks ago, we started hearing real murmurings about the upcoming Pocket Micro 2, the sequel to the flawed Pocket Micro that released a few years back and showed real promise. AYANEO pulled out the big guns for this new revised model: inset sticks, a 52% increased battery size, and a heavy-hitting Snapdragon 865 processor for its size class. They even announced an exclusive GameCube-inspired colorway, a first for AYANEO!

I mean, just look at that thing.

I’ve talked a lot in the past about how much I love small handhelds. EDC means a lot to me when determining the worth of these little devices. So, of course I was enamored by the concept of a powerhouse that small, and poised to fit entirely within a jeans pocket. To me, the Pocket Micro 2 was going to be revolutionary.

Notice the use of the past-tense here. The AYANEO Pocket Micro 2 is completely and utterly dead…before its even shipped.

Excluding the small handful of reviewers that are lucky enough to find themselves with a complimentary unit from AYANEO, the rest of the world, save for a lucky one hundred and ten people, are shit out of luck, according to AYANEO employee John Nee.

Let me break that down by the models, as two configurations and three distinct colorways were offered:

6GB + 128GB, “Frosty White”: 30 units

6GB + 128GB, “Midnight Black”: 30 units

8GB + 256GB, “Frosty White”: 10 units

8GB + 256GB, “Midnight Black”: 10 units

8GB + 256GB, “Stardust Purple”: 30 units

Adding that up, the entire first batch of this seemingly amazing device is limited to a mere 110 units. Keep in mind, most AYANEO devices launch with a few thousand units available for pre-order, at least. The difference here is that these are not pre-orders: They are direct orders for the first batch, shipping just next week. But unless you were on that lucky, lucky boat, that’s the only batch you’re ever getting.

To give you a timeline on this whole debacle, keep in mind that the information on unit availability was posted at 10:52 AM EST on the June 26, 2026. When that information was made available, orders had been open for more than two hours - since the middle of Arthur Zhang’s livestream revealing the specs and price. This means that the window to order (which wasn’t even announced) ended before the device was even finished being revealed.

I had one in my cart. I completed the checkout. The order should’ve processed. A weird PayPal error on my end caused the AYANEO site to freak out, and by the time I realized this, I was already three hours deep into my shift at work. But every single AYANEO Pocket Micro 2 that was ever going to be made was gone by that time. But nobody was meant to know this, because everyone was meant to think this console was actually going to get a full release.

To explain what I mean, we need to look at what was originally shared during the livestream; the pricing information, directly shown off by Arthur Zhang:

Note the “Launch Offer Price,” seemingly different from the “Retail Price.”

At first glance, this lineup seems incredibly standard for AYANEO. An early-bird price (in the past, usually a perk of an Indiegogo campaign) followed by a later-batch full price when the device is added to their catalog in earnest. All seems typical, except for one major flaw: There was no earnesty in this device being part of their catalog at any point during its launch.

We can see a little bit more information about its cancellation by peeking at John Nee’s messages in the official AYANEO Discord:

John Nee responding to whatobiplays regarding a potential restock.

John goes on at some length to describe that the device is cancelled due to “cost issue,” and that the price would need to be closer to $349 USD in order to be sustainable. For this reason, the device’s very existence isn’t feasible, and the existing stock (essentially a sample batch) is all that will ever be produced.

But this is incongruent with the information found above regarding pricing, as with all other AYANEO products, the later batches get the “Retail Pricing” described, implying the existence of other batches in the first place, or otherwise a stock not intentionally made pitifully finite by the manufacturer. Nothing in the pre-launch information suggested that the Pocket Micro 2 was intended to be a limited-time run, or that stock would even be kept to a specifically-sized batch. Again, all of that information came after the fact.

Now obviously, I understand that the world of business is a vast network of industries that I am not a part of. I am no console manufacturer, nor am I, by any means, an accountant.

However.

I don’t find it very difficult to imagine what I would do if I were in the shoes of an upper executive in this scenario, finding out that the device my goons down in the basement just designed isn’t at all feasible to produce at the price the company wants to sell it at. I can think of a good handful of things I would probably consider; options that I’d weigh, and paths I might take. At no point does “lie to consumers by posing as a regular console launch, only to pull the rug that I don’t intend on producing anything only AFTER the fact” cross my mind. Well, until AYANEO put the idea there, that is.

To my knowledge, I am the very first person to cover this development in news format. I find it important, then, to use the opportunity to describe this behavior as absolutely abhorrent. It’s fucking disrespectful, for starters, to the people that bothered to waste their time following the announcements and information about a handheld they were never intended to have. Beyond that, it shows that AYANEO have absolutely no qualms with misleading and outright lying to their consumers just because they think they can get away with it.

Let’s make one thing perfectly clear: AYANEO did not just “decide” to cancel the console twelve hours after its official launch. The cost is information they have had since production began, regardless of any developments in the already-in-shambles microchip sector. A sudden near 150% theoretical price hike (offered as a hypothetical only after the outrage began, and as of yet just vapor) doesn’t just get dropped suddenly in AYANEO’s lap. This is their umpteenth console. They couldn’t have not known before rolling out their fancy promotional images and Arthur Zhang’s hour-long live presentation.

You got that right.

Overall, this whole situation just puts an awful taste in my mouth. I’m highly unlikely to trust AYANEO in the future, let alone purchase anything from them, given this pathetic stunt. I’d say I have hope for their response in the coming days, but their track record is already so abhorrent that I’d rather not go and get your hopes up.

Just a shame.

If you’d like me to review a product, email me: me@jaw.fyi

Suddenly, the price has jumped to $249.99 USD, as mandated by TRIMUI, “under penalty of sanctions” (as per the founder of GoGameGeek, one of those third-party retailers mentioned) due to what is claimed to be the rising cost of metals and core components (read: memory). Supposedly the early pricing was based on the prototype stage, but it seems very difficult to believe that TRIMUI wouldn’t have hammered (ha) out pricing before revealing the device to the world and putting it up on their own site. They are offering a ‘special’ price of $212.49 USD to certain retailers that have been affected, but even that isn’t opening my ears to TRIMUI’s plight very well.

Take for example the Retroid Pocket Classic, which had a G1 Gen 2 (not to be confused with the Pro U’s G2 Gen 1). Despite the difference, these chips are comparable in some aspects. Even if you consider the G2 to be twice as expensive as the G1, it makes no sense that the device itself should finish more than double the $99 MSRP of the most comparable option, which itself had a higher-quality OLED panel, among other things.

I’d point the blame chiefly toward the abysmal state of the chip market in general, due to data centers led by Nvidia dictator Jensen Huang and the second coming of Hitler, Sam Altman of OpenAI. The past two years have proven that there’s a war on consumer electronics underway, and these evil cretins aren’t going to be happy until you have no ability of your own to purchase compute power. These retro handhelds are only a byproduct of this war.

GoGameGeek’s response to a buyer who pre-ordered

Retailers are doing their best to make this right, it seems, with bundled packages and apologies via these emails. But if you ask me, that’s not going to be enough to make the device itself have even a fraction of the launch that was originally promised.

How is TRIMUI going to respond, given that they supposedly can’t offer the device for any cheaper? We were all expecting a reasonable $150 for this device, but a 60% markup is just choking, considering the alternatives currently available on the market.

If you’d like me to review a product, email me: me@jaw.fyi

Admittedly, it’s pretty easy to get me hyped, but I think this time it’s for a damn good reason.

AYANEO released one of my favorite handhelds, the Pocket Micro, all the way back in late 2024. Back then it had a few things that were pretty new for these devices: an all-glass front, aluminum construction, and a genuinely surprising level of performance in so small a package thanks to the MediaTek Helio G99 chipset that powered it. It even had a fan, all packed into a device big enough to fit into your pocket! When I found out this thing was available, it genuinely felt like a new frontier in the market.

But as AYANEO usually does, there was just that one little thing…

The sticks. My problem (and most other people’s, famously) with the original Pocket Micro was the super tall analog sticks. These things were tall compared to the face of the device, and they were even tall compared with other handhelds released around a similar time. Inset sticks were only beginning to become a ‘standard’ of smaller handhelds, and in truth, the few that had tried it hadn’t really gone over well with a certain sect of the community. I personally recall many complaints about it on the Miyoo A30 at the time, despite the point of the design being to be compact. The Pocket Micro, I feel, definitively proved why they were necessary.

The AYANEO Pocket Micro, with its insanely tall sticks

That design flaw alone kneecapped the Pocket Micro from being a true EDC (every day carry) candidate. Instead it was relegated to a jacket pocket or a small bag, which significantly limited its ability to outshine similar power-level handhelds that were a little more comfortable to hold. There were a few other small flaws, like the lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack or the shape of the shoulder buttons. The battery, too, was considered to be pitiful even on release, with only 2600 mAh to play with on the relatively power-hungry G99.

Despite these flaws, I still happily purchased the Pocket Micro. More specifically, I purchased the Antec Core Micro, which was a rebranded version of the Pocket Micro licensed out to PC case manufacturer Antec. Some others sold their models after realizing they were unable to adjust to the sticks, or adjusted as best as they were able with 3D printed stick caps intended to cut as much space out of the original design as possible.

An example of the low-profile stick caps 3D printed by some to mitigate the size of the originals

AYANEO eventually responded…but in the completely wrong way. A few months after the Pocket Micro’s release, they announced the Pocket Micro Classic, which was, for all intents and purposes, identical to the original internally. The only difference was the lack of joysticks altogether.

Huh?

My Pocket Micro was actually in transit from the Netherlands when AYANEO announced the Pocket Micro Classic. I remember being so utterly confused at the time as to why anyone would even want that much power as the G99 was able to offer without so much as a stick to play Nintendo 64 games. The 3:2 ratio screen and high PPI 960 x 640 display were perfect for GBA, which was the main draw to the device to begin with, but for that to be the only thing you use it for confounded me utterly. I’m the kind of person who has to be able to do multiple things with a device, or I find it pointless to own.

A few days ago, AYANEO answered my prayers when they revealed the Pocket Micro 2.

Originally, we only knew that this was going to be a new Pocket Micro with a Snapdragon (specifics as-of-yet unknown) processor. AYANEO (and other companies apparently, like Anbernic) like to drip-feed details over a period of weeks in order to enrage me specifically, so information on this thing is still sparse. However, the reveal of a bigger battery (3950 mAh compared to the original’s 2600 mAh), a 3.5mm port, and larger buttons are really shaping this thing up to be an impressive piece of hardware. And, of course, the sticks are now inset, barely (if at all) extending beyond other controls.

Genuinely, AYANEO could have done nothing else but this to the design, and it would have been a day-one purchase from me. Suddenly the Pocket Micro 2 is a top contender in the small-to-micro handheld space, and every detail they reveal about it makes it that much more attractive in my eyes.

As of this article’s writing, there’s still two days to go for the full device reveal, where we’ll learn about the SoC and see the full thing for the first time. But what we know about it already has convinced me to pick one up. I’m really digging that white colorway, which was apparently planned for the first model but dropped before production. Only time will tell what other features this thing has hidden away, and the all-important price tag.

If you’d like me to review a product, email me: me@jaw.fyi

“Hey…I’ve only got two controllers.”

That comes up a lot more often than you’d expect. Sometimes, they might only have one! Especially when there’s multiple people involved, its usually the turn-taking and deciding who doesn’t actually want to play all that much that follows, when in the best case scenario we could just have another controller.

Enter: The IINE Chronos.

IINE’s Chronos controller is just portable enough.

The Chronos takes the form of a small slate approximately 124 x 65 x 20 mm in size, but has all the features you’d expect out of a fully-fledged controller. It’s designed to be brought, not left, and so features inset analog sticks and a flat, gripless design. Pictured is the gray/blue model with an Xbox button layout, though many other colorways are offered; most of them using a Nintendo button layout instead. Every model is identical internally, to my knowledge, but I have not tested any of the newer colorways for updated internals. If they’d been around when I bought mine, I’d’ve bought the retro gray/red.

The first standout thing about this particular model is how compact and portable it is, despite having two full joysticks. It even has rumble! Since there’s no screen or major board laying around to get in the way, the wells for the sticks are very smooth and easy to access. In my testing, I rarely even noticed that I was using inset sticks, outside of their depth compared to the buttons. They sit significantly lower than all the other controls - nearly flush with the shell - but it’s not something that feels uncomfortable to use.

The buttons themselves aren’t the most impressive in the world. The ABXY are a bit too springy for my personal preference, and they’re just a bit unbeveled for my liking. That’s not a detraction from the controller itself, just my own preferences. The d-pad is the same way. Start and Select are placed similarly to an NES controller, horizontally between the ABXY buttons and left analog stick. The shoulders are side-by-side, a requirement to keep them from protruding out the back any.

In my testing, I found the controls themselves perfectly responsive and concise. The d-pad had the slightest of issues with false diagonals, but for the most part behaved as I expected. Similarly, the analog sticks felt slightly too sensitive compared to something higher quality like a Switch Pro Controller, but again, only barely. Everything functioned just well enough that I didn’t have major complaints either way.

It’s worth noting that a long gaming session will probably cause your hands to start cramping when using the Chronos, but that’s not necessarily a fault of the controller in any way. The shape is a prerequisite; and likely, this particular controller isn’t going to find itself involved in many intense hours-long sessions.

Actually using the controller was stupid easy. It works without flaw on both Switch and PC, and Android as well, if you’d planned to dock something equally as portable like a Retroid Pocket 5 or Anbernic RG Rotate. It also supports a wired connection, in case you find yourself needing to charge and play at the same time.

The last noteworthy plus I have for the controller is that it weighs almost nothing - just barely past 80 grams! That weight does unfortunately lead to the controller feeling slightly less than premium, but i’m glad its so light regardless.

One complaint I will raise is with the geometry of the inline shoulders; LT and RT are very small compared to LB and RB, although they are the kind of buttons that are less likely to find themselves used in party games or lighter fighting games, depending on your control scheme.

I do think there are improvements to be made with this controller, but they’re only small, incremental things that could get better, not that they necessarily need to. For that, the IINE Chronos gets a high rating, and a permanent place in the side-pocket of my backpack. Keeping in mind what it is, there’s nothing I’m left wanting for with this controller.

Final Rating: 85 / 100

If you’d like me to review a product, email me: me@jaw.fyi

Offering users the strange concept of less choices rather than more, MinUI aims to solve the executive dysfunction of retro handhelds by intentional limitation. Showing users only consoles and games, and forgoing every other feature (even Wi-Fi!) so that superfluous things like achivements and boxart have no place in the mind of the player. It is kind of a genius solution, and pretty indicative of the current era of tech frustration that we all live in.

Admittedly, I was not one of the early adopters of MinUI, nor did I get much into its forks, including NextUI and PakUI. For me, the lower-end a device is, the more I tend to want to get out of it. I gravitated toward more full-featured offerings for those devices that offered it, and it actually wasn’t until Cannoli that I came to really appreciate the design philosophies of MinUI.

Cannoli’s default menu. (Device: Anbernic RG Rotate)

Cannoli is developed by Brandon Kowalski, or K-Wall, and seeks to invoke the same manner of intentional limitations (referred to as ‘unapologetically opinionated’ by the developer) of MinUI. It handles things quite a bit differently, since it’s a frontend for Android and not an entire UI wrapper in and of itself, but the effect is roughly the same in practice. After a little bit of tinkering, and a good amount of Italian slang, it presents you with an almost-familiar menu for users of MinUI and its forks.

There’s not too much to be said of Cannoli other than that it is amazing at what it does. It gives you a flat black menu with white text and dares you to play games, both through its bundled cores and through standalone emulators. There are no touch controls, no notifications, and no animations of any kind. Pretty much any emulator you can think of is supported, so the experience isn’t limited to older-gen emulation: on my AYANEO Pocket DMG, I even launch Nintendo Switch games through Eden Nightly, seamlessly from the Cannoli main menu.

One of the greatest features of base Cannoli is the addition of a Five Game Handheld (5GH) mode, which roughly mimics the functionality outlined by the Retro Game Corps MinUI Starter Guide. Essentially, this does away with even the ability to select a console, showing you exactly five games to choose from on the front menu, and nothing else. When you’re trying to cut through the noise and just pick a game, it’s undeniable how insanely easy this mode makes things.

The Five Game Handheld settings menu. (Device: AYANEO Pocket DMG)

There are other features here not present in MinUI that are worth noting: Nonna’s Kitchen is a web UI to handle file management, and all of the emulators can be configured in sub-menus that are unique to Cannoli. The interface is tight and not busy at all, and I’ve found it really feels at home on square or near-square aspect ratios, which is why I’ve showcased it with the Pocket DMG and RG Rotate. It really feels like a natural part of the device itself, hardly even a frontend; and that makes it that much easier to use.

K-Wall is incredibly open to conversation in his Discord server, where he shares updates and progress reports on Cannoli’s development. I’ve been following the project since one of its first releases, and its come so far in that time that it really feels like a complete product now. I had some reservations at first regarding its use of generative AI, but any generated assets were replaced pretty quickly.

I’ve linked Cannoli’s website below, and also included a link to K-Wall’s Ko-fi. He’s put some hard work into this project, and its really revolutionized the simplistic side of Android. Even though I tend to use more full-featured frontends, sometimes I find myself drawn back to Cannoli just because of how stupid simple it is.

Cannoli’s website

K-Wall’s Ko-fi

If you’d like me to review a product, email me: me@jaw.fyi

Looking at the newly-revealed RG55G1 doesn’t make any immediate waves. It looks like the recently-released RG476H, but with the 5.5” OLED panel that they used in the RG556 and RG557 the last couple of years. That part is entirely within my regular expectations. But what really drew my attention was the fact that the name ended with G1.

For those not in the know, Trimui, another one of my favorite brands, recently revealed the specs for their succinctly named Trimui Brick Hammer Pro U. In that video, it was shown that the Pro U will sport the Snapdragon G2 Gen 1 chipset, complete with its eight Kryo cores and near-1GHz GPU. Pretty much everyone was expecting it to have the infinitely weaker Allwinner A523 chip that was used in last year’s Smart Pro S.

This was a huge deal for Trimui, and it means just as much for Anbernic. Suddenly these brands are both staring down the barrel of real power, nothing like the shoddy driver support offered by other chipsets from manufacturers like Allwinner, Rockchip and Unisoc. These Snapdragons are the real deal, and the backbone of the success of the bigger brands like Retroid and AYANEO over the last few years. Although Anbernic had certainly found a capable powerhouse for higher-end emulation with the Dimensity 8300 from their #7 lineup (RG477V, RG477M, and RG557), Qualcomm’s ceiling is in the stratosphere by comparison.

The jump in performance really can’t be overstated. When we went from the Retroid Pocket 4 Plus to the Pocket 5, it became less of an issue of smoothing out your frames on the top of the PlayStation 2’s library, and more of an issue of picking which Nintendo Switch games you wanted to load onto your device. Turnip drivers are the biggest driver (hehe) of this leap in performance, as Snapdragon chips allow you to sideload your own custom drivers from the userland, something which no other manufacturer has replicated.

Curiously, it had been rumored in the past that Anbernic was seeking a partnership with Qualcomm in order to start using Snapdragon processors, but that the deal had fell through because of Anbernic’s penchant to include pirated ROMs and shady apps like the RixelHK “game downloader” on their devices. Qualcomm obviously has a high reputation, and the legalities of that kind of behavior, especially for devices being sold worldwide, can be a bit of an issue.

The controversial RixelHK is included on some Anbernic devices.

Regardless of the contoversy, it seems that Anbernic has potentially ironed out these issues with Qualcomm and forged a path to what is hopefully a very successful partnership. Qualcomm seems to be pushing their G line recently with Trimui and even the Retroid Pocket G2 (powered by the G2 Gen 2), so it makes total sense for their next step to be the industry’s current best-seller. Of course, we’re not even perfectly sure that it’s actually a Snapdragon powering this as-of-yet mysterious RG55G1, but I’d say it’s a safe bet given its inclusion in other devices recently.

The RG55G1 looks really cool, in all fairness to the device, but it’s what’s inside that’s got me excited. I can’t wait to see what Anbernic is cooking this time, and for the future.

If you’d like me to review a product, email me: me@jaw.fyi

Ever since I started buying retro handhelds in 2024, I’ve had this fascination with the perfect EDC (Every Day Carry, if you somehow don’t know). Something that I can carry with me when and wherever I am, and that can be deployed in an instant. This originally took the form of a micro handheld I could fit in the pocket of my dress pants at work, but eventually it became something a lot more methodical and designed.

The first of my EDC devices was the Miyoo A30. It was an awesome little device that served its purpose very well - and it’s a device that I consider to be criminally underrated in the grand scheme of things. What was so amazing about it to me was that it disappeared in my pocket while still having enough power to play most of what I wanted it to at the time. At that point, I was mainly interested in the more retro side of things: Super Famicom, Game Boy Color, and a little bit of light Game Boy Advance or Nintendo 64 here and there. The A30’s chipset and tiny little 2.8” screen carried me for the first few months of my addiction. But there was always the thought of more.

The Miyoo A30, my first EDC handheld

Eventually I started sinking a good bit of money into the hobby, and ended up with some pretty powerful handhelds. The Retroid Pocket 5 was and is one of my go-tos for the things that the lightweight, Linux-based handhelds couldn’t do, GameCube and Switch titles especially. The RP5 was great, don’t get me wrong, and I still use it almost daily now; but it did make me wonder if we would ever get a device capable of the consoles that it could emulate, portable and compact enough to be that perfect EDC. That wasn’t really at the forefront, though, because at the time the smaller handhelds pretty exclusively remained underpowered. What did change in my decisionmaking process around that time was the way I carried my devices.

Shortly after the release of the Trimui Brick (another one of my favorite handhelds historically) I purchased a belt case from a seller on Etsy on a whim. It was a handmade leather flap case with a magnetic clasp and a metal clip on the back to secure it to my belt. Since I work almost exclusively in jeans or dress pants and also carry a gun, it means I’m always wearing a heavy-duty belt. The case that I bought, although incredibly bulky for the device it was carrying, was a perfect fit for me. Now instead of fiddling with my Miyoo A30 in a pocket, the Trimui Brick effortless sat on my hip, always at the ready. When the Brick Hammer released, that immediately became my new EDC. The enhanced build quality of the aluminum shell was perfect for being toted around all day. Although the Brick as a whole was soon phased out by the coming of the GKD Pixel II, which was significantly smaller while not sacrificing much in terms of emulation capability. But with a new device, I needed a new case to carry it in.

I am an avid (read: addicted) browser of AliExpress. I adore buying things I don’t need with money I don’t have and waiting time I don’t want to in order to get packages that I cannot remember in the mail. That, to me, is like the feeling of Christmas. In my incessant browsing, I came across a manufacturer making leather cases for cigarettes and lighters. Apparently that is a relatively common thing in China - enough that there was a dedicated manufacturer for accessories for it (and other things, like car keys) on Ali. Noticing that some of the cases were similar in size, I decided to reach out to see if any of them would work for what I needed. The store, blongk, replied and told me they could customize the size for my device, and then asked for the measurements. Two or three weeks later, I had the case sitting in my mailbox.

It changed everything.

The bulky case I’d gotten on Etsy was just a proof of concept. It survived an entire trip to Japan and nearly a year of workdays, but it never did feel like that perfect EDC I was looking for. The blongk case solved every problem I had with the original, and made the Pixel II melt away into my hip when I carried it. With twigUI, I essentially ended my search for the perfect EDC.

My previous perfect EDC, the GKD Pixel II

About a month ago now, Anbernic revealed and then quickly released the RG Rotate, a goofy-looking square of metal (and plastic, depending on the color you purchase) that seemed utterly pointless to me when I watched the trailer for it.

Then it hit me.

This was actually a genius innovation by Anbernic, rather than a random gimmick for the purpose of nostalgia-baiting potential customers. The Rotate was, in its essence, a cheat code to saving space in a pocketable device. By folding all of the controls underneath the display, the entire footprint of the device was suddenly only the size of the screen and bezels. That in and of itself makes the Rotate a hugely valuable device for someone looking for an EDC.

What makes the Rotate a smash-hit, though, is that it’s paired with the perfect chipset: The Unisoc Tiger T618. This chipset was particularly present in Anbernic’s earlier portfolio, at the time as a more powerful option than the increasingly common RK3326 and RK3566 offerings. It allowed a small amount of sixth-gen emulation, but its main selling point at the time was the overhead it provided for fifth-gen emulation. It was overall superseded by the T820 chipset by Anbernic for a year or two, but recently it has begun to make its way back into the fold…as a budget chipset.

When Anbernic’s #5 series (that is, devices with a 5 denoting that they use the T618, i.e. RG405V) was first introduced, it was to a relatively high MSRP of around $150 USD. Today that money can get you into a Snapdragon processor and significantly faster speeds. So as chipset technology progresses, the T618 eventually managed to become a lower-cost option for Anbernic, finding its way into more recent offerings like the RG Vita, and now the RG Rotate.

This isn’t exactly a review of the Rotato (as we lovingly call it on Discord), but it gives the background on why this device is special as an EDC. The Rotate can fold away to an impressive size, given its 3.5” 1:1 screen, and it has enough power to, with recent advances in emulators like Azahar and Dolphin MMJR2, scrape later-gen emulation for titles that are comfortable enough to play with just a dpad. I pre-ordered one at the first opportunity, and even pre-measured the size I would need for another case from blongk.

My EDC setup with the RG Rotate

Safe to say, it was immediately a hit. This thing absolutely rocks. I mean it - the jump in emulation capability from the RK3326S of the Pixel II to the Android-based experience of gaming on the T618 is like jumping to lightspeed. The Rotate is only a bit wider than the Pixel II, but in the case that I have it doesn’t even feel big at all. It still melts away into my hip; this time, though, its packing serious heat.

I’ve found that my favorite consoles to play are the ones I can put up and down quickly: GBC and GBA are favorites as always, and with the overlays that I’ve been working on for RetroArch, the thing feels like a fully complete experience in my hand. A welcome surprise was how well certain 3DS games seem to run here: having Fire Emblem Awakening back in my pocket for a quick turn or two when I’m at work is such a cool feeling.

3DS running at 60FPS on the Rotate - at work, no less!

I initially battled between my two favorite frontends to run the device on, Cocoon and Cannoli, but in the end the full-featured Cocoon won out for me. It really just accentuates the power that you have with the T618, that you have access to all of the boxart and metadata and Android ports and everything else that makes this device so different an experience from one like the Pixel II. I can see myself folding for Cannoli as time passes, though, and as I start to want something a little more streamlined.

I’m not doing an in-depth review of the Rotate here, but I am highlighting its strengths to show just how far EDC handhelds have come for me in the past couple of years. I’m excited to see where things end up come the next couple, but for now the Rotate is all I need.

blongk official store (not sponsored)

If you’d like me to review a product, email me: me@jaw.fyi