Betrayal, frustration, regret. These are just a few of the emotions I felt when I bought my first gamepad for a smartphone, the Logitech Powershell, in 2015. The sales pitch sounded so sensible. You’re already carrying a tiny computer in your pocket all the time, snap that phone into a controller case and you’d have the perfect mobile gaming device, right?
Sadly, the Powershell was a big-time piece of shit, with just a few, stiff buttons, painful ergonomics, and poor software support. In short, I felt burned. A lot can change in five years, though. Taking another look in 2020, I’ve found that today’s mobile gamepads have addressed many of the Powershell’s problems. (Some pretty successfully!) The newest of these is the Razer Kishi, which, while not perfect, gets you closer to turning your phone into a game console than ever before.