I had the Note (gsm) which is the best Android device I've owned so far. I sold it since it doesn't support 1700mhz, then to only get the Play later, because the idea of slide out gamepad is too cool. I'm looking at the Galaxy SIII next naturally. Or wait until the Nexus completely lost its value and sell for $300 (its doing a very good job at losing value from 750 to 400 by now).
About the iControlPad. I dusted it off yesterday after being stored for nearly a year with the intention of selling it. At first, I didn't know how to set it up and could only get it to work with a few apps. I read the support page again and put it in SPP mode running with latest Bluez IME which made it work exactly like the Play gamepad, so it basically worked with all games that support hardware keys, even exact same keys configuration as the Play. If you put it in HID mode which is intended to work as gamepad for Mac and PC, it won't work correctly for Android. Also it has internal 4000mah battery, so you could get a male-male mini to microUSB cable from eBay for charging purposes. Not as portable as a slideout gamepad, but its a much better controller than other bluetooth alternative I've seen.
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