Speziell für diesen Teardown benötigte Werkzeuge
Einleitung
Quarantine turned you into a gamer? Lucky for you, Razer’s new Kishi Universal Controller is here to turn your smartphone into a play-anywhere system, with real buttons and joysticks. Join us as we tear down this stretchy controller to take a closer look at its inner workings and evaluate its repairability.
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Let's see what the Razer Kishi brings to the smartphone gaming ... game.
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Standard A-B-X-Y buttons, two clickable analog thumbsticks, one 8-way D-pad, plus a shoulder button and a trigger button on each side)
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Direct connectivity to your phone via USB-C or Lightning connector (depending on which model you buy)
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No internal battery, no Bluetooth, and no headphone jack
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Compatible with Android 8 Oreo/iOS 9 or higher, supporting device dimensions of 145.3–163.7mm (H), 68.2–78.1mm (W), and 7.0–8.8mm (D)
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Two slide locks on the back of the Kishi secure both halves of the controller, keeping it compact when there's no phone attached.
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Pulling outward on both inserts releases the clip, so you can extend both sides of the Razer Kishi until your phone fits in between.
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Game time started—we blast off ten Tri-point screws from the rear side. Thankfully we came equipped with 64 bits of Mako Driver Kit goodness. We're leveling up already!
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Beneath the back cover, we find two Steam-ish booby-trap interconnect cables—each one snaking off to a separate circuit board.
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Instead of the tricky Tri-points found in other portable gaming options, we find regular Phillips #0 screws inside of the handles.
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Normally each new level gets more challenging, but here it seems Razer gave us a break. Or is it just a distracting side quest? Regardless, we're happy to go on a Phillips fetch quest.
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There's no boss battle here yet—just a couple boards, which we quickly extract.
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The right board contains the following bijous:
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Fresco Logic FL7102, USB3.1 Type-C PD3.0 Controller
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Soldered-on USB Type-C charging port
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Soldered-on joystick controller (hello Oculus Touch and Xbox One S)
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Plug-on phone connector (in this model USB-C)
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Soldered-on breakout board for one of the shoulder buttons
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"Forward" button
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Indicator LED
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On the back of the board we discover:
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Broadcom (formerly SiByte) 4407 DA9N1S microprocessor
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A breakout board for the second shoulder trigger, which is attached separately and is therefore easier to repair.
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This one seems to use some sort of rotary knob offering not only an on/off status but a gradual push depth of the shoulder trigger.
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Extracting the left circuit board reveals:
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Another joystick, which is also soldered in place
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Four golden contacts for the D-pad (similar to the ones on the first circuit board)
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Soldered-on shoulder button
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Another shoulder trigger breakout board
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"Back" button
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"Home" button
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What remains is the telescoping slider mechanism that supports your phone when attached to the Kishi.
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It includes a folding rubber cushion, which attaches to the back cover with small springs. That's what saves you from worrying about scratches on the back of your phone while gaming.
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Quest complete! That's one more adventure mastered. Is it time to start working on a speed run? Let's recap what we've learned:
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One final question: Can it post a high score?
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- No adhesive was used and components are attached with screws.
- The controller's relatively modular construction means replacing most components will be a simple task.
- One of the most strained parts—the phone connector—is plug-in and easy to replace.
- We always say screw before glue. But using two different types of screws—one of them being Tri-point—is unnecessary and a bit annoying.
- The most likely-to-fail components—both joysticks—are soldered directly onto the circuit boards, as is the passthrough USB-C charging port.
Fazit
Reparierbarkeits-Index
(10 ist am einfachsten zu reparieren)
6 Kommentare
Very useful. I wonder if there's any unused traces on the ribbon cable: thinking of adding stereo speakers using a small Bluetooth module (though it seems rather packed).
That’d be nice tinkering. Please share if you find anything.
I’m still wondering why Razer didn’t include support for USB-C headphones. Looking at the internals makes me wonder if it was more work to make it charge-only.
