Android gaming has grown to be extremely popular, but even now it still isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. That’s OK. Some people surely only harbor feelings of disdain for gaming on Android though simply because they despise touchscreen controls, and may not be too keen to pick up a separate piece of equipment to give a more traditional feel with a gamepad. It’s for reasons like these why devices exist which have the controls built in, like this clamshell smartphone running Android which takes on the style and design form factor of a Nintendo 3DS. It lets users play games with built-in controls and hardware buttons so things feel a little more like a handheld gaming console.
In fact, to be fair, this isn’t really a smartphone, it’s simply a handheld Android gaming device. Think more along the lines of a portable version of the Android consoles which have and still exist. The device is called the GPD XD, and while it takes on the form of Nintendo’s wildly popular portable, it has a slightly different button control scheme. It features dual joy sticks which are located towards the top of the device, a d-pad, a,b,x,y buttons, and right and left trigger and bumper buttons, and a series of other buttons in the middle for volume and other functions.
Right now the device is on a presale so it hasn’t actually launched, but those that love playing games on Android and would rather do so with a dedicated gaming device, could opt for the GPD XD which looks to come in two different colors, blue or black, and two different storage size models for each colors, 16GB and 32GB. Prices for the presale are also discounted so those who pick it up early will get the 16GB model for $149.99, and the 32GB model for $169.99. As for the rest of the specs, the GPD XD is sporting a 5-inch IPS display with HD (720p) resolution, and it’s powered by a Rockchip quad-core processor (specifically the RK3288 CPU) with a Mali-T764 GPU. It’s also got 2GB of RAM and has expandable storage up to 128GB via the microSD card slot, and it runs Android 4.4 KitKat. If you’re looking for a dedicated gaming device to handle your Android gaming needs, this little unit might not be a bad option.