You carry your mobile phone around with you all day, messaging, calling and swiping your way through life. It’s also capable of being pretty much your entire entertainment centre, and gaming is an integral part of that. The Gamevice Flex joins a steady stream of physical controls to make your mobile gaming as close to the home console experience as possible.
The Gamevice Flex folds up into a tight little package, and doesn’t look all that different to the Switch’s Joy-Con when they’re in a grip. This does prompt a minor note of disappointment, as while it looks as though it’s capable of being used as a standalone controller, it’s not. With no power and no Bluetooth, the Flex relies on the lightning connector of an iPhone to draw power. It does however include a 3.5mm audio connection and a power passthrough, so you can keep your phone topped up through hours of game time, and frankly anything that adds a headphone socket to an iPhone is doing God’s work.
Unclipping the two main parts is straightforward and simple, and then you’re onto the only fiddly part of the whole package: setting the Gamevice Flex up for the first time. You need to make sure that your iPhone is held snuggly in place, and to do that you have to use the little measuring card that’s supplied. That helps you to identify which plastic inserts you’ll need to clip into place – it can even accommodate your phone with a case on. Once the inserts are in, your phone should just slot firmly into its spot, with the lightning plug comfortably ensuring that the connection is solid.
You’re getting the offset analogue sticks of the Xbox layout here, which makes sense given that the Gamevice Flex is aimed firmly at Xbox Cloud Gaming via Game Pass. The sticks feel taut and accurate, and I barely thought about them once I started playing – a very good sign. Besides that, there’s all of the expected face buttons and controls of a latest-gen Xbox controller, though it swaps out the Share button for a screenshot button instead.
The one addition is a dedicated Gamevice button, with Gamevice offering its own launcher which is accessed here once you’ve downloaded the GameviceLive app. It pulls together access to a batch of different game providers beyond Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming, including Geforce Now, Apple Arcade and the Apple App Store, though it’s a bit clunky thanks to Apple’s locked-down infrastructure.
You can scroll through a heap of suggested titles, with each option bringing up a trailer and an install or ‘How to Play’ option. You can also add titles to your favourites list for quick access which is handy, but overall I found myself bypassing the whole thing for either the Xbox Cloud Gaming link I’ve got set up, or heading directly to a game app.
The Gamevice is built solidly from black plastic, though it’s lightweight enough not to add too much additional heft to whichever size of iPhone you’re using. It’s also small enough when clipped together to go easily in your bag, and it has become a regular travel companion for me over the past couple of months, particularly when taking my Nintendo Switch or Steam Deck would have been too unwieldy.
The Flex proves its worth within moments of starting up a game, and I quickly found myself merrily blasting away in Destiny 2. While latency is going to be inherent with any streaming service, my few years of playing Stadia have given me a high tolerance for the vagaries of an internet connection. As long as things are stable on the streaming side, the Flex is quick and accurate, and you feel fully in control of the action, even when things become a bit frantic.
It was a similar story with GRID Legends, and other than the phone’s smaller screen making the racing a bit tougher at times, I don’t think I’ve ever been able to play a racing game over a streaming service with the same level of control via the Gamevice Flex. The triggers in particular feel accurate and boast the same level of travel as you’d find on Microsoft’s official controller. After I’d had enough of all the high-octane stuff, I opted for the far more sedate storytelling of Citizen Sleeper, and over a number of hours it cemented the simple fact that the Gamevice Flex makes your mobile gaming experience feel like a dedicated console.
With an RRP just a smidge below $100 USD, the Gamevice Flex sits at a lower price than the similarly specced Backbone One, beats out the Razer Kishi with full analogue trigger travel, and it’s far better built than the Gamesir X2 Pro. I also much prefer this layout to the phone-above-a-full-size-controller offerings like the PowerA MOGA XP-5 X, as it feels like a true handheld – and it’s much easier to fit into your bag.
