Sony Ericsson Xperia Play
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Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Overview
The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play is an Android-based device totally focused on gaming featuring a dedicated slideout keypad with a familiar Playstation layout. It's one of the most unique phones yet and is the first Android handset designed specifically for gaming.
It's Playstation certified, meaning owners will be able to find some Sony PS1 classics in the Android market to download and enjoy. Verizon's version differs a tad bit from the version released in other regions. Specifically, they use stock Android instead of adding Sony Ericsson's Mediascape and Timescape layout on top of it.
The device caught everyone's attention and made people long for a phone that had a built-in gamepad. The specs are in-line with today's high-end phones, but Sony Ericsson worked with Qualcomm to tune the 1GHz Snapdragon inside specifically for the Xperia Play.
In short, this thing pumps out more power than is normally possible. That much is needed due to all of the high-quality 3D titles people will be playing on it. The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play is now available from Verizon and other carriers around the globe.
Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Specs
| General | |
| Form Factor: | Slide-out GamePad |
| AKA: | ? |
| Date Released (YYYY/MM/DD): | 2011/04/01 |
| Size | |
| Weight: | 6.17 oz (175 g) |
| Dimensions: | 4.69 x 2.44 x 0.63 (119 x 62 x 16 mm) |
| Display | |
| Resolution: | 800x480 |
| Size: | 4.0-inch |
| Type: | TFT-LCD |
| Camera | |
| Video: | 720p HD @ 30fps |
| Flash: | LED |
| Auto-focus: | Yes |
| Megapixels: | 5 megapixel rear, vga front |
| Connectivity | |
| GPS: | Yes, with A-GPS |
| USB: | microUSB 2.0 |
| Bluetooth: | 2.1 + EDR |
| Wi-Fi: | 802.11 b/g/n |
| HDMI: | No |
| Multimedia | |
| Headset Jack: | Yes |
| Radio: | No |
| Battery | |
| Type: | 1500 mAh |
| Hardware/OS | |
| Operating System: | Android 2.3 |
| Internal Memory: | 400 MB |
| External Memory: | microSD (up to 32GB) |
| RAM: | 512 MB |
| Processor: | 1 GHz Qualcomm Processor |
Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Reviews
Phandroid "Don’t let the fact that the Xperia Play comes with a single-core processor dissuade you. I found it snappy and more than capable of handling all the 3D games from the Android Market I could throw at it."
CNET "The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play is a significant step forward in mobile gaming, but it suffers from key hardware limitations."
Engadget "So all we really need to know now is whether the Android smartphone underpinning this smash-bang fusion of old and new school entertainment happens to be any good. Shall we get Started?"
IGN "The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play suffers from what I like to call 3DS Disorder, symptoms of which include, but are not limited to: underwhelming hardware with a critical lack of killer apps."
Android Central "And somewhere within those two large divisions of the company, something was bound to go wrong."
Android Guys "Rather, Sony Ericsson handsets are decidedly elegant. From the moment you take this out of the box, it looks and feels like a well-crafted device."
Android Community "It’s slick and sleek, the physical buttons for the 4 Android functions are fabulous, and the combination of plastic and metal and glass in the majority of the handset are well done. But how about that PlayStation controller?"
BGR "Sony Ericsson’s Xperia PLAY is the company’s first smartphone focused on bringing serious gaming and a powerful handset to the masses."
Pocket Now "Ever since the XPERIA Play emerged, the device gained immediate fame in the smartphone and gaming communities alike."
Ubergizmo "While other outlets have already published their reviews on the Xperia Play over the last few weeks, reviewing it from an Android smartphone perspective, we decided to hone in on its real trump card: gaming."
Slash Gear "The Xperia Play is being touted as the “World’s First PlayStation Certified Smartphone”. Does that make it a good phone?"
Phone Arena "Can we say beginning of an era about the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play? In case you are wondering why, it is the first ever smartphone with a dedicated gamepad."
GSMArena "The Sony Ericsson XPERIA Play has strong ties to Sony’s gaming rigs, both portable and not, and Sony’s a big name in gaming."
Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Pictures
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Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Videos
Sony Ericsson Xperia Play News
Verizon’s Xperia Play has received a new update that adds a couple of important enhancements, but also adds a bit more bloatware. To start, VZ Navigator and Video On-Demand have been pre-installed. The power button can be held down to take screenshots. The right trigger can be used as a camera button within the camera [...]
Rumors of a “PlayStation Phone” eventually panned out in the form of the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play, but the gaming handset we were left with could have turned out much differently. New information is coming to light from several sources that reveals Google’s desire to launch the phone as an Android 2.3 flagship along with [...]
Several Sony Xperia smartphones are being updated to Ice Cream Sandwich, the start of a new software rollout that will continue into early summer. The Xperia arc S, Xperia neo V, and Xperia ray are the first Sony handset’s to receive Android 4.0 with the update kicking off for owners in Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, [...]
SEGA to Preview Virtua Tennis for Android at CES 2012 While CES is mostly known as an event to showcase the latest tech hardware, software makers do make an appearance from time to time. This year SEGA is using their ties to the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play to showcase Virtua Tennis Challenge, and Android version of the popular tennis title. SEGA says the game has [...]
Onlive For Android Adds Xperia Play Support – Lets You Game On Your Phone Like A Big Boy Waking up to my phone today, I noticed there were a gang of apps in the Market with fresh updates ready to be installed. Checking my email, I noticed an actual press release from just such an app update, this time from cloud gaming service Onlive, who wants Android gamers everywhere to know that their [...]
Is The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Receiving A 4G Upgrade? When I think about the “Top 3 things I would have improved on the Sony Xperia Play,” I can’t say 4G connectivity would have made the cut but then again, I guess any upgrade is a good one. Take this leaked image from a Verizon employee who is to begin training on the “Xperia Play [...]
Madden NFL 12 Optimized for Xperia Play While the Madden games may be good even on touchscreen phones, we imagine they’d be even better on a gamepad. Fortunately for Xperia Play owners, they’ll have a chance to see just how much better it could be as an updated version of the game now supports the phone’s very nice gamepad. Users of the [...]
Verizon’s Black Friday Deals Revealed So you’re wondering what Verizon’s got cooking for the biggest shopping day of the year? According to new evidence by Droid-Life there are some things you might want to take advantage. We’ve got deals on a few of Verizon’s big devices. The Motorola XOOM can be had for $200. While you might opt for something [...]
Sony Ericsson Announces Android 2.3.4 Rollout For All Countries – Adds Bonus Features Back in September, Sony Ericsson announced that they would being rolling out the Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread update to their devices, unfortunately for us here in the states (and other parts of the world), it was only for Nordic countries. Thankfully, today, SE announced that the 2.3.4 update has begun rolling out for the rest of [...]
Sony Currently In Discussions To Bring Playstation Suite To Non-Sony Devices Remember back when Sony said their Playstation Suite would arrive on other non-Sony Android devices sometime in the future? Well, speaking during AsiaD today in Hong Kong, Sony Computer Entertainment chairman Kaz Hirai (damn, that’s a cool name) gave us a little bit of an update on the progress with that. Apparently, the framework is [...]
Minecraft Now in the Android Market, Kristen Schaal Wants You to Build her a Palace As promised, Minecraft Pocket Edition has left its period of Xperia Play exclusivity and launched in the Android Market for all handsets capable of supporting the game. Though Sony Ericsson no longer holds exclusive dibs, they are still issuing a challenge to the Minecraft community to build comedian and Xperia Play spokeswoman Kristen Schaal an [...]
Sony Ericsson Supports The Android Modding Community – Helps Developers Build Custom ROMs Sony Ericsson is well aware of the Android modding community and unlike other OEM’s who try and squash it, they’re doing their part to help support it. Whether it’s creating a custom ROM or modifying the kernel, the Sony Ericsson Developer program is aimed at helping these devs cook up nice and stable custom ROMs [...]
Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Now Receiving Android 2.3.4 – Adds 720p HD Recording Good news for Sony Ericsson Xperia Play users! Can’t say I’ve ever seen this happen before but Xperia Play users are reportedly getting a little more than they expected with Sony Ericsson’s latest Android 2.3.4 update. Apparently, SE has done them a solid and upped their video recording capabilities of the Xplay from standard definition [...]
Sony Ericsson Xperia Play 4G Now Available from AT&T for Just $50 Heads up, mobile gamers – AT&T’s made available their version of the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play. This one has 4G radios, something other versions don’t have, and it also looks to have Sony Ericsson’s custom user interface on top of Gingerbread. Specs from other versions remain largely the same. It has a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, [...]
Playstation Suite SDK Coming In November to Playstation Certified Devices The Tokyo Game Show is taking place right now in Japan and Sony is dropping a world of hurt on the gaming industry thanks in part to their new PlayStation Vita handheld gaming device. To help capture the mobile market, Sony is introducing the Playstation Suite SDK for developers to be available this November. This [...]
Xperia Play Scores Another Exclusive with FIFA 12 The next installment of EA’s popular soccer franchise will be hitting Android early next year with the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play picking up exclusive rights to FIFA 12 for the first month of its release. It’s another big score for the gaming handset that continues to pile on quality games to its catalog. Word is [...]
Minecraft Pocket Edition Now Available as Xperia Play Exclusive Get your pick axe ready, Mojang’s highly anticipated Minecraft Pocket Edition has been officially released to the Android Market. As has been made clear almost since the announcement that the addictive world-building game would make its way to mobile handsets, you will need a Sony Ericsson Xperia Play to enjoy this one. Priced at $6.99, [...]
Mojang Puts Limited Edition Minecraft Xperia Play Up for Sale on eBay A limited edition Sony Ericsson Xperia Play featuring a Minecraft deco will be offered up as a prize at the Gamescon conference being held in Germany, but if you’re ready to spend a pretty penny you could claim your own thanks to Mojang. The development house behind Minecraft has one of the special edition phones [...]
Minecraft Teased for the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play The exact release date of Minecraft for Android is unknown at this point, but that’s not stopping Sony Ericsson from teasing the upcoming Xperia Play exclusive. And when we say tease, we mean the smallest of teases possible in the for of a nine-second video clip. One thing we do know is that the game [...]
Xperia Play’s Playstation One Emulator Reversed Engineered To Play Custom ISO’s [Video] Thanks to one of our awesome Phandroid readers, I stumbled upon a rather amazing breakthrough over on XDA. Apparently, a developer named yifanlu has been hard at work looking for a way to reverse engineer the native Playstation One emulator found on the Xperia Play to play converted custom ISO’s. Well, after a week of [...]
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