Yet another retro gaming handheld announced: Small Universe X Sugar Cube

Veho

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Screen go wheeeeee

In a veritable sea of retro gaming handheld devices, every segment of the market is covered - there's big ones, small ones, powerful ones, cheap ones, vertical ones, horizontal ones, clamshell ones, and everything in between - and you need to have some kind of gimmick to set you apart from everyone else.

The newly announced Sugar Cube does this by having... a rotating screen.

Recognizing all those gamers that would rather cut their own arm off than have *gasp* black bars in the corners of the screen (yes I am biased, can you tell?), the new handheld's 3.9 inch 1240×1080 OLED display can rotate to be set into either portrait or landscape mode. Switching it from a 10:9 aspect ratio to a 9:10 aspect ratio, which... is not much of a difference, is it? I mean it's not a 16:9 or even 4:3 screen where portrait VS landscape makes a huge difference.

Maybe it can double as a fidget spinner.

Moving past the silliness: the handheld will feature a full metal casing, which is always nice, in several bright, jolly color variants. It should also should offer some decent specs, probably. It will have a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 CPU that we know, the standard Adreno 660 that comes with this SoC, and enough juice to utilize the pretty pretty screen. No words on the price or any other features yet, but if they mean to be competitive we can expect analog triggers, Hall effect analog sticks, USB-C OTG, and video out of some sort.

(And my personal bee in my personal bonnet: Snapdragon 888 can run Windows 11 ARM version, it's (just) a matter of device drivers.)


A lot of things remain to be seen.

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(Meh they should have made it clamshell instead, grumble grumble.)


Sources:
https://liliputing.com/this-handhel...ay-can-rotate-for-landscape-or-portrait-mode/
https://retrododo.com/small-universe-sugar-cubes-handheld/
 
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Oh I've been keeping an eye on this one. It's the same guys behind the Surface Duo controller I bought a few months back (Sugar Cube). I kinda wish they managed to get a 3:2 screen to make real use of that rotation feature though, having a perfect DS and GBA system in one would've been crazy.
 

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I've been following this closely. It's from the same team that developed the Surface Duo controller I purchased a few months ago (Sugar Cube). I do wish they had implemented a 3:2 screen ratio to fully utilize the rotation feature. Imagine having an ideal DS and GBA system combined into one—now that would be incredible.
 

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