Last year, Ohsnap debuted the MCON controller on Kickstarter and nearly broke the website. Over 16,000 people pledged almost $2 million to make the product a reality, and not only did the company ship every single MCON out to every backer, they casually came back to CES this year with not one, but TWO more versions of the device. The more impressive of the two is the MCON Slim, a controller that’s nearly as thin as your standard smartphone, packing in an entire gaming controller (along with trigger buttons) into that ridiculously small form factor.
Designed by 21 year-old Josh King, the MCON Slim is clearly his magnum opus. The youngster (incubated by Dale Backus’ Ohsnap) mentioned how the smartphone was such a powerful device, but all we ever use it for is doomscrolling and emails. The MCON was supposed to prove to the world that the smartphone can be an incredible handheld gaming device, comparable to the Razer Switchblade or even dare I say the Nintendo Switch. Now, the MCON Slim cements that idea even further. Imagine a device, the thickness of a MagSafe power bank), capable of turning your iPhone into the next best gaming console.
Designer: Josh King (Ohsnap)
If you’ve seen the MCON before, think of the Slim as the iPhone Air of gaming controllers. It’s ridiculously sleek, snapping to the back of your phone and literally absorbing your iPhone’s camera bump into it. When shut, it’s still slim enough to slide right into your pocket without you feeling a thing. However, when you’re craving some serious gaming, slide the controller out and you’ve got a makeshift handheld console in mere seconds, with an actual D-Pad, action buttons, two touch-sensitive joypads, and even trigger buttons on the back.
Before you get your hopes up, the MCON Slim is still in its ‘proof of concept’ stage, and won’t launch anytime soon. Josh mentions they’ll probably roll the Slim out in time for the iPhone 18… which works just fine given that I plan on upgrading my iPhone just around that time! The design, however, is beyond impressive. The sliding interaction is flawless, even though the Ohsnap team miniaturized practically everything. The trigger buttons have actual movement, with nearly 3mm of travel. And the best part, the MCON Slim plays nice with the iPhone’s camera module (unlike past versions). A gorgeous fidget-spinner-shaped cutout lets you use the iPhone’s camera even with the Slim controller attached to the back of your phone. Heck, even the flashlight is accessible, which means your gaming console, ahem, smartphone has zero compromises.
And the best part is that the controller slides right out of the dock, turning your phone into a Nintendo Switch of sorts. The connection is all via Bluetooth, which means you can place your phone on a table a few feet away from you while you game with the detached controller in your hands. The slimness results in just two sacrifices – firstly, those pop-out grips from the original MCON don’t make it to this device. And to be honest, I don’t miss them at all. Secondly, the joypads go from physically moving controls to touch-sensitive ones… something that most casual gamers should be fine with. For the pedantic ones, the original MCON (and the upcoming MCON Lite) offers a perfect alternative.
The sad part here is that there’s absolutely no tech spec to talk about. The MCON Slim is entirely a work in progress right now, which means design details, battery life, pricing, everything is subject to change. However, Josh did mention that the MCON Slim should arrive around the same time as the iPhone 18, or in other words – we’ll probably get the MCON Slim before we get GTA VI.
