My Dream Gadget: Sony Ericsson Xperia Play

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play is a stunning mobile device that features all the capabilities of a sleek, stylish mobile phone that incorporates the ability to play HD Playstation games. The Xperia Play is the first PlayStation certified Android Smartphone and incorporates dedicated gaming keys, shoulder buttons, analogue touch-pads and support for multi-player gaming.

The Xperia Play quite honestly has a great feel to it, while other devices on the market have an awkward haphazard feel to them, the Xperia Play feels quite natural in certain areas. The front of the Play features a 4-inch, FWVGA (480 x 854 pixel) touch-screen, which tends to be slightly unresponsive when it comes to touch gestures; however, this seems to be a trend with most Sony Ericsson devices. The front of the device also features four physical keys for the standard Android functions of back, home, menu, and search. The screen itself is quite pleasant to view and has great visual appeal. The Xperia Play also features an Adreno 205 graphical processor, optimised for advanced gaming and includes an 8GB micro SD card, which can be used to store an array of media.

As far as the gaming pad is concerned, certain functions worked well, while others just didn’t. The four-way directional pad and the square, triangle, circle, and X buttons worked surprisingly well, which is what you would expect when it comes to a Playstation certified device. However, when it came to the analogue styled touch-pads it seemed to be a slight miss. I found them hard to use, especially while trying to control certain elements within games. While I was never a fan of the analogue stick featured on the PSP, I do believe that it would have worked much better on the Xperia Play. The shoulder keys on the device also worked quite well when it came to gaming. The positioning of the shoulder keys felt more natural and made the device feel a lot more comfortable and user-friendly.

While gaming on the go is indeed a must nowadays, the Xperia Play offers up some really great sound as well. While playing through various titles I found myself causing quite a bit of noise, as the device pushes out some impressive sound. Even while using the device with earphones, you can hear that the Play is pushing some great quality sound.

The Xperia Play also comes pre-loaded with up to seven games, and features some rather impressive graphics and a battery life to match! The device packs in a 1500mAh battery, which allows for around 8 hours of talk time, 17 days of standby and around 5 – 6 hours of gameplay time. This is really not too bad when it comes to a mobile device that doubles as a handheld gaming console.

The Hardware:

The system features a four-inch capacitive multi-touch screen running at 480 by 854 resolution, and you'll be able to play 3D games for an estimated five and a half hours. There will be both black and white hardware at launch. Here are the rest of the specifications:

Size: 119 x 62 x 16 mm

Weight: 175 grams

Phone memory: 400 MB

Memory card support: microSD™, up to 32 GB

Memory card included: 8GB microSD™

Operating system: Google™ Android 2.3 (Gingerbread)

Processor: 1 GHz Scorpion ARMv7

Conclusion:

The Sony Xperia Play is quite honestly a phenomenal device, you can make calls, text friends, catch a few videos and it doubles as a handheld console. While these are indeed major perks, especially when it comes to a mobile phone/handheld console. I did feel that the touch-pads were slightly inaccurate and the touch-screen slightly unresponsive. Apart from the very few downfalls the Xperia Play is the perfect companion for any gamer on the move.