All of the freshly activated phones will work with wireless gamepads over Bluetooth -- except for the Stadia controller. As with Pixel phones, the Stadia gamepad will have to be plugged in. Google is working on a system that would allow the Stadia controller to connect to browsers and mobile devices via WiFi, rather than the standard Bluetooth connection. For now, the controller has to be wired for PC, laptop and mobile play, though it works wirelessly on the TV via Chromecast Ultra.

"This is one of the items on our roadmap which is going to be launched shortly, but we're actually using a very different approach with our controller, one that connects directly over WiFi to the data center," Stadia's head of gamer experience Andrey Doronichev said. "It doesn't actually maintain a Bluetooth connection with a phone, which is a slightly different way of doing things and requires some extra work on both the app side and the controller side to make sure it works well."

Today's expansion, while significant, is still a drop in the Android ocean. Microsoft's xCloud service, meanwhile, supports any Android device running Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) or higher and Bluetooth 4.0 or better. Microsoft and Samsung have also promised a deeper cloud-based gaming collaboration in the future. At the same time, NVIDIA has relaunched its long-in-preview GeForce Now streaming service, which should work on any smartphone with 2GB of RAM and Android 5.0 (Lollipop) or higher.

Clearly, Google has some catching up to do.

Today's news comes three weeks after a Redditor accused Google of not providing a significant update to Stadia players for 40 days straight. At the time, Stadia had been out for 69 days. The post ran down a list of updates and promised features that were still missing from Stadia, and lamented the lack of new games and poor communication from Google. Players -- each of whom spent $130 on the Stadia Founder's Edition -- were still waiting for 4K capabilities, Google Assistant support and wireless controller functionality in browser mode, plus family sharing and an actual list of new games heading to the platform. The post is packed with players who viewed their Stadia experience as an ill-disguised beta, rather than a full launch.

Google responded by saying it understood players' frustrations, but that it was "up to the publishers" to announce their games. Many players saw this as a dodge, rather than a legitimate response. Google has rolled out a few updates since that Reddit post, adding a handful of new games to Stadia, headlined by Panzer Dragoon and the Serious Sam Collection. And, of course, there's today's news about Samsung, ROG and Razer phone functionality.