You can get clips that you can attach the phone and the controller together. There are also mobile specific controllers if that's more your flavor. Mobile was surprisingly decent to my standards for a period of time where I had no other platform, especially with emulators.

sometimes i put in on my knees, but I'm almost never in a situation where i want to game, but don't have a table.

like, sure, i could spend $1000+ dollars on a mobile solution to compliment my desktop. or i can take my existing hardware and have a pretty good time with it while traveling or waiting for someone or something. it feels like people are trying to come up with silly reasons for this to not work. why would you think i would try to hold the phone in my hands too?

how does needing to put the phone down defeat the purpose on not bringing an entire extra $1000+ dollar gaming machine with me? i mean sure, i could play 2 generations old games on a laptop for a lot less than that, but i haven't spent a single penny on my mobile setup. it's not about being the ideal setup, it was about realizing i could use my existing tools to do interesting things like play my favorite childhood Gameboy games whenever and wherever.

you don't even need a special case for it. i just use a pop socket to stand it up or hang it off something. again, something I already had.