A Compact Game Controller For Your Phone

According to Hackaday, maker Gil Yankovitch has built JoyFon, a compact game controller designed to solve a real problem with mobile gaming: touchscreens lack the tactile feedback of physical buttons. Built around a Raspberry Pi Pico, it features four face buttons, a D-pad, start and select buttons, plus shoulder buttons in later revisions. Because it works as a standard gamepad, it's compatible with phones, tablets, laptops, and PCs. What makes it special is the design for vertical phone use—a 3D-printed enclosure positions the USB-C port at the bottom to plug directly into your phone, aligning the buttons with your natural thumb placement. The layout mirrors the original Game Boy, and while it does cover part of the screen, that's a worthwhile trade-off for the physical controls that mobile gaming has been missing.

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