The Sony Ericsson Feature marketing gurus renamed it the Xperia Play when it finally went official at MWC this year, but the PlayStation connection remains as strong as ever. Aside from the D-pad, iconic game keys, and two touchpads, this device comes with a little app named PlayStation Pocket, which will be serving up dollops of classic PlayStation One gaming to all those with a taste for it.
The Xperia Play is powered by Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). It features a slide-out panel containing the Sony gaming D-pad (for in-game direction control) on the left side, the four symbol-etched game control buttons on the right, and a set of circular touchpads in the middle, which act like analog joysticks for operating certain games.The phone packs a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, and the display is a 4-inch Bravia (480 by 854 pixels FWVGA) touchscreen with an Adreno GPU graphics processor inside.
The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play looks like a really nifty mobile that will deliver some serious gaming kicks. Our main reservation is that the slide-out keyboard makes the phone slightly bulky. But we're not too worried -- it's still a fairly light and portable phone. We also think the Play's success will be largely dependent on the games available -- it needs some really killer titles to give it that must-have quality.
The arrival of PlayStation Suite means there will undoubtedly be a few more gaming-based phones from Sony Ericsson in the next year or so. That slightly takes the sheen off the Play -- you might be wise to hold off and see if Sony releases some other incredible device right after the Play. Nevertheless, as Sony Ericsson's first proper foray into the mobile-gaming market, the Play looks very promising.
