Yoniq is a company that came out of nowhere, so much so that I was only made aware of them a week ago, after an email landed in my inbox introducing themselves and asking if they'd have me swing by their booth at Gamescom to see their upcoming retro handhelds.
At first, I thought this company's inventions were fake, seeing as their website had a whole bunch of AI-generated images on it, which they responded to my email about: "our marketing team is still being built and is not yet as mature as our product and engineering side", so I think they're working on this, eventually. After asking a friend of ours who was at Gamescom to swing by their booth to verify, I was glad to see that Yoniq is a real company and they were indeed showing off their three handheld devices.
The first handheld in their portfolio is called the Yoniq Duo, a dual-screen Android device; the second is the Yoniq Portal, which I will be covering in this article for you, and the third is the Yoniq Lite, a clone of the white-labelled R36S handheld that has riddled AliExpress and other cheap stores across the globe. I am not interested in this one, personally.
The Yoniq Portal is a retro handheld device designed to look and feel like the original PlayStation 2 controller, featuring what looks like a 4-5" display that separates both sides of the controller. It features the iconic PS2 DPAD, large nostalgic analogue sticks, the memorable action buttons (which I thought were trademarked) and the clunky shoulder buttons that will likely feel like the originals.
It looks and feels like a PlayStation 2 Portal, and due to its name, that's obviously what it's going for here, but in a more portable, 2000s aesthetic. It will likely come paired with Yoniq's operating system, called PantasOS, which they are calling an "open gaming ecosystem designed to connect your devices, games, and experiences in one seamless platform". This has yet to be released, but it appears to be a custom Android front-end for their upcoming devices.
Around the slightly tilted display, you'll find an array of ports for charging, adding your ROMs, volume control and more, centring everything you need to make things a little more comfortable. The DualShock is known for being a fairly comfortable device to use for long periods of time, and so is the Yoniq Portal, with custom additional menu buttons right next to your thumbs below the start and select buttons, which again, look and feel like the PS2's.
As of now, no specifications, pricing or release date has been announced, though their website does show a "launch timer" for this and the Duo handheld that ends on 1st January, so perhaps that's when this thing will be officially launched, or it could just be a placeholder, seeing as their website is still under construction.
The sign next to the devices at their Gamescom booth shares a few things, but nothing specific, such as "handheld optimised performance", whatever that means, along with cross-platform cloud connectivity, possibly meaning it can sync with your PC and modern consoles like you can on many Android and PC handhelds. There's also "AI performance scheduling", again, fancy wording for something that might just mean automatic power adjustments and finally "professional gamepad adjustment", meaning it may have some upcoming customisations.
Overall, it does look like an AliExpress knockoff handheld, but Yoniq have informed us, "our company has access to some of the most experienced supply-chain and manufacturing resources in China, and our team has previously been involved in the development and production of a large number of handheld gaming devices", so perhaps this will surprise many of us when development has finalised. It's clear these guys aren't just another handheld manufacturer; they have experience, and because they're at Gamescom, some budget to expose themselves to a Western audience before launch. Exciting times!
