Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Previewed

The so called ‘Playstation Phone’ combines Sony’s portable gaming system with a phone is one of the many tech unicorns that many what to come true. But that unicorn is turning out to be a reality as the people over at Engadget have managed to get an exclusive hands on with the Sony’s Playstation Phone, aka, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play. They confirmed that the Xperia Play will have a 4″ 854 x 480 LCD screen that is the same screen that is on the X10 and this screen is powered by Bravia engine for better video playback. But we don’t know if it is powered by the Qualcomm MSM8655 CPU but the clocking range goes from 122.88 MHz all the way up to the now expected 1 GHz.

Other internals include a Adreno 205 GPU, 512 MB of RAM, 1500 mAh batter, a SIM card slot and a Micro SD card slot. The score on quadrant seems decent at 1689 and overall the things that make the handset go seems standard. But the one thing that makes the Xperia play different from the bunch is the sliding playstation controls that lurk underneath the screen. You have the standard Playstation buttons, the D-Pad and the things in the middle of the controller are joysticks and this control interface is said to work natively with Android.

The Xperia Play will run a skinned version of Gingerbread that is said to be similar in look to the experience on the X10, but much said to be much faster. The new additions in Gingerbread such as the new status icons, and text selection tools are also going to be on the Xperia Play but btherwise it is the same experience as on the X10. Engadget put a two different emulators on the Xperia Play (Gameboy Advance and Playstation) and said everything works and “ran pretty well.”  But in the photos of the device, there seems to be an app called “Playstation Pocket”  where I presume that you will be able to get optimised Playstation games for the Xperia Play whenever it comes out. And while on that subject, it is expected to be officially announced at MWC next month in Barcelona.

We still don’t know the price of the Xperia Play and when it will be released but honestly, I am quite tempted. Gaming on Android seriously lacks compared to iOS and this device certainly attracts the gamer in me. So what about you, are you interested in picking one of these up when it comes out or do you even care?

Posted by Patrick

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