obile gaming has long hit a dead end with clumsy telescopic clamps that turn any phone into an unwieldy, top-heavy brick. Abxylute decided to fix the ergonomic trainwreck of its previous M4 controller and launched a Kickstarter campaign for two new models, the M5 and M6, attempting to resurrect the long-forgotten slider form factor made famous by the iconic Sony Xperia Play.
Abxylute compares the way the M6 opens and closes to the Sony Xperia Play, which also slides open to reveal a full gamepad.
These newcomers offer two drastically different approaches to portability and control, though they ask for remarkably real money for a crowdfunded gamble.
Is the M6 actually comfortable in real life?
The flagship M6 is built for anyone who ever cursed a mobile controller for lacking a proper grip and full-sized sticks. The controller snaps onto the back of your phone via magnets and uses a sliding rail mechanism that conceals the physical buttons until you need them. Packed inside is a modest 500mAh battery rated for up to 10 hours of play, relying on Bluetooth 5.3 for connection.
A 500mAh battery sits inside the gamepad, allowing up to 10 hours of gameplay.
Ergonomics got a serious upgrade here thanks to capacitive touch sticks, Hall-effect linear triggers that won't drift out of spite, and a six-axis gyroscope for motion controls. The engineers even slapped a customizable Z button on the back that defaults to L3 or R3 and handles macros if you want to chain inputs. If the base chassis still feels cramped, the company will happily sell you an optional magnetic grip attachment to bulk it up.
What they stripped from the slim M5 and should you buy it?
To achieve a slimmer profile, the engineers had to make brutal compromises: the M5 lacks an internal battery, RGB lighting, a gyroscope, Hall-effect triggers, and capacitive sticks entirely. You have to wire your phone directly into it, but in exchange, you get pass-through charging and dedicated L3/R3 buttons that somehow went missing on its heavier sibling.
Both models rely on the Abxy app to wrangle emulators, cloud gaming services, and touch-mapping tricks that drag on-screen buttons over to physical inputs. Backing a Kickstarter hardware project is always a gamble, but if you have mourned the Xperia Play format for the last decade, this is the closest anyone has come to bringing it back from the dead without buying a dedicated handheld.