All games from the PS4 era run smoothly on the handheld.
Rumors that Sony is working on a new PlayStation handheld have been circulating for years. A creative DIY enthusiast has now taken matters into his own hands and transformed the PS4 into a portable console.
The PS4 handheld we never got
Handhelds are without a doubt one of the biggest and most important trends in the gaming industry in recent years. Nintendo has shown with the Switch that handhelds can hold their own against traditional consoles, and Valve has tapped into the market for PC gamers with the Steam Deck.
Many manufacturers have since followed suit with their own models. Sony fans, however, have been waiting for a successor to the PS Vita for more than 14 years now.
Reddit user “wewillmakeitnow” shows quite impressively in a new post what such a device might look like. After showcasing his first attempt a few months ago, he’s now presenting a new, significantly improved version of his PS4 handheld:
(Reddit)
For the device, he cut a PS4 Slim motherboard to size, downscaled it, and optimized it for better battery performance. It also features a 7-inch OLED display, six batteries, and a sophisticated cooling system.
He designed and assembled the case himself. According to the user, the handheld offers a battery life of one and a half to three hours, depending on the game. It can also be used while charging and connected to a TV.
In this way, the handheld is essentially the PS4 equivalent of the Nintendo Switch, and all PS4 games can be played on it without any issues.
There’s a lot of enthusiasm in the comments. One user writes, for example:
“Wow! PlayStation could use your help with their next-gen handheld.”
Other comments are along similar lines. The idea of being able to easily play the entire PS4 catalog on the go is actually pretty cool.
Whether Sony is actually working on a new handheld and whether it will look similar to the user’s mod project is, of course, unclear.
However, the device shows that it would certainly have been possible to release a handheld for the PS4 era. We can only hope that Sony recognizes the potential and soon provides PlayStation players with a model of their own.
