Anbernic may have just teased its most nostalgic handheld yet. Not long after rolling out the Xperia Play-inspired RG Slide, a newly leaked video suggests the company is experimenting with another retro phone-style design—this time borrowing a clever trick from the Motorola FlipOut era.
The unreleased device shows up in a short clip shared to the r/SBCGaming community by a user named Qink001. At first glance, it looks like a compact, square handheld with a touchscreen—clean, minimal, and almost phone-like. The surprise comes seconds later: the display swivels 90 degrees, sliding aside to reveal a full set of gaming controls hidden underneath. It’s an eye-catching throwback to rotating-screen smartphones from the late 2000s and early 2010s, and it instantly sets this handheld apart from the usual rectangular retro console designs.
Under the rotating screen, Anbernic appears to have squeezed in all the essentials. There’s a D-pad, colored ABXY face buttons, start and select buttons, plus a circular button positioned at the top center whose purpose isn’t yet clear. The controls sit in a recessed section, a practical touch that likely helps prevent snagging or accidental presses while the screen rotates into place. The unit in the video is silver, features an Anbernic logo near the bottom edge, and includes a lanyard hole at one corner—suggesting it’s built to be carried around easily.
A quick look at the back shows shoulder buttons and four visible screws, reinforcing the impression that this is either an engineering sample or a prototype rather than a finished retail product. No hardware specs have been confirmed yet, but the interface shown on-screen includes a Chrome browser icon, which strongly hints the handheld is running Android. If that’s true, it could open the door to a wide range of emulators, Android games, and streaming options—depending on the final chipset and software support.
What’s especially interesting is the timing. Anbernic still hasn’t released the previously announced RG Vita and RG Vita Pro, yet this new concept is already appearing in the wild. That could mean the company is testing multiple designs in parallel, or simply gauging community interest before committing to a full launch.
For now, it’s unclear whether this rotating-screen handheld will become a real product or stay as a proof-of-concept experiment. Either way, the design is already generating buzz because it offers something rare in the retro handheld space: a genuinely different form factor with real nostalgia appeal, while still looking modern enough to fit today’s portable gaming scene.
