Gadgets: A Different Kind of Handheld

Playing games on your phone is becoming more and more popular. There a great number of fun and good games you can play on iOS or Android, but one thing I can't get used to is the touch screen. While searching for a solution and because of my love for gadgets (especially the obscure Chinese ones) I happened to stumble upon the Android Handhelds

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Copy Cats

I am fond of Chinese gadgets, I just love them. Chinese companies are known to copy Western/Japanese products and add something extra to make it stand out. For a long time I used to import Chinese phones because of the dual-sim functionality and the weird but fun options that are some times added. I owned one phone that supported free-to-air TV. I mean I could just pull out an antenna and watch free-to-air TV channels on my phone!
Of course those phones were blatant copies of of Iphones, Nokias, basically everything that was popular at that time.

Taking it to the next level

So when you think of handhelds, you are probably thinking of Nintendo with their 3ds or Switch. If you are retro gamer you probably have fond memories of the Gameboy, the Sega game gear or the Atari Lynx.
Just like with popular model phones, Chinese companies tried to copy the successful handhelds. However with both the phones and the handhelds there was one major problem. They needed a solid OS that could support their hardware and offer costumers the apps and games they wanted.
And then came Google with their Android OS.......

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Let the games begin!

Smartphones became more powerful over time and Android grew in popularity. More and more games became available in the android app store. So it was only a matter of time before someone put two and two together.

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The handheld you see in the picture is the GPD G5a, I actually own one of these.

Yes, it is the Android handheld. Long before Nvidia came up with the Shield (remember the first one?) Chinese companies have been building Android handhelds.
Android turned out to be the perfect solution for both the Chinese phones as well as the handhelds (both usually equipped with MediaTek chips). Because of the flexibility of Android it was easy to customize the OS to suit the needs on a handheld. In fact, the handheld is nothing more than a phone in custom casing with extra buttons, d-pad and thumbsticks.

Let's get Retro....

So what can you do with an android handheld? Well, you can play all the games that the Play store has available. But even more interesting is the fact that you can use emulators to play all the oldies but goodies. You can find emulators for arcade games like the Mame emulator or even for the Dreamcast like the Reicast emulator. Because these retro games need less horsepower to run smoothly, Android handhelds are perfect for retrogaming.

SNK released a handheld version of the Neo Geo called Neo Geo Gold X. This was actually a handheld that ran an emulator.

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Things are getting better

To be honest the quality of these handhelds can sometimes be questionable but there are some good quality handhelds available and the best thing is that they are very cheap. If you are into retro gaming it is worth a try.
My favorite brand for Android handhelds is GPD (which stands for Gamepad Digital). They recently released a Nintendo look-alike called the GPD XD that received good reviews.

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2 years ago I imported their previous model the GPD G5a and have enjoyed every minute of it. It is easy to carry around with you and great for some relaxed gaming while on holiday or when you are on the move.

GPD is really trying hard to bring some quality to the table. Last year on Gamescom in Cologne, Germany I got my hands on their GPD Win. The GPD Win is a handheld with full windows 10 functionality.

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Another interesting project by GPD is their 7" metal body UMPC (Ultra Mobile Personal Computer) with Windows 10 or Ubuntu OS.

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Even more goodies

If only playing games is not enough for you and you need more power in the palm of your hand, it would be a good idea to check out the Pandora and Pyra Projects by Dragonbox who are based in Germany. They make custom built UMPC's. The price is a little higher than the Chinese handhelds but the UMPC's are built on specs provided by the community to get the best quality UMPC available for both gaming and all-round functionality.

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If you want to know more about handhelds and UMPC's than check out these sites:

Obscure Handhelds
Dingoonity
Pandora and Pyra

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