Ayaneo Pocket Play: smartphone with pull-out gamepad

Martin Jud

11-12-2025

Translation: machine translated

Ayaneo is venturing into the smartphone world for the first time. With the Pocket Play, the manufacturer is launching a device that looks like a normal mobile phone - until you slide the display upwards and there is a controller underneath.

Ayaneo is known for its handhelds. Now comes the Pocket Play, the brand's first smartphone - and it has a design that brings back memories. A slider mechanism that exposes a controller under the display, as you last saw on the PSP Go (2009) and the Xperia Play (2011).

Ayaneo teased the project back in October. Now comes the first extended presentation - with a Kickstarter campaign that has been set up but not yet launched and an official video.

Only the obvious has been confirmed: the slider design, the gamepad with directional pad, ABXY buttons, shoulder buttons and two touchpads, the camera arrangement and the black and white/silver colour variants. Ayaneo has not provided further technical data such as processor, display size, resolution, battery capacity, RAM and storage.

The Kickstarter page does not yet list any specifications either. A mid-range Snapdragon chip, a display between six and seven inches and variants with eight to twelve gigabytes of RAM are possible - but these are speculations.

Martin Jud

Senior Editor

martin.jud@digitecgalaxus.ch

I find my muse in everything. When I don’t, I draw inspiration from daydreaming. After all, if you dream, you don’t sleep through life.

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