Jan "Jenkings" Škoda - blog

I have received a Galaxy Xcover 3 and PS1 slim as an exchange for an old PC HDD shaft and a couple of old SSDs.

The PS1 came with a demo CD and without any cables or controllers. I leave it for the long winter evenings and look forward to getting it working.





The phone does work though and is only missing the back cover. I will 3D print it later. The battery seems to be alive, it can be charged, and it has lasted tens of minutes of playing games without any significant drops in charge.

It runs on Android 5.1, and after the first start it seemed very old. I did not know that the Android interface has changed so much, as it still looks the same to me after each update. It may be that there are many small changes between versions, which is why the 5.1 looks so old.

Since Google Play only supports devices with Android 6 and below, I downloaded some really old .apk files for my favourite games that are no longer available on Google Play. For example, Slingshot Racing is a really great game that I bought many years ago, but it is impossible to install it the official way.

I don't like installing .apks on phones because I prefer the Play Store, but this phone has no other way to install anything, so I will enjoy the abandoned games.

I am also looking for an abandoned Android game. It was a top-down strategy game with stations and trains. You looked down at a square paper with some stations and some tunnels in the corners. Your goal was to draw tracks and junctions, and when you had done that, you had to direct the trains by using switches and semaphores to get them to their stations and then to their destinations. I have not found a live resource for this game, but I am still hoping to find one. It was called Train: Railway Builder & Conductor Game, which is a really generic name, and it is very difficult to find anywhere.

However, the phone looks very modern and nice. It used to be dustproof and waterproof, but with the missing back cover, it complains every time you switch it on. The screen is completely clean and without any scratches, which is really nice and rare for me. I will test the battery condition and keep it for my collection. But first I have to try all the games I loved!

The only real problem with it is that the microUSB charging connector is a bit loose, but I think I will leave it as it is, or I will solder a new one if I get annoyed by the tricky charging.