It’s always interesting when people disassemble gaming consoles to discover how, exactly, they work. In a recent teardown video of the Nintendo Alarmo from iFixit, some interesting discoveries were made regarding the technology inside of Nintendo’s stab at an alarm clock. While most of the components are fairly standard for what Alarmo is doing, such as having a pretty typical LCD screen and a 24 GHz mmWave presence sensor, there is one surprising bit of tech in here that could point to improved Joy-Con on the Switch 2: a Hall effect sensor.
The rotary dial on the top of the Alarmo, which is used to navigate the menus on the device, utilizes a hall effect sensor instead of a cheaper component like a linear resonant actuator or a basic thumbstick. As we’ve discussed on Nintendo Wire before, Hall effect joysticks would be a massive improvement for the Switch 2’s Joy-Con and would effectively eliminate stick drift for the new console. For something like the Alarmo, I wouldn’t have expected Nintendo to bother with a Hall effect sensor as it’s not like people are meant to be fiddling with the dial consistently. At the same time, the inclusion here could mean that Nintendo is embracing better technology moving forward.
It’s already been rumored that the Joy-Con on the Switch 2 are massively improved and with Nintendo including the technology on something as innocuous as the Alarmo, I have a good feeling that this means the new Joy-Con will feature Hall effect sticks. If they do, Nintendo will have solved the biggest problem plaguing the original Switch. With no stick drift to worry about, it would also put Nintendo’s controllers as some of the best in the industry right now. Here’s hoping.
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Via: The Verge
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
