Xiaomi might bring native DualShock 4 support for Poco F1

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Smartphones are rapidly occupying the the ‘gaming’ hardware arena. Console sales are dropping and games like Fortnite or PUBG on phones are the new big things. Phone OEMs are trying to satisfy this trend by launching feature packed, neon-rocking, high performance phones.

Hardcore smartphone players (/streamers) prefer to use dedicated controllers rather than the touch inputs. Console gamepads like Sony’s DualShock or Microsoft’s Xbox One Controller are some of the most acclaimed peripherals in this regard.

When you connect such gamepads with the phone, either via USB-OTG or pairing wirelessly via Bluetooth, the phone sees them as Human Interface Device (HID). The host (in this case, the phone) needs to know about the key layout of the HID hardware, otherwise the buttons or the vibration motos may not work as intended.

Poco F1 is a fantastic phone, which is especially popular among young crowds for it’s flagship like internals, competitive pricing and regular updates. A major segment of them bought the device with the sole intent of gaming. But as a matter of fact, the phone doesn’t properly support latest DualShock 4 controller.

Xiaomi’s in-house MIUI has known compatibility issues with DualShock controllers.

When you pair the controller on the phone the device is registered and listed as a wireless controller, however, system doesn’t recognice any controller event (buttons, axis buttons, joystick movement, etc), the problem is related to MIUI because if i install a custom rom (tested with resurrection remix 5.8.5) the system register the controller actions.

The problem is not system only, any app that accept gamepads under MIUI suffer the same problem, don’t recognice the controller

(Source)

This is a known case, but I’ve noticed that they haven’t fixed the issue yet. I don’t want to root my device, the ps4 controller doesn’t work with OTG cables on my MI MIX 2. Pairing via blootooth is laggy and unplayable. A lot of devices support the Controller via OTG, what’s missing on the MI devices?
Will this be fixed on miui 10 ? Or we will have no solutions forever for non rooted devices?

(Source)

However, Google added native key mapping support for DualShock 4 in Android Pie. Poco F1 is few of those phones from Xiaomi who got Android Pie based MIUI 10 update rather quickly. Even after that, the incompatibility issue persists.

There are few known methods to force older controllers via third party apps, but they need root access to add the keymaps in the OS. 1Controller, a popular open source Magisk module for gamepad remapping, clearly mentions the incompatibility with phones running MIUI 10.

While you can discover and pair with the controller wirelessly from the phone, the buttons are not at all working correctly with games. The Bluetooth connection also lags a lot and wired connection via OTG can’t detect the controller. As Poco F1 shares an unified kernel source with Mi 8/8 Pro/8 Explorer Edition and Mix 2S/3, the bug should be much widespread than initial speculation.

Users are discussing possible workarounds to use DS controllers with Poco F1 in this thread on XDA. But a native solution is always preferable, particularly when stock Android 9 Pie contains the fix.

An user contacted Alvin Tse, head of Pocophone Global via Twitter about the scenario:

Alvin assured that the company might be looking into it if enough feedbacks would be submitted via proper channel and boosted the priority of the matter.

We hope there will be a quick fix rolling out soon, considering Poco itself advertises F1 targeting the gamers.

Do you prefer controllers for mobile gaming? ???️

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