Thworted

That’s really on-point. The saw on a pocketknife is actually great, if you just need to saw a little bit — like, take a couple twigs off a bigger branch or whatever — and you’re not trying to build a whole-ass table. Likewise, manage your expectations of what cloud gaming on a phone actually offers, and it could really meet your needs well for a lot of people.

I play games for a few minutes at a time, uhhhhh, from home, like you described. I’ve used XCloud and my own PS5 the most for this. XCloud used to have pretty iffy startup times but they’re down well under a minute now, sometimes barely 30 seconds. Of course, then you still have to get through the console menus and whatnot, but you could realistically be controlling a character in around 45 seconds. With my own PS5, startup time is down around 10-15 seconds, and of course the SSD means getting into a game is often less than 10 seconds as well. At that point, I’m not using my phone as a phone, and I’ll generally ignore notifications if they do come in.

Who would have paid for this? Who comes out of this in a positive light? Valve, I guess? Seems like a real stretch to me, and of course Verge publishes plenty of paid articles that are marked that way, so it would be pretty weird for them to try to sneak this one out.

I didn’t hate using a "clamp" attachment to bolt my phone to a console controller, before I bought my Kishi. It’s definitely more awkward and puts some strain on your hands/wrists, supporting the extra weight, but for most use cases I could hook up my Dualshock 4 and it Just Worked. You definitely wouldn’t have any trouble hooking up headphones then, right?

Other commenters have mostly covered this, but just to kind of go through point by point:

• Focus mode. Learn it, use it. Why on earth do you want to "just check Instagram" in the middle of a game? Some native games can also lose progress if you switch away, so, don’t do that!
• Choice of game matters. All the examples you listed are action-y games where you’re going to notice any extra latency right away. Streaming to the phone is ideally suited to slower games that don’t require twitch reflexes.
• Context is key. The best setup to play for 30-60 minutes might be totally different from the best setup when you have a 6-hour layover at an airport. A phone with a vise-style controller is fantastic when you’re going to use it for less than an hour at a stretch. I use mine almost every day, generally for well under an hour at a time. I’ve never noticed a big dent in battery life, nor had my phone heat up. (Are you streaming with native apps instead of via browser? That can make a huge difference.)
• It doesn’t make sense to compare your phone to a Steam Deck that’s at least twice the footprint/volume/weight. You’d probably get an even better experience out of a 12" tablet and full size Xbox/PS5 gamepad, but of course you’re less likely still to throw those in a bag every time you leave the house. I think a phone with a compact, travel-friendly dedicated gamepad like the Kishi is a good tradeoff.

This is why I love my (v1) Kishi and would never even consider a Backbone. The entire point of having a phone controller is that I can tuck it into a jacket or cargo-pant pocket, ideally without any case, and it won’t just snap in half at the slightest provocation.

Correct. If that’s a dealbreaker, I’m not sure what other options you have — good luck!

I should have clarified, I bought mine for something like 50 bucks and was very happy at that price point. I think it launched for twice that, and I definitely agree it does not feel like a $100 "premium" product. The good news is that $50 seems to be the new established price for the V1….

The best news to come out of this is that it sounds like they’re going to rebrand the v1 controller and keep selling it. I really like mine and would be bummed out if I couldn’t replace it in a couple of years.