HANDHELD NEWS – Both Microsoft and Sony are preparing next-generation handhelds, and we’re hearing more and more about Sony’s efforts.

Well-known AMD leaker Kepler_L2 has popped up again on the NeoGAF forum, revealing more information about the long-rumored handheld device. According to Kepler_L2, the AMD APU powering the system will be the only one from the company to feature AI upscaling in the near future. The insider added that the handheld will come with 16 GB of LPDDR5X RAM, even though LPDDR6 is still years away. It will also have one-third the memory bandwidth of the base PlayStation 5, but with more cache and improved memory compression.

The leaker clarified that the system will have 4 MB of L2 cache and 16 MB of MALL cache, which are not present in current-gen systems. Regarding the PlayStation handheld architecture, Kepler_L2 reiterated that both the handheld and the PlayStation 6 will be based on a branch of the gfx13 (RDNA5/UDNA) architecture. Considering AMD only launched the Radeon RX 9000 series with RDNA 4 a few months ago, this still sounds very futuristic.

Rumors about the PlayStation handheld have circulated for a while, but Sony has not indicated whether it exists. Last week, however, we learned that the PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Pro will soon receive a low-power mode for energy savings, and this is believed to be the power profile for the yet-to-be-announced handheld—making it seem increasingly likely that such a device is in the works.

Meanwhile, Microsoft revealed some of its handheld plans at this year’s Xbox Game Showcase, announcing the ROG Xbox Ally, a handheld PC with a clear Xbox flavor. The company was reportedly working on a full-fledged handheld, but those plans have apparently been shelved in order to focus on improving handheld gaming performance on Windows 11, which currently lags behind what SteamOS can offer…

Source: WCCFTech, NeoGAF