Hi everyone,

When u/chrisristovski, u/sebastiansnell and the Sidephone team sent me the Mini Controller Keytile, the obvious first question was: can I play Game Boy on this?

That experiment turned into SideRetro: an emulator designed specifically around the Sidephone's tiny screen and physical keys.

It supports:

• Game Boy and Game Boy Color
• Game Boy Advance
• NES
• Mega Drive / Genesis

The Mini Controller is the best way to play, and the interface is designed around it first. But limiting the app to one tile felt wrong, so SideRetro also maps controls onto Compact QWERTY, T9, Classic Keypad and Sundial.

An on-screen legend shows what each physical key does in the current game. SideRetro passively figures out which tile you're using from your keypresses, so there's no controller setup screen or profile to select. You can hide the legend once you know the controls.

There are deliberately no touch controls during play. The SP-01's screen is already tiny, and every Sidephone has physical keys directly underneath it. Long-pressing the screen opens the menu for save states, display settings and the rest.

🌅 Making the whole screen part of the game

A lot of old consoles don't naturally fit a tall portrait display. Rather than leaving the unused space feeling accidental, SideRetro can make it part of the presentation.

My favourite is Lit mode. It samples the game while you play and makes the rest of the screen glow like an old CRT, with the dominant colors of the game. The SideRetro logo and Keytile legend inherit the brightest version of the sampled colour, so the entire phone changes with the scene.

There's also a console-inspired frame, an optional CRT filter, stretched fullscreen and landscape mode (if you're willing to accept the ergonomics of holding a Sidephone sideways – I am not, lol).

📦 Adding games

SideRetro has its own library. Download or transfer a compatible ROM (with LocalSend for example), choose Add games, and SideRetro imports it into the app. Regular ROM files and ZIP archives are supported.

SideRetro does not include games or links to ROM sources. You'll need to provide games you have the right to use.

It's also completely offline:

• No permissions
• No internet access
• No accounts
• No analytics
• No ads

🔗 Install it through the Sidephone Library

SideRetro is part of the SideSuite App Pack, so you can install it directly through the SP-01's built-in App Library and receive updates automatically.

Scan the QR code on sidesuite.app in the App Library. SideRetro will then appear in the Library alongside SideHome, SideType and SideCall.

If you're reading this on the SP-01 and can't scan your own screen, enter this address manually:

https://fdroid.sidesuite.app/fdroid/repo

GitHub Releases and Obtainium remain available if you prefer installing APKs yourself.

💛 Thanks for all the support so far!

I'm so grateful for all the support from the community for my projects. SideRetro exists because the Sidephone team supplied the Keytiles I needed to build and test it and because you guys keep staying excited about these projects. So thank you! ❤️

SideSuite itself is independent and not affiliated with the Sidephone team. All of its apps remain free and open-source.

I've also opened GitHub Sponsors. Sponsorship is completely optional, nothing is locked behind it, and the apps will stay free. But if SideSuite makes your Sidephone experience more enjoyable, supporting the project genuinely helps me spend more time building and maintaining it.

SideRetro is a v1.0, so there will inevitably be odd ROMs and control combinations I haven't encountered. If something breaks, reply here or open a GitHub issue with the game system, which Keytile was used, what happened and (if possible) a screenshot.

Get it: https://sidesuite.app

Happy gaming! 🕹️

- Oliver

PS. Tell me what games you're going to play.
PSS. I'm leaving for a 5 day hike in the Finnish Lapland on wednesday. Should be beautiful. Will take photos. Will try not to play too much Pokemon in the tent.

Thanks u/chrisristovski u/sebastiansnell and team for sending me the rest of the tiles! Will definitely help my work in making all of SideSuite more useful for all the tiles. My next agenda is mapping all of them and shipping some pretty cool updates to SideType and some new things I'm working on 😉 Major things coming 😎

Two days ago I posted SideHome v1.0 here, and the comments basically wrote my roadmap for me. So here's v1.1 — every one of these came from this sub:

"my previous wallpaper flashes up when I go home" --> Fixed, and then some. SideHome can now keep the system and lock screen wallpaper matched to the theme, so closing an app or waking the phone stays in the same calm vibe. It asks once before touching anything and nothing gets overwritten unless you approve (you can toggle off any time in settings).

"can I turn off the weather?" --> Yes. One switch removes the whole weather page.

"I live in Wellington, weather = wind" --> The weather page had a little moment of rebirth: wind with gusts, per-hour wind in the strip, "feels like", sunrise/sunset, rain in the next hour, rain odds for the week, and you can tap a day to expand it. Everything follows one rule: a fact only appears when it would surprise you. Gusts show only when they outrun the wind, etc.

"can the library open as just the list and not search automatically?" --> New setting: "Library opens in". List-first means typing does nothing until you deliberately enter search.

"what are the mystery numbers?" --> They're keypad shortcuts: press 1–9 to launch that item. Very useful for me, because I'm dumb, but maybe not as useful for everyone, so I made them togglable. The first-run coach now explains them, and you can hide them once you know your layout by heart.

And the "AND", a Photo theme. Mostly for cat pictures (see above). Pick a photo, frame it yourself (pinch, drag, twist) against a live preview of your actual home screen, and SideHome bakes legibility in: text colours derive from the photo, a soft fade and halo keep everything readable, and the app library floats on a blurred copy (not perfect yet, let me know if it behaves weirdly). Your lock screen gets the clean photo.

One transparency note: the wallpaper sync adds SET_WALLPAPER permission. It can only set a wallpaper, never read yours, and it does nothing until you approve. Full details in the README's privacy section.

Update now via the App Pack at sidesuite.app

Hi everyone,

Some of you might remember SideType and SideCall. Time for a new release, and this took me a while: SideHome, a home screen built for the SP-01.

SideType took me a day. SideCall took a weekend. This has been most of the last three weeks, and it's the app I most wanted to exist when I bought the phone.

I kept coming back to the same feeling. The SP-01 is a deliberately quiet phone, and I felt that a grid of apps fighting for my attention when I open the phone fights the calmness this phone brings me. A home screen shouldn't be something you push through. It should be something you glance at.

So SideHome is a window, not a menu:

🌅 The background is alive with the actual time of day. One continuous OKLCH colour field that drifts from dawn through day to dusk to night. You sense what time it is before you've read the clock. It's static between shifts, so an idle home costs you almost nothing in battery.

🕰 The home itself is four things. A big clock, the date with a one-line weather glance, and up to four favourites as a text list (can be folders). That's it. Tap the clock for your clock app.

✋ No edit mode. Long-press a favourite to pick it up and put it somewhere. Drop one on another to make a folder. Drag it off to remove it. Folders open in place and name themselves from what's inside (can be overridden).

🔍 The app library is a place, not a sheet. Swipe up for an A–Z list or grouped category bubbles, whichever you prefer, and SideHome remembers which you chose. And if you have SideType installed, the search field does something I'm quite proud of: SideHome hands it a private signal saying "this is an app search", and SideType turns your installed apps into a live prediction dictionary for that one field. So on your Compact QWERTY*, a press or two lands straight on the apps you need. It gets dropped the moment you leave the field, so your app names never leak into normal typing. With any other keyboard it just types normally.

🌤 A weather page, a swipe to the right. Current weather, a change-line ("clearing by 11:00"), the next few hours, the week. You type a place; there's no location permission.

⌨️ It drives entirely from the keys. No profile setup – the tiles emit distinct keycodes, so one map handles whichever is fitted. Numbers are direct-index on T9 and Compact QWERTY: press 3, launch the third favourite. The Sundial ring works as a D-pad. Tested on Compact QWERTY, Sundial and T9; Classic Keypad and Mini Controller are coming soon (thanks to the Sidephone team for supporting my work ❤️).

🎨 Five themes, including a custom one where you pick a hue and saturation and the engine derives everything else, so your colour still breathes with the day and stays readable. No illegible combinations possible.

Free, open-source (GPL-3.0), and purpose-built for the Sidephone screen.

📦 Installing all of this got a lot easier

This is the other thing I've been working on. The SP-01's Library app can add extra sources, called App Packs, and SideSuite has one now (note, not affiliated with the Sidephone team).

Scan one code and SideHome, SideType and SideCall all appear in your Library next to the built-in apps. No sideloading, no "unknown sources" warning, and updates arrive on their own from then on.

The installation QR-code is on sidesuite.app

Open that on a laptop or another phone, then on the SP-01 go:
Library → Settings → App Packs → ➕ and scan it.
The page also shows the signing fingerprint, which the Library will ask you to confirm as it adds the pack, and then checks against every update afterwards.

Reading this on the SP-01? You can't scan your own screen, so skip the code and type the address in by hand instead: https://fdroid.sidesuite.app/fdroid/repo

Already installed any of my apps by hand? Add the pack anyway, your next update installs automatically.

Prefer the old way? Everything is still on GitHub Releases, and Obtainium still works. That path isn't going anywhere.

Get it: sidesuite.app
SideHome on GitHub

☝️ Fair warning: this is a v1.0, so expect rough edges. Here's a few known limitations:

• The sky's timing follows the latitude of the city you set for the weather. If you haven't set one it falls back to 60° (northern Europe), so if you're a long way south, set a city and the light will match your actual day.
• Key navigation is tested on Compact QWERTY, Sundial and T9. If you're on another tile, I'd love to hear what happens (getting the rest of the tiles soon, so fixing then).
• Notification dots and the weather are both opt-in and off until you turn them on.

If something's broken, open an issue on GitHub: what you did, what happened, what you expected, and a screenshot if you can. Or just reply here, I read everything.

Sidenote: SideSuite now has an actual home at sidesuite.app, and GitHub Sponsors is open. Completely optional and nothing is pay-to-play, but if SideHome makes your phone nicer to pick up, it genuinely helps me keep building these.

Happy glancing! 🌅

- Oliver

* I'm working on making SideType available for other keytiles as well. This is a larger architectural change, so it's coming slowly.

This week's agenda is getting SideHome released and improving SideType (thanks for the improvement ideas everyone)

Some final touches needed still

Hi everyone,

Some of you might remember SideType (my keyboard for the Compact QWERTY tile) — here's a new one, for a different itch.

As many of you have pointed out; the SP-01 has no proximity sensor, so the screen stays fully lit and live against your face while on a call. After a few longer calls I personally noticed there were a few issues with this:

• 😖 Your ear presses the buttons. Mid-call your ear lands on mute, the keypad, or the hang-up button. You finish a call and realise you muted yourself four minutes ago, or hung up on your mum.
• 🔇 Sometimes the mic dies when the screen sleeps. I tried to remedy the earlier, by pressing the power button to lock the screen, but then eventually the screen sleeps, and sometimes the microphone dies with that. The call looks connected, but the other side stops hearing you.

On other phones, that little proximity sensor handles both quietly: blanks the screen at your ear, keeps the call alive while it's dark. The SP-01 just doesn't have one. So I built SideCall to stand in for it:

• 👂 On the earpiece, it draws a calm black screen over the dialer so nothing your face touches reaches a button. To get back, you drag a ring three-quarters of the way around - a deliberate gesture your ear shouldn't be able to make by resting on the glass.
• 🔊 It holds the screen awake for the whole call, on every route, so the mic never drops.
• 📱 On speaker / Bluetooth / headset it hides nothing, since there's nothing at your face to guard, so it just keeps the mic alive.

It's deliberately not a dialer replacement; it doesn't answer, hang up, or touch your call. It's a thin overlay that floats over whatever dialer you already use and gets out of the way the instant you want it gone. There's also a little setup screen where you can turn it off or tweak how quickly it re-locks. Fully offline, no network permission at all, and it stores nothing about your calls. Free and open-source.

Get it: https://github.com/side-suite/SideCall easiest updates via Obtainium (add the repo URL), or grab the APK from Releases. Ask me if you need a hand setting it up!

I've been running it on real calls (earpiece, speaker, Bluetooth) and it's been solid, but I'd love feedback from anyone else on the Sidephone, especially edge cases I haven't hit. If something's off, open an issue on GitHub (what you were doing, what the guard did vs. what you expected. A screenshot helps).

Happy calling! 📞

Sidenote: I'm starting to pull my Sidephone apps together under SideSuite - a home for a growing set of small apps to make the SP-01 nicer to live with. SideCall is the first release there, and SideType is moving over too, with a branding refresh on the way (same keyboard, new coat of paint). It's all staying open-source. I've also opened up GitHub Sponsors – completely optional, but if any of this saves you a hangup with your grandma or accidental muting and you feel like chipping in, it genuinely helps me keep building. Either way, hope it's useful!

EDIT v1.1: SideCall now works even when your phone is locked (this was a bug with v1). Answer a call straight from the lock screen and the guard is right there over it, instead of only kicking in after you unlock (the common "asleep in your pocket" case).

– Oliver

Working on a new home screen for the Sidephone that changes throughout the day. Here's a sneak peek. What do you think? Still work in progress, will be available later this week - ofc open-sourced.

- Oliver

A couple of days ago I posted about SideType, a predictive keyboard alternative for JakeType that improves the Compact QWERTY tile, so it can type 30+ Latin-script languages, with special characters included. Thanks so much for all the interest and feedback on that post 🙏

Since I got a bunch of feedback on what to improve (and a few bug reports), I decided to build v1.1:

🙂 Emoji & symbol drawer: v1.0 had only an Emoji binder picker. This new version brings in a proper on-screen picker with full Emoji/Symbols tabs and categories.

⌨️ Bindable symbol keys: just like the Emoji drawer, you can now hold SYM + a key to instantly type a special characters you've pinned to it. 

📦 ~7× smaller download: 219 MB → 32 MB. v1.0 bundled all language dictionaries into the app package, which is wasteful since nobody probably can write all of them + some non-Latin ones don’t even work with it yet. v.1.1 bundles 8 common dictionaries and grabs the other 20+ languages on demand the first time you pick them.

🧹 Nicer defaults: TT9 had an annoying ”on-screen keyboard drag-to-resize” feature, that would take up the whole screen if it was accidentally swiped. I turned this off by default (since you type on the physical tile), and I profiled typing latency on the actual SP-01 to confirm it stays snappy.

Get it / update: https://github.com/oliverpalonkorp/SideType . If you added it to Obtanium it should update itself. Otherwise grab the APK from the latest release.

Feedback and bug reports are again very very welcome, especially from anyone typing in a language I can't test myself. Happy typing!

Hi everyone,

I received my Sidephone yesterday, and absolutely fell in love with it. I got the Compact QWERTY tile, but hit a wall I notice many here have hit: the stock JakeType keyboard (which is genuinely nice) only does English. I write in Finnish every day, and without ä/ö it just couldn't keep up.

So I built SideType: a free, open-source predictive keyboard for the tile that works in (hopefully) every Latin-script language (~30: Finnish, Swedish, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Turkish, Czech, Portuguese, Dutch etc). Accented letters "ride along" on their base key – ä/å on A, ö on O, and so on, so predictive text just spells words correctly.

It's a fork of the excellent Traditional T9 engine, adapted to the two-letters-per-key layout. Some nice-to-have extras I added: tap the language chip (EN/FI/DE…) to switch language, pin emojis to keys (hold SYM + key), an add-your-own-words dictionary, and it installs alongside JakeType — replaces nothing. Fully offline, no tracking.

Get it: https://github.com/oliverpalonkorp/SideType - easiest updates via Obtainium (add the repo URL), or grab the APK from Releases. You may ask me if you need any help!

⚠️ Fair warning, this is a very early release and took me only a day to build, so expect some bugs. The layouts for all those languages were generated automatically and build-checked, but I've only hand-tested a few (English, Finnish, German). A language might have a misplaced accent or odd prediction. If you hit a bug, please open an issue on Github (say the language, what you typed, what you expected — a screenshot helps). Fixes should be quick when I have time to work on it (next to my other ventures).

Happy typing!

- Oliver