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The D-pad is a bit too firm for use in retro 2D games that require quick, precise platforming, but the analog stick usually works well enough for those purposes anyway. The sticks are suitably tight and responsive, and the buttons have a satisfying clickiness to them. Once locked into place, the Backbone feels right at home. With practice, that became much more natural. I was much more comfortable with stretching the device out almost completely and plugging in the lightning cable that way before letting the spring collapse back into place. That always felt wrong, like the angled approach meant I could snap off the lightning charging dongle by accident. At first, I would plug the phone into the dock at an angle and then attempt to slide out the controller's spring-lock mechanism to slide it into place.
Backbone controller iphone how to#
It can be a little fiddly learning how to get your phone into place. How comfortable that ends up being depends mostly on the length of your charging cable since functionally, it's out of the way of your hands during use. But if you're just one of those people who prefer to keep your phone charged, the right-side controller has a pass-through charging port that can keep your phone powered while you play. The controller doesn't appear to have much impact on battery life, aside from the standard power-sucking you'd normally expect from playing games on your iPhone. However, the A/B and X/Y buttons are reversed from the Switch interface, which I've found can cause some confusion simply because they look so similar. The result resembles a Switch, with your iPhone in the center flanked by the two controller halves. The central mechanism slides apart and then springs tightly back into place, so you simply dock your phone into the lightning port and then let the controller's grips lock around it. This is where your iPhone locks in-think of it as a Nintendo Switch with the two Joy-Cons connected. The Backbone One itself resembles a standard game controller, with a noticeable gap in the center.
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Backbone, a controller built from the ground up specifically for the iPhone, is a solution that matches Apple's famous simplicity, and a welcome (if pricey) accessory for iPhone owners. The experience as a whole is still less than ideal. While Xbox and PlayStation controllers are ubiquitous among gamers, some docks for them can feel unwieldy, and propping your phone up against a book isn't great. Apple's addition of controller support on its family of iOS mobile devices was something of a concession-touch controls just aren't right for everything-but it has been a boon to the library by enabling games that need a controller to comfortably play.