Dual Shock 3 Secrets

R

Rainbow Man

Veteran
What does that controlletr hide beneath its matte-black exterior (well unless you live in Asia I guess; then i tmight be white instead)?

I was tired of wondering about that so I took a jeweler's screwdriver to mine and opened it up. At first it refused to budge after removing the 5 screws, but after pressing on the spot between the analog sticks it popped open easy peasy.

For starters there's obviously two motors in it.. They're pretty beefy from the looks of it with decent torque. The right-hand side offset weight has some significant mass to it made up of 4 1mm-ish steel plates. Motors are soldered directly to the circuit board - which appears slightly larger to standard sixaxis when I'd hoped for some professional-looking connectors, but hey.. Can't have everything.

The L2/R2 paddles are actually standard silicone rubber bubble switches just like the face buttons, with the paddle acting as a sort of lever squeezing it harder the more it's depressed. There's also a metal spring to keep the paddle nicely tense.

What really catched my eye though is the battetry. It says 300mAh on the bottom of the DS3 - up an impressive 10x in capacity from sixaxis. However the battery itself claims 610mAh! That's a fairly staggering 20 1/3 times increase!

I've only charged my DS3 once so far and despite a few hours play with quite a bit of shaking it still claims full 3 bar capacity on the PS button menu. Pretty awesome I have to say.

Peace.
 
i just got my DS3 along with GT5P a few days ago, and yeah, the battery life seems to be the same as the sixaxis (if not slightly better). my controller came charged with 2 bars left; after a full charge, i've been playing GT5P for about 19 hours now and theres still 1 bar left. after the warning, you can almost get a good hour out of it, too. so at this rate, i'm guessing it will last ~25 hours.
 
I'm curious, is the plastic on the DS3 the same semi-transparent material as on the Sixaxis, or is it opaque again like the DS2?
 
my sixaxis is very slightly translucent. at first glance, it looks opaque, but if you look closely, you can tell. not sure if all sixaxis' are the same.
 
djskribbles said:
my sixaxis is very slightly translucent. at first glance, it looks opaque, but if you look closely, you can tell. not sure if all sixaxis' are the same.
Click to expand...

I would have never known unless you've told me. I just held up both of my sixaxes to the TV and lo and behold, they are blueish translucent. Nice. And indeed, my DS3 isn't.
 
I've held my sixaxis up every which way to different light sources, including a torch in a darkened room, and nothing is passing through. Not even translucent to a degree, let alone transparent. Perhaps they changed the plastic for all controllers?
 
Shifty Geezer said:
I've held my sixaxis up every which way to different light sources, including a torch in a darkened room, and nothing is passing through. Not even translucent to a degree, let alone transparent. Perhaps they changed the plastic for all controllers?
Click to expand...

My original Sixaxis was transparent, I replaced that from Sony support, citing bluetooth dropouts, and the replacement is also transparent (serial 357...).
Then I bougt another one, and that one is not (901...)

This is how I differentiate them. :)
 
I own a whole gaggle of controlers now. Many different models. Let me post some pics.

Original Black Sixaxis
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White DS3
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Silver DS3
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That seems to be opaque too, yes. 40GB model. I'll check out my mates controllers tomorrow. We all got 40GB machines, so I'm guessing the opaque plastic was introduced then (if not before) as a cost saving exercise?
 
Shifty Geezer said:
That seems to be opaque too, yes. 40GB model. I'll check out my mates controllers tomorrow. We all got 40GB machines, so I'm guessing the opaque plastic was introduced then (if not before) as a cost saving exercise?
Click to expand...

The Euro 60 GB model controllers are semitranslucent.
 
I can confirm that 40 GB sixaxis is opaque, while the original 60 GB sixaxis is translucent.

I have both a 40 GB machine and a 60 GB one. That one was one of the first things I noticed upon opening the 40 GB box.
 
Interesting, so newer PS3s are opaque too. Virtually all the panels on my 60GB unit are that semi-translucent material.
 
Rainbow Man said:
What really catched my eye though is the battetry. It says 300mAh on the bottom of the DS3 - up an impressive 10x in capacity from sixaxis. However the battery itself claims 610mAh! That's a fairly staggering 20 1/3 times increase!
Click to expand...

The bottom of the DS3 actually says "300mA", not "300mAh", and the bottom of the normal Sixaxis says "30mA". mA is current, not capacity, and all that the labelling on the bottom says is that the DS3 draws 10x the current drawn by the Sixaxis, at peak, which is about as expected given the motors in the DS3.
 
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