You can tell tech hardware design teams are getting bored. With the entire smartphone industry having unanimously decided that every device should become a featureless rounded rectangle, designers must be going out of their minds. Which perhaps explains what’s going on over at Xiaomi, because its latest creation is unhinged. Much like Apple’s iPhone 17 Pro, Xiaomi’s latest blower, the suspiciously similarly named Xiaomi 17 Pro, has a camera bar (sorry, plateau). Very much unlike Apple, Xiaomi’s decided its equivalent should double as a Game Boy.
Inexplicably, m’colleague Tom Morgan-Freelander neglected to mention this in his write-up. He sensibly focused on how the screen on the back of Xiaomi’s phone could be used for notifications, timers, and even as a viewfinder. Nowhere did he suggest it could turn into something that, in Xiaomi’s own words, lets you “rediscover the joy of handheld gaming”. Or perhaps he was made aware of this, ran screaming from the room, and excised the horror from his own mind. Which would probably be for the best. Because what Xiaomi’s cooked up is compelling in a bad way. It’s the gaming equivalent of watching a vulture rip apart a corpse.
Basket case
It begins with you slapping on a case. Depending on how Google Translate is feeling at the time, the product roughly translates as ‘Retro Handheld Gamepad Case’. And if you’re mad enough to buy it, the thing costs ¥299 – about $42/£31. It attaches to your phone, unhelpfully blocks Wi-Fi charging, and then quickly connects wirelessly. At that point you can use its various controls, which appear to be very firmly in “we have Game Boy at home” territory. The internal battery will net you up to 40 days of play at three hours per day. That’s assuming you can stomach it for that long.
I don’t have a case myself. In fact, after this column, it’s very unlikely Xiaomi will ever speak to me again. But I have watched plenty of YouTube influencers getting far too over-excited about it. They’re declaring this case to be the future of gaming. Ironic, given that it so heavily riffs on the past. And to be fair to Xiaomi, its game case does at least work in a literal sense. Prod the buttons and things happen. But the overall experience makes me think I’ve fallen, hit my head rather badly, and woken in a world where handheld video games have taken a turn for the surreal.
Game of phones
For one thing, the bundled games include Angry Birds 2. You’ll recall that title was designed specifically for devices that didn’t have traditional controls. Some of the others – vertical shooter Blast Fighter, Subway Surfers wannabe Furry Run and Classic Snake – seem more suited to a D-pad. But they – and, indeed, you – will surely be less suited to a setup where almost a third of the screen is obscured by two whopping great camera lenses. Dynamic Island has nothing on this.
Clearly, it’s a gimmick. It’s hard to imagine anyone designing games specifically for the back of this phone. And even if someone got an actual Game Boy emulator running on it, you’re going to suck at Tetris or Super Mario Bros when you can’t see a chunk of the screen.
So this isn’t a gaming revolution, nor even a good way to bring retro goodness to mobiles. We have proper controllers for that. But Xiaomi’s game case creators do deserve credit for – to borrow an Apple phrase – deciding to ‘think different’. Even if the end result is more like, ‘What were they thinking?’
