The Power of Emulators: A First Look at the Retroid Pocket Flip

The Retroid Pocket Flip is a handheld emulator that has been making waves in the gaming community, and for good reason. This device can run on almost any device, making it a versatile option for gamers looking to play classic games on the go. One of the standout features of the Retroid Pocket Flip is its ability to map L3 and R3 buttons with rockers to swap screens out, allowing for large or double-screen modes in single-player mode.

The Dreamcast is another popular game that runs well on this hardware, thanks to the use of the re-dream emulator. The d-pad's rotation allows for special moves to be pulled off, although the reviewer notes that they personally prefer a tighter d-pad. However, the d-pad does work effectively, and it's clear that the developers have put effort into making this feature work.

For PSP emulation, the Standalone version of PPSSPP is used, which can handle more demanding games like God of War. The reviewer is impressed with how well the device handles emulated games, including Chains of Olympus at 1X resolution and TimeSplitters at 0.5X resolution. While the dolphin handheld emulator may be preferred for certain games, such as Mario Kart, the Retroid Pocket Flip can still produce smooth gameplay.

The PS2 emulation using Ether's X2 is another highlight of the device, with Kingdom Hearts 2 running smoothly at 0.5X resolution. However, more demanding games like Gran Turismo 4 are less successful, even with extensive tweaking. The reviewer notes that while the device can handle these games to some extent, they will not run at full speed.

Design and Performance

The Retroid Pocket Flip has a clamshell design that the reviewer personally loves, although they note that some people may prefer other designs. The built-in cooling system is a notable upgrade over other handheld devices, and the linear triggers are an interesting feature. However, the reviewer notes that they would rather use analog sticks for everyday gaming.

One issue the reviewer has experienced with the device is using the L3 and R3 buttons incorrectly due to not being accustomed to the rockers. It takes some practice to get used to these new controls, but once mastered, they can be very effective.

Overall Impression

The Retroid Pocket Flip is a well-designed handheld emulator that offers impressive performance. The reviewer is impressed with its ability to run demanding games smoothly, and the design is aesthetically pleasing. While there may be some limitations, such as Gran Turismo 4 not running at full speed, the device still offers a lot of value.

The Retroid Pocket Flip will likely appeal to gamers who are looking for a portable solution that can handle classic games from various consoles. With its clamshell design and built-in cooling system, it's clear that the developers have put thought into creating a device that is both functional and stylish.

If you're interested in trying out the Retroid Pocket Flip, there are several color options available on the official website, including watermelon, white, and black. The reviewer will be posting more videos to showcase the device's capabilities, so stay tuned to their channel for future content.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enforeign hey what's going on everybody it's ETA Prime back here again today we're going to be taking a look at the all-new retroid pocket flip and this is definitely one that I've been waiting for uh ever since it was announced I've been super excited about this because my favorite handheld form factor is the Nintendo DS I love the clamshell design and with this we're getting really close but as a lot of you already know we've only got a single screen here which is totally fine with me because it's actually a beautiful 4.7 inch IPS retroid is offering a few different color variants but the one we have here is the watermelon version so it's kind of a clear red I personally think it looks good and in real life it's a lot brighter than it looks in pictures so if you check out their website just note that it is a bit brighter than it's looking on screen so first things first here the main thing I was worried about when this was announced were the analog sticks I'm not a huge fan of rocker style analog sticks but then we found out that these are Hall based rocker style analog sticks and after getting into my hand and using them for a little while they're actually pretty good they're a lot better than that thought they'd be now I would prefer real analog sticks over rocker style every single day but since we're working with kind of a clean shell design it needed to be nice and thin there so the screen could fold over these are great and I'm glad that they went with high quality rockers here and another thing I really wanted to take a look at was the d-pad from what they've shown so far we actually weren't sure how far this would be recessed inside of the unit and as you can see we've got a little bit of height to this d-pad so we don't have to worry about missing our moves or anything like that and fighting games or Platformers and we will be testing this out by the end of the video and by the way these are clickable so we've got L3 and R3 here with these rockers which was really cool to see the action buttons over here are double color injection molded so we don't have to worry about paint rubbing off because there's no paint here what we're seeing here for the ABX and Y is actually plastic so it's not going to rub off now take an overall look at the unit over here on the right hand side we've got our volume rocker moving around to the front we've got a power button and the 3.5 millimeter headphone jack so we don't have to rely on the built-in speakers but I will tell you they do sound pretty good it's using dual stereo speakers over here on the left hand side we've got a Micro SD compartment and this will support FAT32 or NTFS right out of the box and when we move around back you'll see that we have a micro HDMI port so we can connect this to a larger display and USB type c for charging the 5000 milliamp hour battery and taking a look at the bottom you see we have some ventilation here and this is actually functional because there is a built-in fan this is going to allow us to keep those sustained clocks on the CPU and it's controllable from Android there are a few different profiles that we can choose from one main thing that I think was missing from the retroid pocket 3 and 3 plus is present here with the flip because we've actually got analog triggers around the back here so it does make it really easy to play your favorite racing games they're linear or analog whatever you want to call them and finally we've got an extra M1 and an M2 button we can program this inside of Android so we've got extra functionality here just in case a game requires those extra buttons and when it comes to the specs of the new retroid pocket flip for the CPU we've got the unisoc tiger t618 this is the same CPU that was used in the Retro 3 plus so we can expect the same performance but sustained performance because we've got that built-in cooler this CPU has two cortex a75 cores running at 2 gigahertz and six a55 cores running at 2 gigahertz and when it comes to the GPU we've got the Mali g52 mc2 at 850 megahertz four gigabytes of LP ddr4x Ram 128 gigabytes of internal emmc 5.1 storage plus we've got micro SD card support a 4.7 inch 60 hertz IPS display with a resolution of 1334 by 750 and it can get up to 450 nits of brightness 5000 milliamp hour battery and this is running Android 11. set up on these units is super easy Once you boot it up you're going to get your Setup Wizard this is going to allow us to change the time zone we can connect to Wi-Fi and enable Google Play services so we do have full access to Google Play if you want it and I'll tell you right out of the box this is a pretty clean version of Android 11 aside from the fan control and there are retroid launcher that they do have built in you can opt to use that but we also have the option to install a bunch of emulators during the setup process and a few of these are optimized for this chipset you can totally opt out of this if you want to but there's 30 here I'm just going to install all of them and the final option here is our launcher we can just use the retroid launcher or the AOSP launcher I'm going to go with AOSP so it looks like Android and we can swap over to that retroid launcher at any time I've been messing around with this for a little while now it's very Snappy we've tested out the t618 in the past and with this since we've got that fan built in we do have fan control from the drop down menu three profiles to choose from and I will tell you in performance mode it does have a little bit of a wine to it so if you're in a quiet room you can definitely hear it but you know if you're playing a game and you've got the speakers going you won't notice the fan it's not super loud but it's got a bit of a whine when everything else is nice and Silent overall I am loving the form Factory here I think it's kind of the perfect size if you've got much larger hands it might be a bit cramped for you but overall most people should be very comfortable with the form factor here and of course I wanted to give you a look at this thing compared to the retroid pocket 3 plus because that's the one that a lot of people have right now again they're using the same chip and you're going to see very similar performance but in the long run with this built-in cooler we can get that same performance for much longer just sustain performance because we're able to cool that CPU down and when you look at the flip you know they took a lot of cues from the DS and the 3DS and this thing does fit right at home in my little collection here I am missing one right now because I'm reshelling it but I've got the DSi XL 2DS the original DS which is kind of a Haas and I've also got a DSi here as you can see I mean it definitely fits right in jumping right into a little bit of testing we're going to start off here with some native Android gaming and first on the list we've got Minecraft definitely easier to run and right now I didn't have to change any of the settings I do have the FPS up in the top left hand corner I believe this is set at 12 chunks and you can see we're dipping under 60 but taking those chunks down just a little bit will allow you to play this at a constant 60. but if I didn't have that frame counter on I really wouldn't even be able to tell the difference Minecraft does play very nicely on this handheld next up we've got CarX drift racing and the big reason I wanted to boot this one up was just to show you those analog triggers are working personally my use case scenario for linear triggers like this are racing games and as you can see I mean you can give it just a little bit of gas and we've got that linear input same thing with the brake in a lot of the newer racing games on Android do support this but it comes in really handy for streaming games with something like Moonlight or steam line and the final native Android game I want to take a look at is Call of Duty mobile and with this one the controller isn't detected by the game because it only uses first party controllers but luckily we've got a built-in mapper so we can use the built-in controls here with basically any game we'll just need to map them to on-screen touch points and Call of Duty mobile runs at 60 up in the top left-hand Corner I've got the retroids built-in frame counter we're at 60 and uh yeah I'm just getting used to these rocker style analog sticks but they work out great and I'll tell you this does seem to be kind of updated at least their built-in mapper because it's a lot easier to aim with this one than it was with the retroid pocket 3 plus so a lot of people do pick these up specifically for emulation and you can always use whatever front end you want as long as it's compatible with Android it's going to run on this device but uh retroite has their own emulation front end built in it's actually really simple to use and I'm running all of my stuff from a Micro SD card right now in my N64 section no games are listed but I've put all of my games in the default location and the retroid front end will create that folder for you either on internal or external now I can just scan that it's going to populate my games and automatically download the Box arm moving over to my Game Boy Color section I've put a bunch of games in here and I've already scanned that directory but as I scroll down you'll see that not all of the artwork is downloaded just yet I kind of have to hover over it and it'll scrape it on the fly if we take a look in here you'll see we've got a lot of supported systems but it doesn't mean that it's going to run every single game flawlessly this will run some easier to emulate PS2 3DS and GameCube games but you don't specifically buy this for the higher end systems but keep in mind there are a few games that run pretty well since the flip has taken a lot of cues from the DS I figured we'd go ahead and test this out first I'm using the DraStic emulator and all the buttons were mapped for me we've got more than enough power for DS emulation especially using the DraStic emulator this emulator basically runs on everything and my L3 and R3 buttons with these rockers here were actually mapped to kind of swap the screens out so we can go large we can go double screen and swap them while we're in single mode Dreamcast is another one that's going to run really well on this Hardware I'm using the re-dream emulator and while we're here I figured we'd go ahead and test this d-pad out it actually has some really nice rotation to pull these special moves off but in my own opinion I personally prefer a tighter d-pad I'm not saying that this thing's wobbly or anything like that it definitely works I just wish it was a bit tighter but yeah I mean I can definitely pull these off no problem at all moving over to some PSP emulation I'm using the Standalone version of PPSSPP with the really hard games to emulate like the God of War series we've got chains of Olympus here I'm at 1X resolution but I don't have any hacks on and I'm using the Vulcan back in this is running at 60fps and if we can run this at 1X then the easier to emulate stuff can definitely go up to 30 in some of them even 4X resolution now like I mentioned you don't run out and pick this up specifically for GameCube and PS2 but I definitely wanted to show you that some games do run pretty decently we've got time Splitters too Vulcan back in and I'm at 0.5 x resolution we're using the dolphin for handheld emulator that you can download during the setup this is a highly modified version that allows us to kind of take the resolution way down and a lot of the easier to emulate games will run better with this on the retroid pocket flip but then when you move over to something like Mario Kart I prefer using the official version of dolphin with all of the new fixes and everything like that and with this one we're using the opengl backend but as you can see we do get some dips every once in a while especially when new effects appear on screen and of course I wanted to show off some PS2 emulation using ethers X2 we've got Kingdom Hearts 2 here at 0.5 x resolution so we're not quite at Native resolution this is an easier one to emulate games like gradius and Crash Bandicoot are going to run really well but uh trying to run something like Gran Turismo 4 even with a ton of hacks on just really isn't possible on the unisoc t618 now I could probably get this game to run a little better if I spent some more time tweaking the settings but we're not going to get 60 out of Gran Turismo 4 or God of War First Impressions here I personally love the design I think they knocked it out of the park with this thing but I am very partial to the clamshell design and I understand that some people out there just don't like these but and if that's the case there are other handhelds on the market like the retroid pocket three plus and uh you know you're gonna get the same kind of performance but we do have some upgrades here like the built-in cooling system we've got those linear triggers and some people may consider it an upgrade given that we have Hull based rockers here but personally I would rather have the old analog sticks versus any rocker every day of the week but I do have to say that I was more than impressed with what they've done here with these they feel much better than I ever thought they would but personally I am running into one issue with them and I think it comes down to user error just not being used to using these rockers but whenever I'm playing a dual analog stick based game on this I keep mashing the L3 and R3 button so I do need to kind of get used to using these takes a little bit of pressure to get to that L3 and R3 button to click in on these rockers and I just keep hitting it but yeah this fits right in with the clamshell family I think they've done a bang-up job here and I will have another video coming up I just wanted to kind of do a first look here I've got a lot more that I want to test with it and if there's anything else you want to see with this just let me know in the comments below over on the retroid website they do have several color options to choose from so if you're not into this what they're calling watermelon then you could go with something like a white version or even a black version but uh yeah I really do like this thing and I will have a couple more videos coming so stay tuned to the channel but that's gonna wrap it up for this one like always thanks for watching\n"