Anyone making phones with controllers built-in?

That GPD G5A interests me. I don't want the 1GB RAM version though. I saw a rumor of a limited run to make a 2GB AM version with the new RK3288 chips instead of the RK3188 set. If it comes to be then I will want that thing. I don't care that it isn't a phone too. I already have a simple android phone for the basic stuff. I just need a decently powerful Android gaming machine. the fact it's also a handheld is an extra bonus. I was debating whether to get a Mad Catz M.O.J.O. or Nvidia Shield to get Tegra 4 power. I just don't like the folding screen on the Shield and the MOJO is rather large for a home base console. Decisions, decisions, decisions...

 

800X480 is perfect for ps2 and previous emulation, and the screen is 5 inches, come on..... you would be hard pressed to see the difference between 480 and 720ish with fingerprints on it, even with 20/20 vision.

The JXD S5800 has a terrible processor(compatibility wise). So I don't think there is a good option right now for phones.

The JXD s601, 2, 3 come with the slider sticks but they are mapped to the same keyboard addresses as the directional pad.

Keep in mind that most kernels for android accept analog devices, but the actual android device has to have any non-peripheral compiled in the actual build. Most newer handhelds have the seporate wiring for the analog controls, but no software/firmware implementation to actually use the input properly. To top it all off most have closed source, and no interest in updating the consoles in the future. Make sure you have a strong community following, or open source code if you want options/bugfixes to be updated later. If Skelton has written a rom (SKELROM) for it you're probably golden.

I haven't even looked into the 7800 for several reasons: Its not exactly portable, it costs almost 2x as much, and for the price....JXD has a habit of randomly closing off/ending support for random consoles. I purchased my JXD S60X's for less than $70, they weren't exactly an investment compared to $169-$199.

 

As I said on the first post the JXD phone chip sucks, no argument there, but the control part now that sucks, how could they halfass it like that?

For the rest, tbh it doesnt surprises me, most chinese oems are shit when it comes to support, xiaomi must be the only exception and it does not seem interested in gaming (portable at least) nor the western market for now.

I wonder which outfit are these companies (GPD, JDX, etc) using to make these things. I dont have a lot of experience dealing with chinese OEMs but what I know is that they always bit more than they can chew. I guy I know in another division had to go all the way to guangzhou and stay there for months to oversee productions because all the batches that made the way over here had "defects", which is just a way to say even the metal was brittle as shit.

Anyways, about the Tegra4 it is a nice chip but I have no idea why its not being used in more devices. Besides the shield and tablets I could only find it in one phone, the Mi3 but the idiots in charge used some shitty chinese telco system so if you import one it can only use 2G speeds. Like going back in time to 2006

My dream is an xperia-like phone with a Tegra 4, dual analogs and 2GB of ram.

 

Funny thing is, GPD(claim to) made the first android handheld. They actually(claim to) make the majority of chinese handhelds for other companies, they often run into problems with companies not paying them, and therefore quality suffers.

Rock chips can be had for less than 10$ with ram attached, in bulk. Nvidia hasn't released their bulk price, but i'm sure its around 3-4 times more than that.


Here is a recent interview explaining a little bit about the Chinese handheld companies, GPD as a whole, and the causes of most issues in the obscure handheld community; from another board I frequent:
http://boards.dingoonity.org/gpd-devices/(coming-this-week)-interview-with-gpd/

 

Agreed completely there. There is the Mad Catz M.O.J.O. home console that uses it but that defeats the purpose of being mobile even if it does have 10/100 ethernet and USB 3.0 built in. My dream phone must be a bit large and think for all I need in it. 5" 1080p screen, high resolution optical zoom front camera, at least 1080p rear camera, Tegra 4, 2GB RAM, at least 32GB ROM with a full sized SD slot to support the 256GB SDXC cards, dual sim card support and unlocked to use all carriers, 4G or whatever is fastest in America, multiband frequency for international travel, HDMI out, USB host and OTG, ac wifi, Bluetooth 4.0, slider QWERTY keyboard, the usual Xbox 360 style controls, and the latest build of Android rooted. Probably more but that should cover the most important parts. If this was made I'd sell my heart to get one.

 

Great article, now about the company they seem like a straightforward bunch but tbh those claims seem a bit high, but then again there are so many hacks out there (cough ouya cough) that saying they created the android handheld its no biggie.

As for their problems it doesnt surprise me. Have you heard about zombie companies? they were common in japan a while back and now you have the same problem in china because the govt there is giving away loans to anyone, but when that gravy train stops companies go down, immediately.

BTT, I didnt know those RK chips were so cheap, now those tablets going for $250 seem like a ripoff ;P. What about the new MT chips? I heard the mali GPU packs a lot of punch

Same here, tho I would be ok with lower specs like a 720p screen, what I need is a big battery, 4000mAh like that lenovo phone. As for the size of the screen well thats a problem: the slider would already make the phone pretty thick, add a big screen and its a brick. With controllers you dont need a really big screen cause you dont need space for the virtual buttons so I guess I could live with a 4.5" screen, or even 4" like the iphone's

Still with all these off the shelf parts there could be many sizes for this phone, and well if enough people want it there could be a phablet slider for gaming.

 

Development and internal trade within china eat up the majority of that money. Also if you google the mali 400 its equivalent to the graphics processing power of the PS3, and beats the crap out of the tegra 3. Shame the CPU's attached are usually slower.

This is one of the main problems with Chinese handhelds, people want all of the new stuff, but don't want to pay the premium for it. Believe that companies like Samsung, Sony, and Nintendo sap the same cheap markets(china and Korea) to build electronics; just as much as the other Chinese handheld companies. Even then....They usually end up selling their electronic products at a loss, or the true cost is subsidized by other companies(ie; phone carriers). There is no free lunch. You want an HD display lots of memory and mobile connectivity, your going to pay for it. China is already tapped as cheap as you can get it. There is a really small market for people who like the stuff we do, and that have the money to back it up.

 

I dont know, I believe a phone for gamers could make it big if it doesnt sucks like previous models, and when the chinese can make something like the elephone, a 5" FHD phone with 2GB of RAM and a 8-core CPU for just $200 you dont have to compromise a lot to get some pretty nice specs.

I see far more phones with those MT chips than the others, are those the cheapest or its about power use?

 

Yes 3rd rate processors are cheaper.

Another issue that you run into is that buttons are a dying breed. The younger generations are buying into the touch screen era. Most phone companies aren't making phones with keyboards due to cost; the majority of phone users then think that a keyboard phone is inferior; phone makers back that up by only releasing crappy keyboard phones; and newer mobile games are developed without the use of buttons. Therefore buttons are becoming legacy.

I actually had my keyboard phone stolen this year, and without a nice relevant replacement I had to go with the Nexus 5(still missing my keyboard whenever I SSH or term).

I was talking to co-workers about my Chinese handhelds, and I get the puzzled look of why you need buttons on a mobile device. I would then explain emulation, and then they would counter with ... does it play ps3, vita, wii or xbox360 games? Does it have a HD screen? Does it have a tegra 4? And the conversations end after that.

I have a feeling after the next generation of consoles, everything will all be tablets. I think the WiiU's tablet was a transition piece.

 

Any better chinese phone SoCs?

I dont know if the younger generations are really going touch-only, else the wiiU should be the biggest hit ever for nintendo and not rumored for an early phase-out due to poor sales.

Also, why are Bt controllers selling so well? even samsung is making one and the last time they cared about gaming was with the 3DO. Even amazon is making a controller while it could tell people to use a kindle or similar device as such instead and lower the adoption cost

And I'm surprised your coworkers are dumb enough to think a phone can emulate X360 but know about tegra4 which is practically unheard of in phones aside from 2 china-only handsets.

Anyway, hows the Nexus 5? I almost got one but the lack of SD and the (from what I heard) crappy camera killed my vibe.

 

I always attribute stuff like this to people having more money than sense. There's also a ton of money in selling cell phone accessories, especially if you can prove it will work with your phone. Yes BT is universal, but having Samsung on the controller will give an uneducated consumer peace of mind that it's going to work with their Galaxy-Whatever. Plus it gives them one number to call for support.

What'll be interesting is how long they'll be selling well...

 

Nintendos sales went down due to them creating their own brand confusion. Rockchip and Allwinner are quality arm processors, beating out even most modern mainstream competition. They have all of the modern processor extensions and instruction sets. Iv'e seen them register as a krait or exnos processors, which makes me think that there is a little copying going on.

I don't know if the BT controller thing is also just a market test fad or not.

My nexus 5 is pretty nice, and reliable. The camera takes decent pictures. I don't need it to have sepia filters or outperform my DSLR. My only issue is that recently the GPS hangs sometimes. But I think I just need to factory reset it, because my wife has the same phone and firmware with no issues.

 

Allwinner seems to use the same underpowered cores that MT uses, but coupled with some dated GPUs, and rockchip is a little better but its upcoming chip looks a lot like what MT is working on, same GPU and everything.

 

MediaTek and Ingenic(adding that one in too) processors have a bad reputation due to the products that contain them. They are both common in the $99 and less android Drug store/ebay tablets, and cheap smart phones. I don't know about recently, but in the past they have a reputation of having missing extensions and incompatibilities with android. Another issue is that per MHZ they are slower. I can attest to this as I have had an "Alcatel one touch evolve" as a phone and my older tmobile G2(with the same ram) ran circles around it(despite the MT powered Evolve having a 200mhz benefit). In addition, some android apps weren't compatible with it. I haven't seen a good optimized device for one, so I can't say that one day they could make awesome processors. I don't think the GPU's are the issue as even lower end powerVR and Mali 400 gpu's can keep up with last generation consoles. The Issue that I have is either:
1.)MT and Ingenic processors are just added to junk android/win-ce devices.
or
2.)MT and Ingenic processors are the cheapest for a reason.

Don't get me wrong I have seen the Igenic processors sail in the linux community, and for closed source/application specific devices; and I'm sure MT can too. But in the android dept they are lacking in : Compatibility, hacker popularity(if you rely on 3rd party roms), and software updates(if you rely on your manufacturer).

 

The newest Mediatek proccessors are on a smaller manufacturing process and can use less power and therefore will shine in the budget cell phone arena. There is also a rumor that if samsung enters the budget cell phone arena they will use MT processors. RC/AW never really took off for phones in the US. With the new MT chips I would wait to see the performance and compatibility compared to other chips. 90% of the time you use your phone your on 1 or 2 processors anyways, so most won't see any benefit from Octacore/Quadcore anyways. They need to get the primary cores sorted out and optimized before working on more.

 

Does this system run on Pops like the PSP?

 

Considering that Nokia is getting back into gaming by opening their own game studio to develop WP8 Lumia games (Starting with Nokia Modern Mayor), and since they still make phones, perhaps an NGage revival could happen? Smack WP8.1 onto the device, give it analog sticks, Dpad and face buttons, and call it the NGage 2.
Id buy it. I like Windows Phone, and Nokia, and the NGage was a great idea but executed poorly.

 

Sorry for the DP. Internet Explorer is refusing to let me press EDIT for whatever reason. Anyways, I quickly threw together this concept:


Basically, have Windows 8.1 on the device, or android, set the device to launch the NGAGE UI (Shown in photo), at startup with an optional choice to turn it off, and aim it towards games, while retaining the cell phone features.

(I used the Sega Handheld by AT Games in the concept because it reminds me of the NGAGE color scheme.)

 

Old news but looking at forums I would say its way lower than that, most users are reporting all kinds of bugs and crashes on x86, even of popular apps where devs can afford to add compatibility

 

I created an account just to post on this thread.

I am currently looking for a phone and am going android primarily because I want to GBA old GBA games. In ths past on iOS devices having no physical buttons suck and if I wanted to lug around a separate controller I'd just bring my 3DS.

So far I've found only the Xperia Play, which has what I need physically, but I'm worried about the age. I have the newest Ipod for most of my needs, and it would still be an upgrade to my current phone, but I feel bad buying old tech.

I'm looking everywhere, and sadly everything seems to be attachments or tablets. Did Sony patent the idea of having a slide-out gamepad on a phone? I can't find anything remotely similar anywhere.