OneXSugar: Playing with the first dual-screen transforming handheld

I can’t believe they’re actually making these, was my very first thought, as I powered on a working prototype of the OneXSugar Sugar 1.

This week, One-Netbook is crowdfunding a gaming handheld on Indiegogo like none I’ve ever touched before. It’s got two OLED touchscreens, two power buttons, two sets of volume controls, and two hinged rotating gamepads that let it transform into entirely different modes.

Folded down, it’s like a Nintendo Switch, with a single 6-inch screen flanked by half-gamepads. Pop open the 3.92-inch secondary screen and rotate the gamepads, and it’s like a Nintendo DS with one screen on top of the other! Whichever mode you pick, the main controls instantly and automatically remap themselves to their new orientation.

And that’s just the start. Check out my video below for an extended look:

This is a handheld that can emulate Wii, GameCube, and play the most demanding Android games like Genshin Impact on high settings — and, according to RetroGameCorps, its flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon G3 Gen 3 and 16GB of RAM can even play original Nintendo Switch games smoothly with the right drivers.

But there’s only so much I can show you in a two-minute video, so I expect you’re wondering: just how competent is this handheld? How does it actually feel? Do you think it’ll be a worthy product by its planned September ship date? Will it be worth the $599 early bird price, let alone its now-revealed $799 MSRP?

I can’t say for sure — it’s a prototype, after all — but so far, the fun is outweighing the frustrations.

First, because I know you’ll ask: yes, the multitasking is real. I’ve played with dual-screen phones where the manufacturer artificially limits what you can do with the second screen, but that’s not happening here. You can send any app to either screen, even press a virtual button to swap which screen is “primary” as far as Android is concerned. You can turn off either screen to save battery, too, and use whichever you need. As I show in my video, there are all sorts of fun possibilities!

Second, I didn’t have to baby this prototype’s hinges, despite some worrying flex. I just flip them around and enjoy the loud thock as the pads magnetically snap into place. OneXSugar tells me the final hinges are SK7 tool steel and screwed directly into the aluminum alloy underframe, and will have more screws than the prototype. Still, I’m surprised the final hinge pins will still only attach to one half of the handheld’s frame rather than being sandwiched between top and bottom for more strength.

I’m continually surprised at how pleasant the Sugar 1 is to hold. The drift-resistant Hall effect joysticks and the microswitch buttons both feel smooth and responsive, and the grips feel quite sufficient in DS mode — with the secondary screen flipped out of the main body, it leaves a comfortable gap to place my fingers. The one notable caveat is there’s no real D-pad. OneXSugar includes a strong magnetic one that floats atop four face buttons of your choice, but I’m having trouble with accidental extra button presses that way; the buttons are better by themselves.

It’s not the mechanics that worry me most, despite many comments I’ve read about how unnecessarily fragile a multi-hinge device will be. What gives me pause is the software, which feels quite unfinished just over a month before it’s supposed to ship.

One-Netbook has been building miniature Windows laptops, tablets and handhelds for years now, but its first Android device will ship with the last-gen Android 14, with no promise of future upgrades for future game compatibility, and only a single “Sugar Console” app to make the OS gaming-handheld friendly.

Often, it works fine! But while I can generally just flip the controllers up or down and largely have gaming buttons instantly work the way my muscle memory expects, that’s not true of every button: the Start button, Android’s back button and the button that summons OneXSugar’s overlay are hard-coded for now, and I’ve had quite a few apps accidentally open or pause because I pressed the wrong button at the wrong time.

And since you can only swipe out of apps from the designated “primary” screen, I often try to close apps only to find it’s not working because I’m doing it the wrong way.

I’ve also had occasional issues charging the Sugar 1 reliably, or stretching some Android apps across both screens at the same time. Both are getting fixed in software, according to the company.

Though the Sugar 1’s primary selling point is the flexibility of its twin OLED screens, I was surprised to find OneXSugar doesn’t yet have a way to resize your games to use those screens optimally — it only offers the equivalent of picture frame matting to minimize the black borders you see. In order to play Nintendo DS and SNES games at their proper aspect ratios on the Sugar 1, I was at the mercy of the resizing, window dragging, and arranging tools each emulator offers.

Some of the Android games I was able to download didn’t run properly quite yet, as they apparently haven’t yet whitelisted Qualcomm’s new handheld chip; Fortnite refused to run entirely, and Genshin Impact complained about overloading the processor as I ramped up the settings, even as the game seemed to run smoothly.

I wasn’t able to download a lot of native Android titles to begin with: prototypes went out to reviewers without any Google apps or the Google Play Store. That drastically limited what I was able to test, as many top English-language Android games require Google components, and many top Chinese-language games require Chinese logins. The company confirms to The Verge that final units will ship with Google Play, though.

Lastly, I suspect you’re curious about the battery life from its 21.5Wh pack, I won’t be able to give you a good idea yet because my tool was clearly misreporting the battery drain. Over at Retro Game Corps, Russ seems to be seeing anywhere from 1 to 12 hours depending on the title.

I’ve seen lots of zany and droolworthy gaming prototypes in my 15-plus years covering gadgets, but transforming ones like this typically never ship because they’re too complicated and too niche to be worth a manufacturer’s trouble. But One-Netbook, a brand that’s built a reputation for modular portable computers, sees this as an opportunity to make a splash in the crowded Android market, VP Jason Zeng tells The Verge.

He says the goal was to “create something different,” and that his company actually wants to release more such splashy products in the future. For now, its gaming handheld efforts are indeed niche: the 200-person company has only sold around 100,000 pieces, Zeng estimates on a call, with 60 percent of those sales in China. But he says the US is One Netbook’s fastest growing market, and the company sees Android devices as a more affordable way to access a larger population of customers than it’s done with Windows handhelds so far.

One-Netbook has no plans for Windows on ARM yet, Zeng tells us, but would like to connect with Valve. He says the company would find it “very interesting” to discuss a potential SteamOS handheld.