So far, we have received all kinds of smartphone gaming controllers. Thanks to a growing market and phenomenal games producers, mobile gamers increasingly regard their gaming equipment, not just the phone but also the accessory. Smartphone has a natural advantage that everyone has their phone in the pocket. A smartphone is necessary for a modern human, while a home console probably isn’t. So that’s also the reason why those phenomenal games basically can be aimed at a wider user base. In addition, sociality is another important feature for network games, so smartphone probably is the best platform to achieve a wide sociality for individuals.
Most mobile controllers’ design is not a new design for smartphone specifically. We can exactly find their original design model in other gaming platforms, such as the Xbox controller and Nintendo switch controller. So why they are so similar?
No doubly, they are the most mature controllers for most gamers. Comparing to other types, they don’t require much learn cost but also bring gamers a pretty good experience. However, even though they are much popular, we still believe that this smaller gamepad, Wasp 2 units, is a better choice.
Appearance & design
The whole collection contains three units, a one-handed gamepad, a stinger, and a cooling fan. The identical design brings a highly identifiable appearance, though they may look strange from other controllers. Unlike Xbox controller lookalikes for totally off-screen operation, the left-hand gamepad sticks the phone pretty well with a reliable pop-up gripper. And the smaller stinger firmly grips your phone on the right. And you can adjust its upper mapping point by dragging. The RGB cooling fan can stick on the back by three small suckers as long as your phone has a flat and smooth surface.
The plastic material for the cover decreases the whole weight for comfort in those long sessions. Because when playing games with a gamepad, its overall weight with the phone has a great impact on our gaming experience. To boost the whole grip feeling, the surface gets matt processed, which guarantee the touching comfort when holding it. Other detail like the ergonomic curve and the rubber coat also lead to a better gripping experience.
The main reason that we pick it as our first gamepad, is the small size with separable units. As we just mentioned, a smartphone is a device that you have to carry on, and you can play mobile games on it anytime and anywhere. Therefore, it’s probably the best choice among the full-functional gamepads without taking much space.
Connection
We test its connection and compatibility with many phone brands. The Bluetooth 4.0 connection matches the phones pretty fast on both iOS and Android. Though several times it disturbed the screen touch function at the first connection, it reworks well after several attempts. To open the mapping adjustment, you need to download the official Flydigi App and open it through the USB Debugging. Both the Instructional Manual and the App only support Chinese, so probably it would bring you some tiny difficulties to figure out all the features. And it only supports a USB type-c port, and your android devices should run Android 4.0 or newer. The connection is pretty stable which has nothing complained. And it doesn’t support vertical games. As nobody wants to play it vertically with a gamepad, it’s really not a drawback.
Gaming performance
There is no united operational solution on mobile games, so the pre-customization is important. We tried several games like PUBG Mobile, Honkai Impact 3, Arena of Valor, Fortnite, Minecraft and Knives Out mainly on the OnePlus 7, Xiaomi Mi9 and Blackshark 2 & 2 Pro. It’s a totally different feeling when I play those games with the Wasp 2 units. It almost changed the gaming experience and boosted much of my game skills. Compared to those Xbox and Switch controllers, Wasp 2 combines the gamepad and screen-touch operation and bring it to a balance. If touching only, our clumsy fingers would impact our vision, and be not able to find the virtual buttons accurately. And it probably would take you quite a long session to get it used to the positions and maintain a strange holding state. If gamepad only, the nature of touch-based smartphone will not be taken full advantage.
Especially, when we play battle royal games like Fortnite and PUBG Mobile, it requires faster reaction and multiple-button combination. Then Gamepads are solving most problems, but not all problems. Because most battle royal games or 3D games required vision rotation. The best solution right now is the PC mouse. But sorry we cannot bring it to mobile games. But a second choice is on the table, the touching. The best solutions on a smartphone still cannot leave the touching operation. Wasp 2’s design is probably aimed at the dilemma, but they don’t simply jam too many buttons and cause much burden for your right hand. They arrange the limited 6 buttons on the comfortable position for fingers, including one stinger at the back. Otherwise, the additional right stinger is much clever as it does not just free the left hands but also avoid blocking our vision.
During playing PUBG Mobile and other Battle royal games, the best solution is to map ‘aiming’ to the right stinger, and ‘shooting’ to the rear LT button of left gamepad respectively, and leave only my right thumb to control the vision rotation. No vision blocked, no reaction laggy, and not much learning cost.
RGB fan
The RGB fan has tree gears to adjust the airflow. As a gaming accessory, a gradual RGB effect is not allowed to be absent. A problem here is that though it’s pretty small size, it still takes a significant rear space. It probably not fit the small-size phone with a curved or rough surface, especially when it works with the other two units. As it causes holding discomfort to some extent, it is not in our recommended list.
Another drawback for the whole units is the power charging. Because there is no indicator for power, so probably you would worry about running out of the power next minute, or just find out that it runs out the power last minute without charging.
