As smartphones become more powerful, the popularity of dedicated portable gaming consoles is waning. Why carry two devices when one can serve both purposes, right? However for a breed of hardcore gamers, touch controls will never cut it. Bluetooth game controllers like the iPega are meant to alleviate that specific issue. Giving you the tactile feedback of a console class controller in a package that you can easily slip into a pocket and use with your phone. Does the iPega deliver? We find out in our review.
The hardware itself is very compact and is very easy to slip into a pocket. It measures just about 125mm x 72mm x 25mm. You get a total of 9 buttons, a D Pad and two analog sticks on the iPega controller. There’s a central home button flanked by soft rubber start and select keys. The rest of the keys comprise of the face buttons marked out as A,B,X,Y and the two trigger controls.
The design is based off the control scheme on Sony’s PlayStation controllers and has the same basic button placement. Pictured above is the PS Vita next to the iPhone placed in the iPega’s device cradle. Even in this cumbersome looking setup, the iPega and iPhone combo is a bit smaller than the Vita. I suppose this is where devices like the iPega come in handy by letting you use your smartphone for gaming with a proper controller.
The buttons on the iPega are fairly springy and offer decent feed back. The DPad tends to be on the clicky side which you may or may not prefer. We were not satisfied with the analog sticks which are very hard to use. There is very limited travel and the concave sticks aren’t particularly comfortable to use. Pressing the home + face button combinations triggers different HID profiles includes iCade, keyboard and game controller modes.
A spring loaded extension tray on the top of the phone lets you snap a phone right on top of the controller. Phones with displays as large as 5.5inches fit well on the iPega and there are rubber bumpers on both ends of the plastic tabs that protect your phone. The trigger buttons on the controller are particularly disappointing and have very limited travel. They make a clicky sound when depressed and also rattle in place all of which makes you unsure of the quality.
Coming to actual usage, the controller holds on to a solid bluetooth connection and we never faced any drops in the connection while gaming. Compatibility however isn’t the best. While some phones are said to work directly with the controller, we had to jump through loopholes including installing beta drivers and un official apps just to get the keyboard recognized by the system. Since there is no exhaustive list of supported devices, you do risk non-compatibility when you go for the iPega. Once we got it set up though, the controller shows up as a standard human interface device and we were able to control emulators at ease. Pictured above is the Nintendo DS version of Chrono Trigger being controlled via the iPega.
The iPega game controller is priced at $47 which is on the higher side given the hit or miss compatibility with Android phones. In case of iOS devices, this controller has not been built keeping in mind the new game controller APIs which means it is hard to be sure that it will exactly as expected all the time. If you can get it to work, it is the perfect controller to play retro games emulated on your smartphone.