Give New Life to an Old Phone as a Gaming Device

If you are like most people, you probably have a drawer full of old phones. They’ve got to be good for something, even if you can never seem to figure out exactly what that might be. YouTuber Diy Otaku has an interesting idea that might give you some inspiration to pull those old phones back out of the drawer of shame — turn them into portable game consoles.

Gaming on a phone is not the ideal experience. With nothing other than a touchscreen to interact with, the interface always seems to feel a little hollow. But aside from that, phones have got what it takes to do some serious gaming — powerful processors, plenty of memory, and high-resolution displays.

Diy Otaku seized on this opportunity to transform a phone into a full-fledged portable gaming console, reminiscent of devices of the past like the Nintendo DS. As previously noted, the only major problem is the lack of a good user interface. So to address this issue, Diy Otaku disassembled an off-the-shelf Bluetooth keyboard and extracted its main circuit board. This was wired to a set of buttons that serve as the D-pad and other controls. From there, the custom controller can connect to the phone just like a Bluetooth keyboard — since that’s what it really is, after all.

To finish the console off, a 3D-printed shell was developed. It folds up in the middle, with the screen (i.e., the phone) housed in the top half, and the makeshift controller in the bottom half. Next, RetroArch for Android was installed so that Diy Otaku could do some retro gaming on the new device.

Aside from the keyboard hack, the rest of the build is straightforward. You could also use other hardware, like an Arduino, to simplify this particular step if you like. Or you could follow along with Diy Otaku in the video for a bit of help.