Why Can't We Emulate "XYZ" on the Retroid Pocket 2?

The Retroid Pocket 2 is an excellent handheld emulation console for its price. Previously, it was necessary to spend two or three times as much money to get a console which did not have nearly two or three times as much computing or graphics power. However, there is still a big difference in performance between the RP2 and the latest flagship smartphone from a major manufacturer. It would be like expecting hand-built European supercar-level performance from a nice budget sedan, because they are both cars. Not all Android devices are created equal.

There are some things that the RP2 simply cannot do, even if other Android devices can.

"The Android 8.1 update will change that, won't it?"

No. Apps written for Android are written to be as backwards-compatible as possible with older versions of Android. To my knowledge, any emulation apps which will not run on the RP2 under Android 6.0, will still refuse to run on the RP2 even after an update to Android 8.1, due to other hardware or driver limitations which cannot be changed.

In fact, long-term Android users will know that newer versions of Android often introduce problematic changes to the way that apps work. This means that devices running the new version of Android sometimes can't run older apps until they have been updated to work with the new Android system. Hopefully this will not affect the RP2 as much, since Android 8.1 is still fairly old at this point, so most active apps have been updated to work with it.

"But wouldn't it be cool if we could do such-and-such?"

Yes, it probably would. But we can't.