u/ScootSchloingo

I don't like how the stock experience feels like a janky Android phone accompanied by an equally-janky launcher, so I gave Gamma OS a try. I like its navigation and UI, and I really like the Daijisho launcher but it's been months since the initial release and there are still some major bugs that haven't been fixed like the audio jack/Bluetooth not working, and the fan needing to be manually enabled and disabled.

I heard about Rocknix and was interested in it since I don't have much of a use for Android and would love to get into Portmaster, but the last two times I tried a nightly build my experience was horrible. I couldn't get any games to launch, RetroArch itself kept freezing and not detecting the Air X's controls, the overall menu/UI experience was painfully laggy and online connectivity was so slow it took me several minutes just to download a single theme.

Is there something I'm doing wrong with Rocknix or is it still not quite ready for the Air X?

I've owned a Mangmi Air X and I've noticed it gets hot. I recently did a GPU deshrouding job so I have a lot of high-quality thermal pads of varying thicknesses and thermal paste left over.

Is it safe to assume that the stock pads and paste on devices are as cheap as possible, and would it even be worth it to replace it all?

I have a Mangmi Air X and right now the software options aren't that good. The stock OS fully supports its features but its default launcher is horrendous. The next best option would be GammaOS which has its optimization improvements, but it's designed in a way where the default launcher (Daijisho) feels like a native part of the OS. When I turn on/wake my device or hit the home button the launcher's right there, and I can access the Android (14) app drawer from a modified top/menu bar, by just tapping the shoulder buttons to cycle through menus. The problem is, GammaOS' first Air X build has some major bugs.

I'm unfamiliar with Emulation Station but I keep hearing nothing but good things about it. If I were to be on my stock OS (basically stock Android 14), could I set up ES-DE so that it has a similar seamless UI/UX experience like Gamma OS? Ideally I want my handheld to feel like a gaming handheld that just so happens to have Android support, and not a generic Android device where I can tap on an icon and launch a game launcher.

Their new CEO ran an "Xbox vs. XBOX" Twitter poll earlier in the week and recently its Twitter branding changed to XBOX (all caps). This comes not too long after they unveiled a new brand logo and boot sequence for existing Xboxes.

Asha Sharma's Twitter poll

The Verge's article

I was looking to upgrade from my Miyoo Mini Plus and my PS Vita 2000 broke on me, so I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone and get an affordable device with a larger screen that could also emulate PSP games. For months I've been seeing and reading reviews praising the Mangmi Air X as this $100 miracle device that can handle everything up to the PSP and even a small handful of GCN/PS2 titles. Just to make it clear, when I bought this I wasn't planning on doing any GCN/PS2 emulation. My goal was something with a large screen that could comfortably handle everything up to the PSX and PSP. Compared to similar devices like the TrimUI Smart Pro S and RG Vita Pro it slightly edges them out in terms of power and ergonomics.

I've owned my device for about a week now and I don't know if this is just standard buyer's remorse but I have no idea what the hell half of these reviewers were even talking about and I'm starting to wonder if they even used their devices for extended periods of time. One interesting thing I should note is that all of the reviews and videos I saw were showcasing one specific model/colorway. I bought the black/orange model which I've rarely seen people cover.

I'm doing this in bullet point form and trying my best to not write an Old Testament-sized rant.

• I can only describe the controls as frustrating. The d-pad is way too stiff. The LB/RB bumpers are way too noisy. One of my triggers is noticeably looser and clunkier than the other and I don't understand why they even included analog triggers as the device can't really handle platforms/games that would support them. Most disappointing of all, the thumbsticks are just awkward. My device's left stick is slightly looser than the right and by default they have some weird deadzone/accuracy issues where unless you push the sticks all the way to the edge, any type of analog control is going to feel imprecise and jittery, even when you manually calibrate them and adjust the deadzones. The d-pad and sticks are only made worse thanks to the input latency issues I'm mentioning next.

• I'm chalking this up to me not being used to Android but there is a shitload of input latency which makes so many different games so difficult to play. On RetroArch I've enabled run-ahead and it changes nothing. Almost every game I've played that requires precise timing or movements feels so awkward. It only gets worse when you have controls that already don't give you a precise, quick feeling. As I mentioned the d-pad is really stiff and the sticks have so much travel to them that whenever I play a lot of 3D/5th-gen games I feel like an old man figuring out how an analog stick works for the first time.

• PSP emulation (despite what literally every reviewer said) hasn't been good for me. I use PPSSP Gold (standalone) and while I've never ran into games that dip into unplayable frame rates, even at 1X scaling almost every game I've played has subtle but noticeable micro-stuttering. The existing input lag and janky sticks only make this more awkward, especially since a lot of PSP games have their own awkward analog control implementation.

• 1st through 4th-gen emulation is as good as you'd expect from any device but ironically the Air X is just weak enough to not be able to support decent-looking LCD/CRT shaders. The ones I've tried that don't make games lag end up draining my battery.

• 5th-gen (PSX/N64/Saturn/Jaguar) emulation is nowhere as good as reviewers pointed out. Fortunately I have no problems emulating any PSX games but N64 emulation is always a 50-50, Saturn emulation has the expected problems and inconsistency on any other platform and while it's not high on anyone's list, Jaguar games consistently either run intolerably poor or they simply crash after a while.

• 6th-gen emulation is a pointless endeavour and I'm confused as to why so many reviews even bothered to acknowledge it. You'll have better luck with GameCube games than PS2 games, but even the most lightweight, easy-to-emulate titles have issues. Once again the input latency and weird sticks/triggers make it worse.

• Native Android gaming feels pointless and not worth the effort. Obviously the Air X can't run sophisticated modern games that make use of full control schemes so I was interested in a lot of older games and fan-created source ports of retro games. A shitload of games that would be perfect for the Air X don't work on Android 14 and a ton of different source ports/decomp projects I've tried either don't work or their Android ports are such a low priority that controller support is janky.

• There are no ideal software/OS options. The stock OS has a horrendous default game launcher and debloating/de-Googling Android is a pain in the ass since you can't easily root the device. Gamma OS is being updated at a snail's pace, has a paywall behind new update releases and at the moment there are major bugs which disable the audio jack and automatic fan cooling activation. I haven't noticed any difference in optimization or performance. Rocknix is the only Linux-based option but using it disables access to the 64GB of onboard storage, you lose access to some standalone Android emulators (PPSSPP Gold being a huge one as it allows for upscaling) and the battery efficiency is far worse than on Android.

• Transferring data to my device has been a tremendous pain in the ass. On multiple computers, my USB connection straight to the Air X either randomly drops out or it's so slow that a 100-500MB transfer feels like I'm back in the early USB 2.0 days. The only option that works for me is transferring files to my SD card and then using Android's file browser to transfer those files from the SD card to the internal storage.

It dawned on me that we're probably not seeing a Gamma OS update for the Air X for a long, long time and some of the major bugs like the audio jack not working and automatic cooling fan activation not working are just too much of a pain in the ass for me.

I'd be fine on the stock OS but ideally I'd want to debloat and de-Google my system. For the life of me I've had the hardest time trying to root my phone so I could install my de-bloating app of choice off F-Droid. There's no download link to firmware 1.1.6 on the web yet, and if I were to reset my device to go to 1.0.60 (stock) there's no way of extracting the bootloader/boot img off it so I could root it.

I'm looking to root the stock OS so I can debloat it, but the only offerings on Mangmi's site are the last build from December 2025.

I need the actual OS download so I can properly root my Air X, as I want to do some debloating. The only downloads from Mangmi's site are from the previous build.

I think I spent five minutes with the stock OS before flashing Gamma OS on my Air X but it's so annoying having a non-functioning headphone jack and needing to manually set my fan/performance settings. It dawned on me that I could technically just remove the stock launcher and replace it with Daijisho for a similar experience.

What would I be missing out on by going back to the stock OS?

I don't know if it's possible to have been spoiled by a low-end Linux handheld but apparently that's the case. I upgraded from a Miyoo Mini Plus to a Mangmi Air X and after getting GammaOS installed and wanting to take a break from RetroArch and some standalone emulators, I've noticed there's not really much of an interesting Android gaming scene. The Play Store is chock full of 2020s mobile slop, so I figured there'd be a bustling scene of projects I could just sideload, but apparently not.

For example, I've been trying to find decent mobile source ports for random older games and everything I'm finding is either a paid app on Google Play that hasn't been updated in forever, or completely dead projects from years ago. Just one example being a decent Android source port for Doom. Am I missing out on the main appeal of an Android handheld, and is the "killer app" just the ability to have more capable, up-to-date emulators?

What makes this difficult is that where I'd be getting them, they're both the same price, so it's not like I have to deal with peoples' observations about the RG Vita Pro being more expensive or overpriced. I'm looking to upgrade from my Miyoo Mini Plus to something that can more competently handle 5th-gen platforms, Dreamcast, PSP and some GameCube/PS2, but I'm tempering my expectations for 6th-gen platforms. I'm also pretty interested in things like Portmaster and playing "native" ports of PC games on my handheld. I've experienced some of that with OnionOS on the Miyoo Mini Plus, but obviously much older games.

I've been reading and watching reviews and there's a lot of ambiguity as to which one would be better. They both seem to be identical hardware-wise except for the Vita Pro's chip being just slightly better than the Air X's, but I'm not seeing anyone acknowledge that extra power.

This would also be my first Android device so unless there aren't any must-have Linux-based OS's I can use on them, I'm just guessing I could have my pick of any emulation frontend.