[Nexus Player Accessories] mvanzante:
To update firmware or not? Might want to read this first

Hi all,

tl:dr / summary - Some Nyko Playpad Pros have issues with charging or arriving in update mode (cycling all lights when charging). Updating the Nyko Playpad Pro firmware sometimes fixes the issue, sometime not. Even if you get a good one, you may not want to update the firmware anyway.

I've been looking for an active forum to post this info in and get help from. Reddit didn't seem to have any good threads dedicated to the Nyko Playpad Pro, and Nyko's website is pretty much useless.

Here's my story. I bought one Playpad Pro from Amazon and when it arrived I read the sticker that said to charge it for an hour minimum before use. I have plenty of micro-USB chargers so instead of using the included one I charged it via my phone cable. As soon as I plugged it in all the lights on the controller started cycling. I hadn't read the directions yet so I didn't know this was odd. Went back and read the instructions and decided to use the included charging cable. Did that and the cycling stopped so I let it charge.

After it was done charging (light was blinking) I tried to turn it on via the home button and it would light up while I held the button down, but as soon as I released it all the lights would go dark. If I connected it to the charger I could get it to turn on and stay on, but that was unacceptable.

Eventually I ran across some information about updating the firmware via PC so I tried that (did the whole UP + A + Reset thing to get into update mode) but it didn't fix the issue, so I returned it to Amazon.

I read a bunch of reviews on Amazon and there were a ton of complaints about units being DOA like mine. I liked the price of the Playpad Pro compared to others, though, and saw that those who got a good controller were very happy with it, so I decided to play the odds and ordered 3 more of them from Amazon, figuring I could return the ones that don't work or I don't need.

I got those 3 controllers earlier this week and I've only opened 2 of them because both of them are working. Both of them would pair with my Nexus 7 (2012) and Moto X (1st gen) out of the box, however they wouldn't connect again after cycling them off then on. I'd have to re-pair each controller each time I turned it on. And, the Nyko Playground app wouldn't recognize them to update the firmware (I eventually read elsewhere that you need an Android 4.1 device to run the firmware upgrade via Android). So instead I updated one of the controllers via the PC updater. The Nyko Playground app would then recognize the controller ("Controller Synced" displayed in green at the top-right of the app and allow me to update the firmware in the app). This solved the pairing issue, but I noticed that android recognized the controller differently after the update. In the BT settings the updated controller displayed with a keyboard icon, while the non-updated controller had a joystick icon.

The keyboard vs. joystick difference wouldn't be relevant until I started trying to use each controller in RetroArch. Even though performance was fine for the updated (keyboard icon) controller in the Android OS and other games, in RetroArch I experienced a significant lag/delay after pressing a button. Furthermore, the updated controller's left thumb-stick would not translate to D-pad movements. On the other hand, the non-updated controller (joystick icon, requires re-pairing at each power on) did not experience any lag within RetroArch, and the left thumb-stick could be used in place of the D-pad.

I'm pretty new to RetroArch so maybe there is a setting I could change to fix the lag and left thumb-stick issues? Or maybe there's a way I can have Android treat the updated controller as a joystick/gamepad instead of a keyboard? For now I'm jumping through the hoops of re-pairing the non-updated controller each time I power it on. Other than that the controller is great.