Another week, another slate of drama in the retro handheld community. This time, it’s with the Retroid Pocket Nova, with retail units slowly beginning to arrive for those who preordered one.
There were some early rumblings about the D-pad sounding a bit louder than other handhelds. At first, it didn’t seem to be a very widespread “issue,” but it would appear that’s no longer the case, as more people have flocked to the Retroid Discord and RH Discord to share their findings.
The problem seems to be that the stem on some Pocket Nova’s is a bit longer for some, resulting in the stem scratching up against the PCB. After reaching out to some members of the community, and tearing apart both my retail Pocket Nova and Retroid Pocket 6, I found that the stem is actually longer on the Nova’s D-pad.
Thanks to @V1carious on the RH Discord, they used a set of digital calipers and found a 0.02mm difference between the Crystal RP Nova and the Black D-pad from the RP6. I didn’t measure the difference myself, but did find that there is a noticeable difference between the 16Bit RP Nova D-pad and the Crystal RP6 D-pad.
For some, you might have a D-pad with a longer stem, but didn’t really notice the Nova being any louder than other handhelds. Thanks to Joe, he found that the “closed diaphragm” kind of design of the trigger buttons, it essentially creates a “sort of sound hole for sound to escape.”
It’s also worth noting that we haven’t seen any reports of the longer stem actually affecting the ability to play games with the Pocket Nova. Joe astutely also pointed out that the longer stem could result in “more floating,” but again, we haven’t seen any reports of that being the case just yet.
There have been some responses over in the Retroid Discord, including the video above, demonstrating a tape-mod being performed. The potential problem with this solution is that when you look at the Bumped Back Shell page on Retroid’s website, there’s a disclaimer:
“Damaging any component while performing this procedure is NOT covered under the manufacturer’s warranty (For DIY).”
Obviously, this is problematic, as in order to perform the tape mod, you have to disassemble the Pocket Nova. For some, doing such a mod isn’t a big deal, but even if you’re an experienced modder, accidents happen and you do have to navigate through some ribbon cables in order to get to the D-pad.
For the time being, that’s the extent of the response from Retroid. However, we do know that the information being shared has been sent over to the engineers at Retroid, so we’ll likely have an “official” response in the coming days.
