One of the best custom ROMs is now available on the Retroid Pocket 6

There’s no shortage of great Android handhelds today, but one issue with these devices is that they’re frequently stuck on outdated Android OS versions. Thankfully, the team behind LineageOS has released its custom ROM for the Retroid Pocket 6.

LineageOS 23.2 is now available to install on the Retroid Pocket 6 (h/t: r/retroid), potentially marking the first time that the team has brought its custom ROM to an Android handheld. This latest version is based on Android 16.

This is great news as the Pocket 6 is only running Android 13 out of the box. Retroid has previously brought Android OS upgrades to its handhelds, but a custom ROM is handy if the manufacturer abandons its device after a short while.

LineageOS also tends to bring performance and battery life improvements compared to most manufacturer ROMs. So this might be the way to go if you want to squeeze a little more performance and endurance out of your handheld.

Don’t have a Retroid Pocket 6 but still want a custom ROM on your Retroid handheld? A developer previously stated that it’ll eventually come to the Retroid Pocket 5 and Pocket G2 devices. Furthermore, a cursory search of the GitHub project reveals that LineageOS is also coming to the newly announced Retroid Pocket Nova.

Don’t care for Retroid? There’s good news here, too. The team previously confirmed that it was working to bring LineageOS to AYN handhelds. More specifically, it’s coming to the AYN Odin 2 series, the Odin 3, and Thor devices.

This is a great turn of events if you want a more performant and up-to-date version of Android on your handheld. But Android isn’t the only option for some of these devices. Developers have also ported Linux distributions like Rocknix to many of these handhelds. Rocknix can even be run off a microSD card and supports a native Steam client.