Backbone Labs has acknowledged the issue that hampers the use of its excellent iPhone gaming controller with the new iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max. As we noticed last week, the iPhone 13 Pro’s thicker camera bump means the phone doesn’t sit neatly in the Backbone One controller, either sticking out on one side or causing the bridge on the back to slightly buckle. It’s not unusable, but it’s not great.
“We spent a tremendous amount of time meticulously crafting every surface of Backbone One (both bits and atoms) and even designing universal support for the iPhones available when it was released,” a Backbone representative wrote in an official post on Reddit. “As a result, we’re disappointed in the situation at hand. Several folks on the team even upgraded to 13 Pro Max for a better gaming experience, and while the fit may be acceptable for some users, it’s not as good as we’d like it to be.”
To address this, Backbone has designed an adapter that is intended to improve the experience with the iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max. Unfortunately, the company says it isn’t able to mass-produce them right away because of supply constraints and COVID-19, so the adapter design will be released as an open-source 3D printable file. If you don’t have access to a 3D printer, Backbone says “we’ll do our best” to send an adapter to users who contact the company’s support team.
The printable files should be posted online “in a matter of days;” we’ll let you know how well the solution works when we can.