Hear that? Get somewhere quiet, and you can almost hear Nintendo’s lawyers crying out in agony. Not because Ayaneo has just announced the Flip 1S DS, honouring the iconic clamshell design of the Nintendo DS, or even because of the ‘DS’ moniker, but because Nintendo can’t do a damn thing about it. We hope.
This isn’t Ayaneo’s first time around the block. Its last clamshell handheld, the Ayaneo Flip 1 DS, also featured a DS look… and that’s stuck around. This year’s release improves upon its predecessor in every way, with some major upgrades to the internals and a far larger display to get your gaming kicks in.
Don’t flip out yet
“Combining hardware upgrades, AI computing power, dual-screen interactive experience, and flagship-level performance, the FLIP 1S DS is not only a flagship flip handheld but also a productivity tool that combines portability and efficiency,” said Ayaneo.
It wasn’t kidding. Powering the Flip 1S DS is the new AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 chipset, making it one of the more powerful handhelds out there. Ayaneo reckons it’s more than capable of handling triple-A titles and ‘high-intensity’ multitasking — which we don’t doubt — but also serves as a decent “AI PC” with its built-in AI engine. It packs in LPDDR5X RAM and has a slot for an M.2 2230 SSD, though specific configs are still unknown.
The dual displays are similarly impressive. The top one (where you’ll be doing your gaming) is a 7in 1080p OLED screen with a refresh rate of 144Hz. The secondary screen, which Ayaneo says acts as a proper extended display here, falls short of that with a 4.5in 1,620 x 1080 IPS display. They’ll go as high as 800 and 550 nits, respectively.
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It’s not entirely clear when that second display will come in handy during a session of God of War, but we don’t see why it can’t be tasked to run Subway Surfers footage 24/7. Ayaneo has other ideas, like using it to check game guides (weak), run AI tools, or simply adjust the volume parameters in-game.
Unlike the Nintendo DS, which didn’t introduce any analogue sticks until the 3DS era, the Flip 1S DS includes two (both of ’em hall effect), in addition to a set of typical A, B, X, and Y buttons with a traditional D-Pad. The triggers, too, are hall effect. Ayaneo’s gone with a minimalist look here, and a metallic texture coating the thing makes this better than any DS we’ve seen.
Ayaneo’s playing coy about the battery powering the Flip 1S DS, though we do know two USB-C ports line the handheld’s edges, both of which are capable of fast charging, speedy transfers, and even connecting peripherals. There’s no official release date or even pricing announced yet, but we can guess it won’t be cheap by the time Ayaneo is ready for release. The company ships globally, so we won’t be left out, either.
