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BARCELONA — Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Play is the phone we have wanted ever since Sony’s PSP was invented. It is, in any meaningful way, the first official PSP phone, and we got to play with it at the Mobile World Congress. How does it do?
Pretty well. With the gamepad tucked out of the way, the Play is a fairly humdrum Android phone, running 2.3 Gingerbread on a Snapdragon processor and equipped with a 5MP camera. As a phone, it is perfectly fine.
But slide that pad out and things get fun, fast. You get a D-Pad, plus the four familiar PlayStation “shape” buttons, start and select and a home button that mimics the regular one up by the screen. There are also two touch-pads, and a pair of shoulder buttons around back, behind the screen.To drive the graphics, the Play has its own GPU, the 1GHz Adreno 205. This allows the phone to push the polygons around and display them at 60fps. Here you can see it in action, along with me getting my ass kicked in the pre-installed Bruce Lee game:
In the hand, you forget immediately that it is a phone. The buttons are fine, although if you were playing a Streetfighter-style game, those d-pad rolling special moves would be a little tricky. The shoulder-buttons are easy to reach, even for my big hands, and the screen hinge is solid enough that things don’t flop around whilst playing.
Games will come from the Android Market Place, and there will be a separate PlayStation Store for buying old PS1 games, which will run on the Play.
It’s impressive, but I’m worried that it will be too expensive to be successful. Amazon.de lists it at €650, which converts to, $880. That’s a lot of cash, and even Sony Ericsson’s promise of 50 launch titles might not be enough to distract you. The launch date has yet to be announced, but could be as early as March.
See Also:
- Rumor: Sony Ericsson Plans Android 3 PlayStation Phone
- Leaked Photo: Is This the Sony Ericsson PlayStation Phone …
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