Why Xbox One controllers break so easily

After having 2 controllers stop working out of the blue (one of which was an Elite which I totally babied), I decided to pop them open and see why they aren't working. I discovered that there are 2 PCBs that are connected by 2 pin headers each. These pin
headers are connected to the PCBs with surface soldered pins. On both controllers, one side of these pin headers has broken its solder joints and completely disconnected from the PCB. This is a TERRIBLE design.... I get using 2 PCBs for the controller due
to the shape and placement of parts. That's not the problem. If you're going to use pin headers, spend the extra $0.01 and put the pins through the PCB. Any device that's supposed to be the most mobile portion of a console should not ever use surface soldered
pins to connect 2 PCBs together. As I mentioned, I have babied my elite controller (only transport in its case, no one else used it, never thrown it, or anything else that could cause damage). This happened just due to the subtle gripping of the controller
while playing. This also happened only 5 months after purchasing the controller. It's just a bad design that needs to be fixed for a future iteration of the device.

:)

 

Rumor: Xbox 720 to Use Touchscreen Controller

People would break touchscreen controllers very easily.......

 

Why does everything break so easily?

You must be harder on your controllers than you think, as I still have my controllers from a launch 360 (over 8 years old FYI) which still work fine as well as all others I bought later. I have never had a controller break and I game on a nearly daily basis.
The only thing which has failed were a few of the Play and Charge packs which I neglected to keep charged, which is more the fault of me than the product itself.

 

I've had mine since launch and have dropped it so many times on a wooden floor and to my surprise it still works, maybe I've just been lucky.

 

even if the solder joints break, they can still make contact and it can work. But for those who see frequent "disconnects" of their controller, this is likely the cause.

 

It would help lend some credibility to your claims if you had actually played a game on the XBox.

 

Didn't realize I was signed into that gamer tag. This is my main gamer tag where I play more than just Ark.

Though there are reasons to have the controller and not the actual console which would prevent gaining any gamerscore whatsoever, so there was no need for your snarky response.

 

^ Some of us understand that people have more than one gamertag.

A few on these forums don't understand as much as they like to think they do. lol

 

^^ I'm getting my popcorn. This gone be good.

 

I dont believe you mister zero gamerscorer.

 

I do, my 1st one had visible wires and needed a screwdriver and some glue to fix, this was straight out of the box in 2013 on day 1.

 

I think the title of this thread needs these two words added at the end: "for some." Have two controllers from the first months of console release, narry an issue with either of them.

 

Yeah exactly, only the original day 1 for me. Though same for my day 1 ps4 so that what happens when things are too quick to market.

 

I love the feel of these controllers. The thumbsticks are positioned perfectly. The only problem is the build quality at least for me on my day 1 console controller was really cheap. I was playing Killer Instinct on the first day and it split apart at the
seems.

 

The Xbox One Controllers are a little on the cheap side. I'm on failing number 2 Controller in under 3 years. This current Controller has a Left Stick Drift every now and then and will be replaced soon.

It would be nice if Controllers could be built with a little more quality. I'm not going to sweat it out too much, I went through 5 Controllers on my Xbox 360 in 8 plus years. Having the Controller $10 more is a little lame though.