AYANEO Pocket S shown handling up to Nintendo Switch games in first independent Android and emulation gaming performance video

The Pocket S has been a while in the making, with AYANEO first showcasing the Android gaming handheld briefly as 'Project S' in late August. Since then, the company has previewed the gaming handheld on various other occasions, most recently at the start of this month. Until now, AYANEO has not allowed any third parties to publish videos with the Pocket S samples. Instead, it has chosen to share gameplay footage itself, details of which we covered at the end of November 2023.

However, it has now provided what is claimed to be an 'early prototype' to ETA Prime, who has offered a first look in the video embedded below. Nonetheless, the YouTuber has also shown what could well be retail packaging, which leans into the device's reliance on a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset. In summary, AYANEO has packed the Pocket S with the following hardware:

• Qualcomm Snapdragon G3x Gen 2 chipset (15 W TDP)
• 6-inch IPS display, 2,560 x 1,440, 400 nits

Additionally, the Pocket S is about 14 mm thick, excluding its triggers, making it much thinner than most Android gaming handhelds. Like the Pocket Air before it, the Pocket S features various UI tweaks over stock Android through AYASpace and AYAHome software. As for gaming performance, ETA Prime has demonstrated that the Pocket S can handle the Android version of Devil May Cry: Peak of Combat, Genshin Impact and Real Racing 3 'fully maxed out' at 60 FPS in 1440p. Also, the YouTuber notes that many games installed from the Google Play Store recognise the Pocket S as an Xbox controller, although AYANEO has included a key mapper service for those that do not.

Meanwhile, Gamecube and Wii games can run at 1080p and beyond using the OpenGL backend. Furthermore, it seems that the Pocket S will deliver 3.5x native resolution on PlayStation 2 titles. Unfortunately, it seems that GPU driver issues often occur when emulating Nintendo Switch titles on YUZU. AYANEO has hinted that the Pocket S will be available in April 2024; full pricing and availability have not been confirmed yet, though.

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