As discovered by Liliputing and picked up by The Verge, a handheld PC company is toying with a rather familiar-looking screen configuration for one of their upcoming products: the Ayaneo Flip DS and its sibling, the Ayaneo Flip KB. The KB just flips open to a mini-keyboard, while the DS has an upper and lower screen, similar to a particularly well-known line of Nintendo handhelds.
The handheld PCs are both powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 7840U CPU and Radeon 780M integrated graphics. They have a primary display size of 7 inches and a refresh rate of 120hz. That’s all that has really been “leaked” by Ayaneo, and I emphasize those quotes because Liliputing does.
Call me short of imagination, but I have no idea what else you’d use the second screen for. To show a slideshow of your anime waifus while you play Doom (2016)? I’m fairly certain that it’s intended for the crowd looking to emulate Nintendo DS games, which I find funny because I think the best platform to emulate Nintendo DS games is a Nintendo DS. It has the form factor and screen resolution and everything. They’re also super cheap. They just don’t let you play modern PC games, so I guess if you’re short on pocket space…
However, I feel like pointing out that it won’t be a very good DS surrogate unless that second screen is a touch display. Try playing Freshly-Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland without one. I feel like, given its obvious purpose, it has to be, but that hasn’t been confirmed.
Meanwhile, The Verge reporter Sean Hollister sounds practically exasperated with Ayaneo’s hijinks. They say: “The company also announces new designs faster than it can ship them — by the time I’ve received one of the company’s products for testing, it’s almost always already moved on to a newer, more desirable model.”
The isn’t for me, but it might be for you. I, on the other hand, have a sudden desire to play Freshly-Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland again.
