This controller has a dedicated button to let you snap a screenshot in-game, or even record a video clip, which are features that should be familiar to anyone who’s used a modern gaming console.
Scroll down a little more in the app, and you’ll find photo and video clips you’ve saved and those from friends.
A full look at what you’ll see when you press the orange Backbone button. This app takes advantage of the iPhone’s excellent haptics to buzz when you flip around the menu, and the company made its own satisfyingly subtle vibration effect that you’ll feel while quickly flying through a bunch of tiles in the interface with the L1 and R1 shoulder buttons. To add games to the Backbone interface, just tap the orange button when you first boot up each new game.
The app also shows new games available for download in the App Store that support controllers. There, you’ll find all of your installed games cleanly laid out in an almost tvOS-esque interface. Pushing the controller’s orange Backbone button while the One is connected to your phone will open up the Backbone app, which looks like an operating system. The One doesn’t require its companion app to work with any iOS game that supports a controller, but using the app turns your iPhone into a game console of sorts.
The hardware alone might make it worth the purchase, but the software is what really makes it unique. The Lightning port supports passthrough charging, as well as audio for Lightning EarPods. Even playing games like Hades through the Steam Link app (with my PC connected via Wi-Fi) felt surprisingly natural. Since the Backbone One launched, it now works with Genshin Impact, the xCloud iOS beta for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers, and Google Stadia, too. And, for popular games like COD: Mobile that don’t have controller support switched on from the start, Backbone curates visual tutorials that appear before it launches to walk you through the steps to turn it on in the game’s settings. Sky: Children of the Light and Call of Duty: Mobile play wonderfully with the One. It’s great for Apple Arcade games that support controllers. With the controller fully extended, it can fit any iPhone running iOS 13 or later, starting with the iPhone 6S and including the new iPhone 12 lineup. Like Razer did with its Kishi controller for iOS, and as other companies have with snap-on controllers of their own, Backbone is introducing one for $100 that it calls the Backbone One. As the high-profile disputes about what content you can play on your iPhone rage on between Apple, Epic Games, Google, and Microsoft, a company called Backbone is focusing instead on making sure you get the most out of the games that are currently available.