Awesome Mod Turns A PS4 Slim Into A Fully Functional OLED Handheld
A user in the Handhelds subreddit by the name of wewillmakeitnow shared their personal effort to create a handheld PlayStation 4. The starting point for this mod is a PS4 slim because of its smaller motherboard, which was made even smaller after investigating what parts of the board could be cut away without losing any functionality.
This mod goes beyond just reducing the footprint, though. It's designed to be proper handheld and improves the power efficiency, optimizes the layout for improved thermals, and its custom cooling system keeps the system’s APU in check while under load. Lastly, there’s an integrated ESP32 microcontroller with custom firmware for monitoring the device’s temperature, power consumption and battery charging.
It has plenty of connectivity, too. The device sports an HDMI output, a dedicated charging port when plugged into AC power, a USB 3.0 port, and three USB-C ports. The USB-C ports can be used to configure and program the ESP32 microcontroller, charge the handheld or for connecting a PS4 controller or external drive.
This project didn’t skimp when it comes to the display, either. It’s equipped with a gorgeous 7-inch FHD OLED, which wewillmakeitnow says has “high image quality, excellent contrast, and low latency.”
Of course, because all the internals were never meant to go inside a portable enclosure the battery life isn’t stellar. The modder shared that they were able to get roughly 3 hours of gameplay with less demanding titles, but graphically intense games can cut that down to 1 and a half hours.
Unfortunately for PlayStation fans, this mod was a personal project and won’t be up for sale. However, it does provide a glimpse to what fans can look forward to if Sony ends up releasing a handheld in the future.
