Yeah, the battery life of the Pocket does suck, especially with the IPS and an Everdrive. It's not too shabby on regular carts, probably about 3 or 4 hours of play. I had to install one of Helder's voltage regulators to get it to be able to use the screen and the Everdrive at the same time but it works well. For a couple of hours. I mostly play on the couch so it's fine and I can always swap the cart to a different Gameboy if needed.
Got two more kits in yesterday.
View attachment 57540
This was built with one of the junk SP PCBs I dug out of the trash and offered Neomoe early in the thread. Glad I kept it! I'm not crazy about how these translucent shells look but the plastic quality and feel is a clear step above SP shells I've used in the past. Feels really solid but not quite OEM. Screen is a Funnyplaying IPS, I have mixed feelings on it. It's a very high quality screen and a clear upgrade from a frontlit SP, but I don't know that it's necessarily better than a backlit SP. It's bright (blindingly so if you turn it all the way up,) the colors are fantastic, and there's little to no ghosting, but without the screen door effect that some of the other IPS panels have it doesn't quite look right to me. It also has the Makho battery in it, which is a little adapter PCB with a lipo battery stuck in the normal battery compartment, made due to the lack of good SP batteries. I haven't played the SP enough to really test it, but it should last a little longer than the generics on the market now.
View attachment 57541
This one is special. It's my original Gameboy I posted early in the thread from my childhood. It did have the old V3 LED backlight kit in it, the IPS is so much better. It's supposed to have the same screen as the Pocket I did, but it looks better on a DMG, I guess because it has more power? I dunno. This one had an optional bracket you could use to center the screen and it made install easy, perfect, and not permanent since no adhesive was used. The Funnyplaying shell is pretty solid, you won't mistake it for an original but it's still nice. Overall the GB is a bit lighter than it was before since the front PCB is replaced with something much simpler. The Funnyplaying dpad and buttons are decent enough but don't feel as nice as the originals so I'll probably swap in my original pad, buttons and membranes.
I now have one of each model Gameboy modded, aside from the Light. It was really fun making these, and almost too easy compared to the shitty mods of yesteryear. I might try some of the regular GBA kits for fun. I don't really like playing on that one but I have several GBAs in my parts drawer in various states of repair.
