There wasn’t much for gaming at this CES in 2015, but there was one company that caught my attention called Snail. They have two very interesting products called W3D and OBOX online. In this article, I’m only going to talking about the W3D. I’ll talk about the OBOX online in the next article.So what is W3D? It’s a Android gaming smartphone that breaks the restrictions of previous mobile gaming hardware. The spec on the W3D are very nice, it has a MTK6592 8-core cpu, 2g of ram, and 16g of storage. It has a 5.5 1080p HD screen, dual joysticks and physical buttons. It also does glass-free 3D display using eye-tracking synchronization.
Snail as also solve a big issue when it comes to mobile gaming and controllers. They have a smart adaptive control scheme, that have automatic recognition and control adjustments for installed games and in game operations. You can navigate the W3D, through there fully customizable controls and key mapping. Using either touch screen or physical buttons.
Here are the specs of the W3D
CPU: 8-core MTK6595/2.2ghz
Cellular: 4g LTE
Ram: 16g rom + 2GB ram LPDDR3 @933mhz
Memory: Micro SDXC upto 64GB
Display: 5.5inch 1920 x 1080
Battery: 4000 mah lithium Battery
Deep Customization with Android 4.4
44 channels fully supporting: LTE/WCDMA/TD-SCDMA/GSM
Front and back HD camera
HI-FI audio output and multiple video play modes
Bluetooth 4.0 +LE transmission
:Pressure Keys
The Price range for these guys are not set in stone yet, but I heard from $200 -$300. I think if this W3d gets enough coverage, it could really take off. The W3D feels great in your hands, it almost feels like the PSVita 2000 model. If I could go buy one of these W3D I would right now, specially since it can work as our smartphone too. You can check them out at www.snail.com
Nice! I know the reason Steve Jobs originally went for the no button design was because they cannot be changed to suit different applications, but let’s be honest, the button layout for games specifically doesn’t really change. As long as you have a D pad, 4 buttons on the other side, two thumb sticks and at least two shoulder buttons, you can’t really go wrong! The adaptive control mapping is always an excellent addition! Will be interesting to see if this takes off…could bridge the gap between mobile and handheld console gaming!