TL;DR
- The Retroid Pocket Classic will have a Snapdragon G1 Gen 2 processor, a new chip designed for gaming handhelds.
- The new line of chips was announced today, which explains Retroid’s hesitation in revealing the full specs.
- This chip does not support video out, explaining one of the strangest omissions of the new device.
- Pre-orders for the Classic open tonight at 9:30 PM ET, starting at $114.
Retroid has slowly revealed the specs and design of the upcoming Pocket Classic over the past few weeks, but it’s been strangely coy about the chipset. Despite being one of the most important components of the device, it’s the only thing that hasn’t been pinned down — until now.
The Retroid Pocket Classic will ship with the new Snapdragon G1 Gen 2 processor, part of Qualcomm’s new line designed specifically for gaming handhelds. This is the company’s first device with one of these new chips, which should offer some advantages over traditional smartphone chips.
Similar to the Snapdragon 4s Gen 3 that Android Authority previously speculated the Classic to ship with, the G1 Gen 2 is designed primarily for efficiency. It has the same two performance cores and six efficiency cores as the 4s Gen 3, so you can expect lower peak performance but better sustained performance and battery life.
Qualcomm’s new chipset is designed for sustained performance and efficiency.
This budget chipset likely won’t support more demanding emulators on Android, but considering the device has no sticks and the screen is nearly square, it’s not ideal for those systems anyway. We’ll have to wait until we can benchmark the new device to see its capabilities, but it should be sufficient for emulation up to and including the Sega Saturn.
However, there is one downside to the new chipset. Android Authority has confirmed with Qualcomm that the Snapdragon G1 Gen2 does not support video out, which explains one of the strangest omissions in the new device. This will be the first device Retroid has ever shipped without video out, and it may prove to be a major weakness of the new budget chipset.
Apart from the new SoC, the Pocket Classic has fairly budget specs overall. It includes either 4 or 6GB of RAM paired with either 64 or 128GB of eMMC 5.1 storage. eMMC is an aging standard that’s largely been replaced by UFS 3.1, even in other Retroid devices. Even so, it features faster read speeds than cards from the microSD port.
The 3.92-inch AMOLED display is the only premium component, and the best-in-class panel has only been found on one gaming handheld in the past. That handheld is the AYANEO Pocket DMG, which starts at more than three times the price of the Retroid Pocket Classic. Only two vertical Android handhelds were released last year, so the Classic may fill an underserved niche in the market.
Pre-orders for the Retroid Pocket Classic open tonight at 9:30 PM ET on the official website. Pricing starts at $114 for the 4GB+64GB version and tops off at $124 for the 6GB+128GB version with the CLASSICSAVE5 pre-order code. It will launch alongside the Retroid Pocket Flip 2, a clamshell handheld with the same specs as the company’s flagship Pocket 5.