The dual-display portable, detailed by retro gaming outlets on October 9, borrows the Nintendo 3DS playbook nearly page for page — and positions itself as the company's flagship answer to the growing dual-screen retro handheld race.
The resemblance is hard to overstate. The clamshell body, speaker grilles, and button placement closely mirror Nintendo's New 3DS family, down to the retractable stylus slot. Anbernic says the redesigned stylus telescopes out and carries a mesh tip, an upgrade over the version bundled with the earlier RG DS Plus.
The palette also nods to Nintendo, with blue, white, and black colorways. One thing Nintendo never had, though, is a dedicated physical AI button — which the DDS carries on its lower shell.
Screens built for pixel-perfect 3DS scaling
The two IPS LCD panels are the real headline. The upper display measures 4.7 inches at 1200x720 resolution (5:3), while the lower touchscreen is 4 inches at 960x720 (4:3).
Those ratios matter: each panel matches the original 3DS displays at exactly three-times integer scaling, so every pixel of the 3DS's 400x240 top image and 320x240 touch image maps cleanly to a 3x3 block with no blurry fractional scaling.
Both screens are rated at 500 nits of brightness and roughly 300 pixels per inch, according to The Gadgeteer. What you will not find is glasses-free stereoscopic 3D — Anbernic has not advertised it, so the 3D slider of the original remains a casualty of nostalgia.
Snapdragon G2 Gen 2 under the hood
Driving the displays is Qualcomm's Snapdragon G2 Gen 2 gaming chip, paired with an Adreno A22 GPU — reportedly an Adreno 735-class part with Turnip driver support, which should let the device render at higher resolutions without breaking a sweat.
A screenshot of the redesigned control center showed a RAM usage bar reading 7.20GB, pointing to at least 8GB of memory, per RetroHandhelds.
The rest of the sheet reads like a wish list: active cooling fans to keep the chip stable, a Z-axis linear motor for haptic feedback, front-firing stereo speakers, a metal stepless hinge, a protective UV-coated shell, and a 6,000mAh battery.
It is a clear step up from the budget RG DS, which paired modest Rockchip silicon with Android, and from the Linux-based RG DS Plus that preceded this new design.
Price and release date still a mystery
The biggest questions remain unanswered: Anbernic has not said when the RG DDS will ship or what it will cost.
Its rivals in the dual-screen retro space — the AYANEO Pocket DS, the AYN Thor, and the upcoming Retroid Pocket Duo — have not waited for a budget-friendly flagship, and the early buzz suggests the DDS could be the strongest contender yet.
For now, the pitch is simple: this is the closest thing to a modern 3DS that money can buy, minus the 3D. If Anbernic prices it anywhere near its recent dual-screen devices, clamshell loyalists may finally get their upgrade.
By Hamza Faisal
