AYANEO, purveyors of some of the most powerful gaming handhelds on the market, are launching a new phone. The AYANEO Pocket PLAY revives the spirit of the classic phone/handheld hybrids of old, with proper physical keys on a slide-out controller. The power to play truly is at your fingertips once more.
AYANEO Pocket PLAY – Gaming in Your Hands
The new AYANEO Pocket PLAY is a true hybrid handheld-gaming-phone that features all of the bells and whistles of a modern smartphone, including its minimalist design, but also features a slide-out controller that bears all of the controls you should need to play pretty much any style of game, from retro to modern.
The physical controller features ABXY buttons and a D-pad, as well as 4 triggers and two track-pads in the place of analogue sticks. You can use those as either an emulated analogue-stick, like you see in plenty of mobile games and ports these days, or as an actual track-pad, enabling you to enjoy even PC-centric genres like point-and-click adventure games.
Right now, it’s unclear what OS the system will be packing, but it’s most likely going to be running Android 16 as that’s the latest release of the operating system available. That said, it’s very likely that AYANEO will put their own spin to it with a custom launcher, or perhaps even a fully customized Android-based OS that is more designed with gaming in mind as we’ve seen them put on some of their Android-based handhelds in the past.
Slide to the Left
While details are a little thin on the ground, you have to admire the visual style of the AYANEO Pocket PLAY. It has managed to provide all of the physical buttons you need for gaming while still being a sleek, modern smartphone in its own right. You still got the screen-lock and volume buttons, as well as extendable storage via MicroSD, and it’s all in a format that is a bit more interesting than the simple ubiquitous modern smartphone “black rectangle”.
We haven’t seen a phone with a slide-out section since the era of The SideKick, and in an age ever-more obsessed with the visual trapping of the early-to-mid 2000s, that can only mean good things for this device in the near future.
You can check out the KickStarter page now and sign up to receive alerts once the campaign goes live.
