Nintendo Is Repairing Joy-Cons with a Piece of Foam

Megalith

Megalith

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In what looks like the simplest repair job ever, the desynching issues plaguing left Joy-Cons are being fixed with a single piece of foam. Based on this band-aid, RF interference was at the heart of the issue, which is what the (conductive) foam blocks out. Nintendo has announced that it was a “manufacturing variation” and that future controllers should no longer have this problem.

…it's likely a piece of conductive foam, which is foam that's been specially treated with nickel, copper or both so it can shield electronics from RF interference. (It's often used in portable electronics when there isn't space for a traditional shield.) Unless we're totally mistaken, this piece of foam is sitting directly on top of the Joy-Con's antenna traces, too, which suggests that it's protecting the antenna from interference. (Another possibility: the foam may be keeping the ribbon cables for the joystick and/or trigger button, which run through that space, from touching the antenna.) I even tried removing the foam, and sure enough: The controller stops working properly when it's not there. Seems like an open-and-shut case.
 
But I thought Nintendo said that there's nothing wrong with the Switch and it's controllers?
 
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Wonder if they will tell people to rub Vaseline on the screen next to fill in the scratches it gets when docked.
 
apparently it may be limited to a single factory mistake.. IE not following spec.. comparing to other joycons which seem to work fine anyway. For the record, mine suffers this issue..
 
This is why I decided that while I'm getting a switch it will be holiday season at the earliest. Too much risk in 1st generation consoles. I got stupidly lucky with my launch day PS3's, PS4 and Wii and I know I got lucky. Only issue I ever had out of them was the graphics memory issue the 1st gen wii had. The 360 was another problem entirely..I went through 5 of those fucking things before I got fed up and packed it into a box in the basement. It has remained there ever since. Come to think of it, I actually have no clue where it even is anymore.
 
This still won't fix the fact that the signal strength of both joycons is significantly smaller than any other controller in existance today, including their very own pro controller, which in and of itself makes them more susceptible to interference of any kind. (remember that decibels is a logarithmic scale, and suddenly the difference in signal strength is worrysome)


edit to add notes about the measurements, each 2.54cm= 1 inch, each meter= 100 cm; each 3 dB the signal stregth doubles.
25cm= 9.84 inches
1m = 39.37 inches or 3 feet 3inches, so 1.5m = 59 inches, almost 5 feet, 6.5m= a bit over 21 feet.
edit 2: the fix to the signal strength is to increase it through firmware directly for the controller, this will take some small hit to battery life but ffs it is more important for the actual controllers to work than to last 20h not really working.
 
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Very disappointed in Nintendo. Literally every aspect of the Switch seems cheap and rough shod. Underpowered even for a Nintendo console and underdeveloped. Of course it doesn't matter if the sheep still come out in droves. subjectively speaking there's nothing [H] about the Switch. If you had to call a console truly [H] I'd say the OG xbox. Now that was a power monster.
 
Funny enough, I also fixed my original Nintendo 3DS with a piece of foam. The top screen kept turning off unless we applied pressure to a specific spot. 15 minutes and 1 tiny thumbnail size piece of foam later and it worked good as new.
 
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