Retroid Pocket Mini receives Android 13 upgrade, but early adopters warn against updating

The Retroid Pocket Mini and Pocket 5 have been available for some time now, having been released in September. While the pair contain broadly the same hardware, the Pocket Mini fell far short of the Pocket 5 at launch when it came to its pre-installed software.

Inexplicably, Retroid pre-installed Android 10 on the Pocket Mini, compared to Android 13 for the Pocket 5. In fact, that choice saw the Pocket Mini arriving with older software than the Pocket 4 and Pocket 4 Pro (curr. $199 on Amazon), despite launching almost a year afterwards.

The difference may sound trivial, but it meant that the Pocket Mini could not access certain emulators or games that require newer versions of Android than one Google shipped over five years ago. Retroid has now rectified this discrepancy by the device up to Android 13, which can be grabbed from its Discord channel.

Unfortunately, there are severe caveats at the time of writing. For instance, the upgrade process wipes the device rather than leaving an existing installation intact. There are reports that the current Android 13 package contains various bugs too. As a result, Retro Handhelds recommends people avoid upgrading to Android 13 on their Pocket Minis for the time being unless absolutely necessary.