Friday May 25, 2012 11:54 AM AEST

Atomic MPC > Reviews > Game > Console Games > Hands on with the Xperia Play mobile phone

Hands on with the Xperia Play mobile phone


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Verdict:
A bulky but intriguing mobile offering.

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First Look: Is the Xperia Play a PlayStation phone by any other name? We've been messing about with one to find out...

Smartphones - not traditionally Atomic fare, but when you think Atomic you do tend think bleeding edge tech. And really, smartphones fit into this category. They're the i7 990x to our boring Dell office machines, in terms of handsets. It's even better when they play games, like the Xperia play

Sony Ericsson’s Playstation pho… I mean Xperia play attempts to bolt on a complete set of hardware gaming controls to your regular Android smartphone experience. We've received a phone to put through its paces, and will give you a first look at it here before we knuckle down in the coming weeks and see what the thing is all about.

The phone itself is quite bulky, but that’s to be expected given the controls. Under the hood we find a 1Ghz preocessor, Adreno 205 graphics chip and 512mb of RAM. It sports a 5.1 megapixel camera with an LED flash on a 4” screen at 480x854. Relatively standard android fare. The phone ships with the latest Gingerbread iteration of android and while Sony’s custom UI is stamped across it, it isn’t as deeply ingrained as it was on previous SE smartphones.

The device very much resembles a PSPgo and a similar spring-loaded slider mechanism reveals the phones raison d’etre; the D-pad, familiar playstation buttons, two analogue touchpads and shoulder buttons. The buttons feel solid and are quite responsive and springy. The device in our early testing felt more comfortable than we expected it to, but we feel that longer play sessions could prove somewhat uncomfortable.

Sony is promising availability of over 50 titles at launch but most of these are current android games that have been tweaked to become controller friendly. Preloaded on the phone are 4 of these tweaked games (Fifa10, Bruce Lee, The Sims, and Star Batallion) and one Psone game (Crash Bandicoot). The phone will live and die based on the upcoming Playstation Suite games and whether the updated android games are enough to convince people they need dedicated gaming controls remains to be seen. This we intend to investigate in the coming weeks.

Enjoy the gallery and stay tuned to the site for further analysis of this intriguing device.

Product Info

Supplier:

Sony Ericsson

price check*

$6.65	Extreme Matt ScreenGuard - To Suit Sony Ericsson Xperia Play - Twin PackPar... TechBuy (NSW)

$9.90	Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY Ultra Clear Screen Protector - PDA Essentials- FR... Calculator King (VIC)

$13.33	Casemate Case-mate Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Barely There - Pnk (Rub) [CM01... MegaBuy Technology Superstore (QLD)

$23.50	Krusell ColorCover XPERIA Play (Made for Sony Ericsson)-Blu [K89585](C) MegaBuy Technology Superstore (QLD)

$29.95	Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY Leather Horizontal Pouch Case - PDA Essentials Calculator King (VIC)

$29.95	Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY Leather Book Case - PDA Essentials Calculator King (VIC)

See more results for Xperia Play on staticice.com.au

*Products and prices sourced from staticICE and are in no way associated with Atomic MPC

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9 Comments

Jeruselem Apr 4, 2011 3:43 PM	That thing has the same CPU/GPU combo as my HTC 7 Trophy (which actually has more RAM than the Xperia Play). I was expecting it to use the newer faster chips.
lemaster22 Apr 4, 2011 4:52 PM	my htc desire has 1gig of ram and the thing has been around for a while ill prob still get one of these instead though and just chuck on some emus for the older games
thesorehead Apr 4, 2011 5:02 PM	Look up the specs of the PSP and contrast them with the specs of the PSPhone. This is (or has the potential to be) IMHO yet another successful convergence of a specialised device (handheld console) into the all-encompassing "smartphone" umbrella. The single biggest advantage of a separate handheld console has always been the dedicated controls - now that has just disappeared.
edenist Apr 4, 2011 5:48 PM	Which desire has 1gb of ram? The base desire is 576mb, the Z has 512, the HD and S have 768mb...... Yes, the hardware is hardly pushing the limits of current mobile tech, but its more than adequate for current android games and ps1 level games, and it gives a reasonable benchmark for devs to use when making their games or porting old ones. I'm still not convinced that this warrants the very high price point it will have. And I am not sold enough to get this on a 24 month contract just yet.
edenist Apr 4, 2011 6:05 PM	Oh, also I too was also hardly impressed by a "1ghz snapdragon", as yeah such a chip has been in the desire for a few years now. However I noticed it has the adreno 205 [what is in the desire HD], which means it is the new 45nm revision, and apparently has much greater performance than the old 200 based cpu and gpu, plus hardware accelerated flash. So the hardware is not quite as antiquated as first impressions might suggest.
12345 Apr 4, 2011 7:10 PM	I like the possibilities of this device. Gaming on a touch only screen isn't great unless you're playing something like angry birds where putting your finger in the way won't distract the overall gameplay. Still the battery is going to be a limiting factor to this phone as I still carry a dedicated pmp/mp3 player alongside my phone because it'll just kill my battery faster. For what you get, a phone with good hardware specs and a gaming platform which seems to exceed gamecenter, it looks good.
Mademan Apr 4, 2011 7:34 PM	I too am keen to see how things pan out. As the recent re-release of Death Rally on Apple devices shows, physical gaming controls are awesome. It would also be great to see Sony push the boundaries of what we term "mobile gaming" even further, with first rate games from their stable. And as for the hardware, who actually thought they would release a cutting edge device? The more advanced it is, the more expensive it is, the longer it will have to stay in production to return profit. And that's not good for both a smart phone and a gaming device. Just look at the first iphone.
Jeruselem Apr 5, 2011 9:21 AM	I hope Sony don't go insane with DRM with their version of the Android OS, but I think they will.
[AP]War Apr 18, 2011 4:46 PM	I've got one of these too, I can't fault the responsiveness of the device and I haven't delved much into the Playstation suite. What I can say however that emulators and other little goodies are very promising with this. I don't know about you but I hate the on screen controls hence my reason for this purchase.

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Issue: 137 | June, 2012

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