When it was first announced that ROCKNIX and Batocera would be available with the Retroid Pocket 5 and Pocket Mini, we were floored. Usually, the ability to dual-boot operating systems is left to either a handful of Anbernic devices or x86 handhelds. However, there were questions as to whether ROCKNIX would support the new and shiny Retroid Pocket Flip 2.

On paper, it seemed pretty obvious as the pertinent internals of the Pocket Flip 2 are shared with the Pocket 5. Once Retroid’s latest handheld made its way into the hands of reviewers, a few of them simply swapped the card from the Pocket 5 into the Flip 2 and were greeted with the ROCKNIX experience. And while pretty much everything worked right out of the box, the one feature that didn’t was the auto-sleep mode when closing the lid.

Fast forward to now, and recent ROCKNIX Nightly builds solve that problem. I loaded it up on my own Pocket Flip 2 earlier, and was absolutely delighted to see the screen actually go to sleep when closing the lid. There have already been a few times when I would close the lid without thinking, only to come back to an empty battery.

If you find yourself wanting to venture down this path, you can grab the latest nightly. However, you’ll see a bunch of different SoC names, some that are familiar, while others might not be.

• SM8250: Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 (RP Flip 2, RP5, etc.)
• SM8550: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 (Odin 2 Family)

So now, you can enjoy everything that ROCKNIX has to offer, on Retroid’s most exciting device release of the year (so far). This means that in addition to the features that you’re already accustomed to, the Pocket Flip 2 can now enjoy PS3 emulation with RPCS3, Xbox emulation courtesy of Xemu, and, of course, PortMaster! Oh, and now’s a good time to congratulate the PortMaster team, as there are more than 1000 ported games available to download and enjoy!

By now, you are probably already trying to download the latest build and get it flashed to your microSD card. However, I would just urge you to exercise a bit of caution, as the “Nightly” builds are more susceptible to game-breaking bugs and other issues that might hinder your experience. If anything, back up the files and contents of your micro SD card first, so you won’t lose anything if something happens.

ROCKNIX Nightly

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