Retroid Pocket Nova Android Handheld Specifications and Pricing Reveal High End AMOLED Display and Powerful Snapdragon Hardware
Retroid has announced its new Android based portable console the Retroid Pocket Nova which delivers high end emulation specs in a small form factor. Based on an officially published report directly on the official Retroid social media platforms, the console is the company's first significant release for the year following a rocky start to the calendar. The device aims at a particular market segment with its high refresh rate display with a 4:3 aspect ratio and entry price of sub $250.
The front of the Retroid Pocket Nova showcases a 4.5" AMOLED panel, with a 120Hz refresh rate. This panel features a static output resolution of 1280 by 960, thus retaining the common 4:3 aspect ratio core to the retro gaming community. Panel properties are listed at 100,000:1 contrast ratio, a maximum brightness of 500 nits, and 150% coverage of the sRGB color spectrum. This time, rather than covering the entire front face of the device with a single glass sheet, Retroid has chosen to leave the surrounding bezel of the screen elevated a retort to feedback on the Retroid community.
The controls layout consists of the D pad centrally positioned at the top with symmetrical Hall Effect analog sticks encased within individually customizable RGB illuminated rings situated below. Two analog triggers are situated on each shoulder of the plastic enclosure; this design is compact at 169.9mm by 84.1 mm by 15.6 mm, and lightweight at 255g. An under demand internal active cooling fan handles the heat output.
To offer competitive processing power to peak mobile devices a 4nm Qualcomm QCS8550 system on a chip was used. It is essentially an IoT version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, with 1 snappy Kryo Gold core running at 3.2GHz, 4 lower power Kryo Gold cores at 2.8GHz and 3 Silver cores ticking along at 2.0GHz, all under the auspices of an Adreno 740 GPU with 48 TOPS neural processing unit. The chip shares the same heart as the Retroid Pocket 6 but does not feature a cellular modem for 5G. 8/12GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 128GB UFS 3.1 internal storage, hooked up to an optional microSD card, are also available.
The device is equipped with Android 13 as an operating system. The wireless communication enabled on the device is Wi Fi 7 and bluetooth 5.3. Audio is enabled through front facing stereo speakers and 3.5mm analog headphone jack. The charging is through a USB 3.1 Type C port for 5000mAh in build battery which allows fast charge up to 27W. Port 3.1 is supported through the same port to display port video and mirror the gameplay to an external display having a maximum resolution of 4K at 60Hz.
Retroid has tiered their pricing by colour finish and memory configurations. The opaque colours (Black, 16 Bit, GC Indigo) start at 229USD for the 8gb RAM base model, and go up to 269USD for the 12gb RAM model. The translucent colours (Ice Blue, Crystal, Watermelon, Clear Purple) have a slight premium at 234USD for the 8gb model and 274USD for the 12gb model. As of yet they have not announced the official opening of pre orders, but those who order early will receive a complimentary ergonomic bumped back shell and a tempered glass screen protector.
