It feels like every other day Sony is found to be patenting some odd invention or another. Its latest hopes to turn a user’s smartphone into a secondary input device, on top of their controller. The patent, spotted by Cheat Happens, would fix a user’s smartphone right onto their DualSense controller.
This isn’t anything we haven’t seen before. Sony kicked around a similar idea soon after the PS4 came out, and released a bit of plastic that mounted onto your controller and held a phone in place. It didn’t really take off, in part because it relied on Remote Play (in 2014, no less) and because it was limited to certain Sony Xperia models.
Sony’s getting Bravia
The idea is perhaps a little less absurd in 2026. With the ubiquity of fibre internet, a more comfortable controller, and fewer Xperia phones out in the wild. Hell, you can pick up a third-party mount that slaps onto your PlayStation controller right now for as little as R250. But Sony’s latest patent takes it to the next level.
The smartphone attaches — magnetically, according to the patent — to your DualSense in Sony’s vision of a hybrid input system. Developers could take advantage of the phone’s camera, gyro, or any number of other sensors. Think of it like the bottom screen of a Nintendo DS, but on steroids. Even if they ignore that, it could still be a handy way to free up some valuable real estate on screen. The rest would migrate to the phone.
“The second input device may comprise one or more inputs controls that may be configured to generate the one or more inputs of the second type. […] input controls may comprise, for example, one more buttons, triggers, joysticks, touchscreens, bumpers, motion sensors, or any other suitable input control[s].”
