Dose the Ayn Thor bring the Hammer? | New Handheld coming!

If you have been following Ayn for a while you knew they are due for a new handheld release.

I was actually in the middle of writing an article going over the possibilities of Ayn’s next handheld and when I thought it might get announced. To be fair I thought I had a couple weeks before we would see anything but they were definitely due. It makes sense however releasing a direct competitor to Ayaneo’s current launch now that Ayn knows the pricing scale they are using and they can snipe some of Ayaneo’s sales.

This morning Ayn dropped a teaser for a new handheld emulator called the Ayn Thor. Like any good teaser they didn’t give us a ton of info but just enough that we can figure out some things about the handheld.

The Ayn Thor is obviously a DS style handheld which looks to have 2 different size screens. Once opened you are treated by so much glass. They have stick with the all glass setup similar to the Ayn Portal around the sticks and face buttons with a display resting comfortably between.

It looks to have the same Ayn/Retroid HallEffect sticks we have come to love and they are inlaid similarly to what we see in the Retroid Pocket Flip 2, RGB and all. The left stick is above the d-pad which likely makes sense with the SOC that will be found in the Thor. It looks like there are home/back and start/select buttons around the screen which are circular.

On the front you will find the volume and power buttons along with a Type-C hole and 3.5mm headphone hole. There is also a door for a microSD card to expand the storage.

The bumpers and triggers at first look appear to be the same as the Retroid Pocket Flip 2. This gives you stacked shoulder buttons which I think is welcome in a handheld like this. If you watch the teaser the triggers seem to shoot lasers.

There is stereo front firing speakers located at the bottom of the glass under the face buttons. Glass can be acoustic if used correctly so this could be interesting. There are slits for sound to travel so hopefully they are tunneled correctly. There is also 2 cutout on the front of the handheld positioned as if they could fire sound as well, it’s not likely but I can’t figure out what else these would be for.

The Ayn Thor also has active cooling. It appears to be the same laptop cooling used in other devices which is good. Hopefully the fan isn’t as loud as some recent handhelds that have released. There is nothing crazier than a handheld that sounds like a jet lifting off.

(Edit 8/19/25 added after initial post) The Ayn Thor will be equipped with a 6” OLED display on the top along with what I can only assume is the 3.92” OLED display out of the Retroid Pocket Classic and Ayaneo Pocket DMG . All these displays have been seen before and offer deep inky blacks along with clean pixels.

Lastly we take a look at the SOC. There hasn’t been a bunch of rumors around Ayn mass ordering a new SOC which would make me initially think Ayn is going with a Snapdragon 8 Gen2 like the current line of Odin handhelds. This would make sense from a cost perspective but I think Ayn might be ready to pump up the power a touch with all the new Ayaneo devices rolling out.

We know it will stick with Snapdragon thanks to the teaser and honestly it’s worked well for them so why wouldn’t they. Qualcomm did release additional mobile chips to their Snapdragon line this year which are likely pretty appealing. Though I wouldn’t be surprised to see another SD8 Gen 2 I think Ayn might go with the Snapdragon G3 Gen 2 for this handheld. I’m probably wrong but that will keep them competitive and it’s a chip made for mobile gaming.

When it comes to the Ayn Thor I’m here for it. It normally takes Ayn 2-3 weeks to open orders for a handheld after its initial trailer so I would expect the Thor to go on sale sometime in September. It typically takes roughly a month after the initial sales release before we start seeing the handhelds reach consumers hands.

Edit: Updated image from Ayn’s Discord channel. The Odin Thor appears to be getting accompanied by an Odin 3 to the lineup. This makes me think there almost definitely will be an upgraded CPU to the Odin 3 anyways.

As we learn more about the Thor I’ll update you. In the meantime Ayn will likely update their site with more information soon.

What do you think about the Ayn Thor? Are you as excited as I am to see Ayn releasing a dual-screen flip handheld?

GameOn

CellPhish

This article may contain affiliate links. If you use these links to purchase an item I may earn a commission which comes at no additional cost to you and supports future content.