RG55G1 - Does Anbernic Finally Have a Snapdragon??

I woke up early this morning (more like “woke up at a regular hour”) to a notification on my phone of another new video from Anbernic. Usually when I see these, I just think, “Oh cool, they’re doing something new again.” It’s usually not very long after the previous device’s release that the company reveals their next offering. It’s very methodical. Today’s, though, was as much exciting as it belonged to the status-quo.

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.

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