oday's handheld gaming market is polarized. Buyers are stuck choosing between dirt-cheap retro players limited to thirty-year-old titles and massive, unwieldy bricks like the Steam Deck that make wrists go numb after thirty minutes. Mainstream manufacturers simply do not offer a balanced, lightweight mid-range device with a vibrant display and a sensible price tag. A maker known as Minor_95 on Habr has offered a practical countermeasure: the Kollektive Deck, a modular handheld built entirely around a secondhand smartphone.
Flea-market anatomy
The engineering logic is pragmatic: strip a used phone down to its bare motherboard and turn it into a dedicated pocket console. The builder used a used POCO F5 with 12 GB of RAM as the core engine and display, sourced for roughly $130–$150. Controls were repurposed from a budget GameSir X2 Type-C mobile controller: the chassis was simply cut in half and integrated into custom ergonomic side grips.
"I don't really like what's on the market: it's either overpriced and poorly made, or obscenely expensive and slightly less flawed. Handhelds have a massive power disparity, and a sensible mid-range tier simply doesn't exist."
This upcycling approach solves the primary flaw of commercial handhelds: planned obsolescence. Upgrading internal components does not require throwing away a $600 device—swapping out the central phone motherboard for a newer board is enough. The build also features Cirque GlidePoint TM040040 round trackpads and dual Waveshare RP2040-Zero microcontrollers to drive the analog inputs and buttons.
Uncompromised cooling, power, and software
To ensure sustained performance without thermal throttling, the developer re-engineered the cooling and power delivery. The smartphone SoC is cooled by a Honeywell PTM7950 phase-change thermal pad applied directly to the silicon, coupled with a copper heat spreader, a 5-volt centrifugal fan, and a compact TEC1-03104 Peltier element.
The custom 3D-printed housing retains a functional SIM card slot, giving the handheld standalone 4G/LTE mobile connectivity without tethering to a phone. On the software side, the device runs a dual-boot setup: a lightweight LineageOS build for native Android games and Linux ARM64 for PC emulation and retro platforms.
While major hardware manufacturers keep churning out two-hour battery bricks, this project proves that a lightweight, modular handheld with a high-end AMOLED screen can be built for a fraction of retail prices. It may require intermediate soldering skills, but the Kollektive Deck serves as a compelling proof of concept for what modern portable hardware should look like.