

The Backbone UI also lets you connect to your fellow gamers through lobbies and chat groups. Scroll through this UI’s entries and you’ll encounter installed iOS games, featured titles that you might want to check out, new releases across the various game streaming services and more. Everything from the magazine-like layout to the instant video previews to the responsiveness of the animations is of a quality that’s worthy of any of the game service storefronts. On the bottom edge of the left and right handholds, you’ll find a 3.5mm headphone jack and a Lightning port for charging your phone, respectively.īackbone’s custom UI layer, which is accessed through a dedicated button adjacent to the right analogue stick, is a slick thing indeed, and a large part of the package. Derek Yu’s superlative roguelite platformer is capable of exposing all but the most reliable directional controls.Įlsewhere you get two buttons that map to the Start/Options (or equivalent) on home console controllers, as well as a Backbone button (more on that later) and a button for recording and broadcasting gameplay, should you be into that sort of thing. The best thing I can say about this oft-overlooked input method is that it passed the Spelunky 2 test. Riot PWL ESL Mobile Controller review - "A tasty branding and features sandwich"įinishing this off is a decent-quality D-pad.On the shoulders you get a pair of solid buttons and another set of responsive analogue triggers, mirroring the set-up of recent PlayStation and Xbox controllers. The four main fascia buttons are incredibly clicky, almost to a distracting degree, but they’re otherwise of decent quality. It was perfectly capable of meeting the precision required of fully-fledged console shooters like Halo Infinite, which is the ultimate test for any analogue stick. The device is made from high-grade plastic, and its twin analogue sticks offer a nice degree of precision despite being on the compact side. Some kind of catch or tension-holding switch would have been welcome. The process of actually getting the phone into the telescopic mechanism isn’t the easiest I’ve ever used, though. I used it with an iPhone 13 Pro, the chunky camera of which has necessitated a special adaptor being bundled in, but anything from the iPhone 6S upwards should work fine. Its no-nonsense expandable form factor sees two handholds splitting either side of your iPhone in a manner that’s reminiscent of the Nintendo Switch or the Steam Deck. In the hands, the Backbone One is an impressive device.
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It’s nothing less than a highly polished gateway to a world of full fat console and PC gaming.

It might seem somewhat expensive at £100, but the Backbone One’s true value goes well beyond offering a very good set of physical controls for your iOS gaming sessions. The Backbone One is an iPhone controller that successfully joins the dots between the disparate gaming experiences that are available through Apple’s smartphone.
