Buy the Retroid Pocket Mini V2 here: https://joeysrh.link/RP_MINIV2
What is the Retroid Pocket Mini V2?
So I was very successful in my surgery of my Retroid Pocket Mini, in replacing the old screen with the new screen and I have to say, it’s downright gorgeous.
I ended up playing some Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, just for fun to see the screen in all its glory, and it’s essentially just perfection now. There’s very, very little slivers of black bars on the sides since it’s not a perfect 8:7 aspect ratio and is instead 31:27, but at the very least, with the black front, it blends in while you’re playing.
Shaders work
And for those of you that are shader fans, yes the shaders are actually all proper and working now like a real grid. Still not a shader fan, but no issues with them that I found.
Now for those of you confused as to why the screen swap was done, basically to make a long story short that was full of a lot of drama, Retroid initially shipped all Mini’s with the top and bottoms of the screen cut off so they could say it was a 4:3 aspect ratio screen when in reality, they were actually hiding parts of the screen and it was really what you see here today.
It caused a lot of issues with shaders and other problems as well, and then lots of drama ensued and they decided to ship Mini users that wanted the full, actual screen the front with the new screen attached and the back plate. So unfortunately, everyone will only get Black as a color, but as you can see, you can mix and match.
I’m imagining those of you with the orange colored Mini’s or others could have some fun here with choosing what to use in your new Frankenstein Mini.
Doing the surgery
As for the actual surgery, I did mine live so people could enjoy my mistakes as I made them and maybe learn from them, I’d say it should take you maybe two hours with light repairing skills. I have zero skills in this area and it took me about that. You also do need to flash your Mini to the new Android 13 build that works with this screen – that also includes those of you already on Android 13 if you flashed it before. So your Mini will be wiped completely doing this.
Thankfully, I have a nice guide in the description on how you can back up everything and restore it to a new device to help you.
But the actual process of doing the swap wasn’t that difficult, just time consuming and you need to go slow. There’s a few spots where you need to lift like the left and right shoulder button contacts, or the volume power button contacts and I have a feeling people will just yank on those and ruin their entire thing. Instead, you need to get in under them and lift them off, separating the adhesive. Honestly, this will likely be the hardest part for most people that maybe don’t have the skills or knowledge needed for this and hopefully my warning helps you.
One other issue that I did find is the replacement backplates with the SD card slot cover, the covers ribbon is not long enough. In fact, if you use it, you can’t close your SD card slot cover properly. I suggest, ripping that out, and then ripping your old SD card slot cover out of the old backplate, and stuffing it into the new backplate and using that. Once I did that, it worked perfectly.
Otherwise, I did mine completely different than Retroid’s video, I found it easier to just remove the entire board as one piece with the fan still attached rather than disconnecting the entire fan. It made it easier on my end.
But overall, I’d say if you’ve ever disconnected a ribbon cable before, you should have no problems doing this and feel free to just follow along with my livestream if you want. It was fun to do.
The final product is gorgeous
But now, after all of that, we have a frankenstein’d Retroid Pocket Mini, that has the same screen that the Retroid Pocket Classic is using, except now with more power, sticks, better triggers and so on. I only had my Classic for under a day because my R1 was broken out of the box, and I’m waiting on a replacement, but it’ll be interesting to see what’s better to use here and I think any Mini users might find that there may be no point to the Classic for you, if you plan to do this screen swap.
What’s super cool to me though, is just how good this screen is. I mentioned it before, but Game Boy and Game Boy Color games are absolutely drop dead gorgeous here. You can try and play spot the black bars if you want.
I’ve ever integer scaled it was well and it shrinks it down slightly, but the uneven pixels in games like Pokemon were really bothering me. Outside of under my studio lights, the black Mini blends in nicely with the black bars and those of you that are allergic to black bars likely won’t have a problem here.
4:3 content looks fantastic on here, either integer scaled or non, personally I’m leaving it integer scaled since it’s such a small difference and it looks better, but honestly it’s such a crisp screen here that it all just works beautifully.
Of course, that 4:3 content doesn’t just mean Super Nintendo or older systems, although you can do 8:7 if you’d like and use up more of the screen and if you do it without integer scaling, you are basically exactly close to full screen once again like Game Boy and Game Boy Color.
Since the Mini is as powerful as the Retroid Pocket 5 and Flip 2 though, you obviously have a lot more systems available to you and just quickly checking Gamecube, it’s the same as you had on the old screen. Since this new screen’s 4:3 content is the same size as the old one, whatever you experienced there would be the same here, except you have the black bars instead of the shell on top and bottom.
Is it worth doing?
So wrapping up here, is the screen replacement worth it? I would say absolutely, in my mind. After doing it, and getting the full power of the screen now, I see no downsides at all and only upsides, especially for any content where you want 8:7 aspect ratios or really vertical aspect ratios like Game Boy, Game Boy Color, if you want to do it to SNES and NES and so on.
I think the more interesting question is if you really need a Classic if you do this swap. I think I found the Classic to be a bit more comfortable to hold than the Mini, but it’s also much larger and has some cool colors. There’s pros and cons to each.
A note to Retroid
I think one lasting thought I have here is around Retroid and I don’t think I’ll ever understand why they did what they did with the Mini in the first place. This, in all its glory, is a beautiful screen now and a much better Mini overall. I think that’s a mistake they’ll never make again.
To correct it, Retroid if you’re listening, sell the Mini again with this new screen. It doesn’t matter if it’s black only, let the people buy this if they want – they should be able to. You solved the problem, you’ve done the right thing, now at least get some money back from it by selling this.