KONKR Pocket Advance review: what shape does to a handheld
What is in the shape of a thing?
How much does the shape influence how the thing will be used? Especially when it is so clearly shaped like something else. Especially when it is basically a copy of a thing that came before.
The KONKR Pocket Advance is clearly a more modern Game Boy Advance. It's in the name, it's in the marketing material, it's in the shape. And thus, I ask myself: is this, despite its ability to emulate much more than that, doomed to be a console mostly for playing Game Boy Advance games?
Yes. Except for the occasional test game, I have used the Pocket Advance almost exclusively for GBA Pokémon ROM hacks. And that is why I like it as much as I do.
Let's get the specs out of the way.
The Pocket Advance has a MediaTek Helio G90T, a Mali-G76 MC4 GPU, either 3 GB of RAM with 32 GB of storage or 4 GB with 64 GB, and a microSD slot. The 3.5-inch touchscreen has a resolution of 960 × 640; there is a 4000 mAh battery, Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5.0, USB-C and a headphone jack. It runs Android 12 and weighs 224 g, around 20% more than a Game Boy Advance with batteries.1
The MediaTek chip alone can comfortably handle the usual retro systems and go quite a bit beyond the GBA. PS1 is trivial, while N64, Dreamcast and PSP are all within range. Some GameCube and PS2 games work too, although at that point the bigger problem is no longer necessarily performance, but the lack of analogue sticks.
A recent update added the option to map the D-pad to an analogue stick, which makes some otherwise unplayable games technically playable. But the mapping is mostly a workaround for something the hardware was never designed around.
The controls don't completely copy the GBA either. KONKR has added eight more buttons without changing the basic shape too much. You get X and Y for a normal four-button ABXY layout, which I somehow completely misremembered as being on the original GBA too. There are also L2 and R2 along the top edge, positioned inside L1 and R1. I never hit them by accident, and they are still easy enough to reach when a game needs them.
There are two more buttons on top, LC and RC, which can be assigned to shortcuts and system functions. I have one of them mapped to fast-forward in RetroArch, mostly because the animations in Pokémon games are too damn slow but are still part of the experience, so removing them isn't an option for me either.
Finally, there are two system buttons on the front: the K button for AYASpace and quick settings, and "=" for returning to the home screen. Start and Select are in roughly the same place as on the original GBA, but it still took me a few days to stop pressing "=" when I wanted Select.
My review unit came in Coral Orange, which I think suits it particularly well. There are several other colours, including a limited edition, but the orange version looks exactly like what it is: a modern take on a plastic handheld from the early 2000s. One of the things I like about it is that KONKR didn't try to make the Pocket Advance look unnecessarily expensive.
It is slightly bigger and heavier than the original GBA, although still small enough that neither really matters in practice. More importantly, it remains properly pocketable. There are, as mentioned, no analogue sticks sticking out from the front, so I can actually put it into a jacket or trouser pocket without worrying about what is happening to the controls in there.
The fact that I don't need a bag for it matters, even if I usually have one with me anyway. A Steam Deck, an Ally or even most smaller Android handhelds still feel like something I have decided to bring with me. The Pocket Advance can just come along.
The screen helps with the whole GBA thing too. The original Game Boy Advance ran at 240 × 160. The Pocket Advance is 960 × 640, exactly four times that on each axis, while keeping the same 3:2 aspect ratio. GBA games therefore scale perfectly to the whole display without uneven pixels or borders, and unsurprisingly, they look excellent on it. I did manage to scratch what I think is the pre-applied screen protector surprisingly quickly, though. So there is that.
Then there is Android.
I use Android every day on my phone, but I still don't particularly love it on gaming handhelds. There is always a collection of launchers, manufacturer software, emulator settings and frontends sitting between the device and whatever game I actually want to play. Cocoon gets recommended a lot, for example, but I find it a little too overdesigned. And don't get me started on setting up Android devices.2
Fortunately, after setting everything up, I barely have to think about Android anymore. Most of the time I wake the Pocket Advance, the game I was playing is still there, and I continue.
During a one-week vacation I put around eight hours into Pokémon Lazarus, with the device mostly sitting in standby between sessions, and charged it once. That is not a useful battery benchmark in any scientific sense, but it is probably a more accurate description of how I use the Pocket Advance anyway. Battery life has simply not been something I have needed to think about.
Most of my other handhelds are more capable on paper. They have bigger screens, analogue sticks and access to much larger game libraries. But I don't necessarily pick them up more often. I can't remember the last time I picked up my Steam Deck.
The Pocket Advance has ended up permanently living inside one Pokémon game or another. Because it is small and light, I grab it when I have ten minutes somewhere. Because standby works well enough, I don't have to think about starting a session. Because the screen is basically ideal for GBA games, they look exactly like they should. And because the whole device looks and feels so obviously derived from a Game Boy Advance, that is the kind of game I instinctively want to play on it.
Which brings me back to the question at the beginning. How much does the shape of a thing influence how you use it?
KONKR built a handheld that is much more capable than the Game Boy Advance it resembles, but those capabilities haven't really changed what I want to do with it. If anything, the extra performance just means the experience is effortless. I can run shaders, fast-forward games, use modern ROM hacks and ignore whether the original hardware could have handled any of it.
More recently, I have started playing PokéMMO on it, which might be the one game that actually makes full use of the fact that this is secretly an Android device. I have already written about how completely insane I find PokéMMO, so I won't repeat all of that here.
But the Pocket Advance already feels close to the ideal device for it. PokéMMO doesn't need analogue sticks, takes advantage of Wi-Fi, Android and the touchscreen, and still fundamentally looks and plays like the sort of Pokémon game this hardware seems designed for. I can play it on my PC or phone too, but neither makes me particularly interested in doing so.
The Pocket Advance does.
Prices start aggressively low for the hardware at around $100, which feels particularly notable in the middle of RAMageddon, when the price of seemingly every other handheld is going in the opposite direction.
Mine is probably going into my EDC. Because it is a really good Game Boy Advance, and I really like Pokémon ROM hacks.
