In a world filled with boring smartphone after boring smartphone, you have to give Ayaneo’s upcoming Pocket Play some credit: we haven’t seen a device like this in more than a decade. The company’s long-awaited (and slightly delayed) slider gaming phone is nearing a full launch, and while we’re still waiting for info on availability, we do finally have a detailed specs sheet that paints a pretty picture — with a few potential pitfalls, unfortunately.
In a video trailer that teases the Pocket Play as “exclusively for true gamers,” Ayaneo delivers plenty of glamor shots of the phone combined with its long-awaited spec reveals. The company’s first smartphone features a 6.8-inch FHD+ 165Hz OLED display that should feel right at home alongside other modern flagships. Under the hood, Ayaeno is using MediaTek’s Dimensity 9300, a flagship chipset initially launched in late 2023 that competed directly with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Combined with LPDDR5 memory and UFS 4.0 storage speeds, it sounds like a pretty powerful device — though we’ll have to keep waiting for specific RAM and storage allotments, apparently.
All of this is powered by a 5,000mAh battery with (unspecified) fast-charging support, which should perform fairly comparably to, say, dropping a Galaxy S25 Ultra in a Backbone controller. It’s running Android 15 out of the box, and while that’s certainly out of date, it’s not the only smartphone to do so lately. Ayaneo does appear to be delivering a true smartphone experience here, though, up to and including a fingerprint sensor built into the power button for biometric authentication and a camera system made up of a 50MP main sensor with a 16MP ultra-wide. I don’t expect either of these lenses — nor the 5MP front-facing lens — to be particularly impressive, but at least they’re here.
Obviously, the sliding controls are the Pocket Play’s main draw, and it sounds pretty impressive. You’ll have to make do with “virtual” touch joysticks, just as with the Xperia Play this device is pulling inspiration from, but those touchpads should still feel better than utilizing a touchscreen — and that’s before you account for your thumbs covering a portion of the display. You still get physical keys for the rest of your controls, including a full D-pad and ABXY buttons. All that, plus dedicated shortcut buttons and full bumpers and triggers along the right side of the phone.
All of this seems to combine into an excellent new package from Ayaneo, but I see a couple of ways this device might still disappoint. First, we still don’t have pricing or availability, and combined with the unspecified RAM, I’m a little nervous what this phone might be priced at. Second, I still don’t know if an ultra-tall 6.8-inch display is the best choice for the bulk of titles potential buyers might look to grab this device to play. Today’s demo showcases Infinity Nikki (at least, I’m pretty sure), and as a modern mobile game, it’s capable of filling the entire screen. But any retro title is doing to look much smaller on this display, and considering the market that usually picks up Ayaneo devices, I’m not sure how pleased they’ll be with this limitation.
Even more concerning, however, is the chipset choice. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with employing this particular MediaTek chip, but the retro gaming hobby scene is built on the backs of enthusiasts, and Qualcomm simply has better driver support, both from emulation apps and from third-party drivers that often improve the overall experience. Scrolling through the comments on this announcement video backs this up, with a lot of fans looking to wait for an eventual Snapdragon-powered follow-up.
Still, nothing here suggests an outright disaster — rather, a few concerns leading up to the launch of this phone. We still don’t have any details on pricing or availability, and Ayaneo’s store page just links to a yet-to-launch Kickstarter page. In a boring year for smartphone launches, though, you have to give the Pocket Play this: it’s not like anything else we’ve seen in recent memory. Oh, also, there’s a red one, and it looks slick.
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