Experience Improved gameplay on Android with your Astra device with this simple trick!

I just discovered something very interesting while testing rhythm based games with the Astra One and our pre-production samples of the Astra Tanks and I felt it was worth sharing with the larger community.

The Android stack natively supports the D-pad mode for gaming controllers. This is the reason why our recommended method of pairing Android devices with the Astra One and the (soon-to-be-released) Astra Tanka asks you, the user to power up your device in the Power + X mode for pairing.

While the D-pad mode for controller works absolutely fine for most games, it remains a somewhat dated protocol.

While testing a Samsung S22, I realized that Android 13 natively supports MFi mode as well. What this means is Android users can now experience improved gameplay and better support for several games (Including native usage with games like Call of Duty Mobile) with their Astra Series devices.

While support for the MFi model on all Android devices is not assured, most phones released in the past few years should work with this method. I would urge our Android users to try this out – It will work in all likelihood and you really have nothing to lose by trying!

Method to enable

1. Power off your Astra Series device (Astra One/ Astra Tanka)
2. Delete the existing bluetooth pairing with the Astra Device on your mobile phone
3. Power up your Astra device in the initial pairing mode for iOS devices (Power + B button)
4. Scan for Bluetooth devices on your phone – You should now be able to see the Astra device as a MFi controller
5. Complete the pairing.
6. Power off the Astra device and Power it back on again (This seems to be required for reasons beyond my understanding – I have forwarded this as a technical query to the geeks….aka the dev team 🙂
7. Step 6 should not be required after the initial connection but it is worth pointing out lest one assumes that this mode won’t work 🙂
8. If all goes well, your Astra Series device should now be paired and ready ti use again

Expected Result

During my experience using the Astra One and Tanka, I always felt that the controller feels more responsive with an iPhone than an Android. With this simple method, I have been able to achieve similar results on both platforms. As an added benefit, CoD mobile and some other games are now working exactly as expected in controller usage mode on Android without the need to use any kind of 3rd party screen emulation,

If you own an Astra One, or are planning to purchase the Astra Tanka at launch, you really ought to give this a try.

Until next time then! Happy Gaming!