Have you ever been gaming on your iPhone and thought: “the games offered on the App Store are great and all, but I wish I could have physical buttons to play them with”?
You’re not the first. But if you decide to pursue that wish online, you’ll discover that the current offerings of physical controls for your iDevice are weak at best. It’s not always because of the technology; in fact, some of the controllers are designed quite well. It’s just that the obstacles required to get a controller working for the iPhone (like getting game developers to tweak their game to be compatible with your controller) manage to successfully hamper even the good controllers.
But before you give up on the whole “physical controls” thing, you may want to read on.
The company WynLabs has suddenly come out with a prototype controller (called the WynCase) that sounds like a miraculous accomplishment.
The controller/case hybrid, titled the WynCase, offers eight face buttons (four on each side of the iDevice’s screen), uses no Bluetooth, requires no battery, adds little bulk, and even offers some drop protection to boot. Instead of connecting to the phone via Bluetooth or 30-pin/Lightning port, the case slightly overlaps the device’s screen, so that when a button is pressed, an electrical signal is sent to the touch screen, mimicking a finger press.
Sounds really sweet, right? Well don’t head to Amazon right now, because the case doesn’t exist on the public market…at least, not yet.
Instead of shooting for an immediate public release, WynLabs has turned to Kickstarter in hopes of getting backers before the first shipment. However, the financial goal is resolute at $80,000, and as of this writing, only $18,123 has been pledged, with a mere 10 days remaining for the funding date.
