Retroid announced this morning that the Retroid Pocket 5 is now available in two new colors, with both Yellow and Turquoise being added to the lineup. This comes weeks after the company “temporarily” discontinued the Retroid Pocket G2, which featured both of these color options.
While many of us are trying to figure out what might be in the works for Retroid’s next handheld, we were a bit surprised by this morning’s announcement. In reality, it wasn’t all that surprising, given that it appears that the Pocket G2 is actually gone for good.
What likely happened is that Retroid has a boatload of Yellow and Turquoise shells in its inventory that are being repurposed for the Pocket 5. This also just provides further confirmation that the Pocket G2 was really nothing more than an internal spec bump, as it was powered by the Snapdragon G2 Gen 2, as opposed to the Snapdragon 865 found in the Retroid Pocket 5.
This really doesn’t come as too much of a surprise, even if it wasn’t the announcement we were expecting to see from the company. However, instead of just adding new color options to the existing Pocket 5 lineup, I kind of wish Retroid had taken a different approach.
It would have been awesome to see Retroid start offering these shells as part of its “DIY” lineup of replacement parts for the Pocket 5, Dual Screen Add-on, and Retroid Pocket Mini. You can already swap out the buttons, D-pad, and backplate, so adding a full shell swap as another option would be icing on the cake.
Alas, it wasn’t meant to be.
Nevertheless, if you’re bummed out that you didn’t get the Pocket G2 in the Switch Lite colorways, you can now just grab the Retroid Pocket 5 in those colors instead!
