Sony Xperia Play Review
Sony Ericsson’s long-awaited Xperia Play is here, and it has plenty of self-made zest to live up to, not least because of the phone’s focal point: the dedicated gaming platform. Usually when a phone launch is announced we see it within a few months, but the Xperia took almost a year to arrive. After such a long wait, can it live up to the hype and compete with currently available smartphones?
It’s still based on previous Xperias, with smooth, tapered edges and chrome accents.
As expected, due to the slide-out screen, the phone is quite thick and also quite heavy, but not that cumbersome, it still slips comfortably into a pocket. The phone itself is sturdy and well built, and the pad slider mechanism is well designed. It didn’t feel like it would break easily, but it’s doubtful it would survive more than one drop off the floor.
The main selling point of the Play is, of course, the dedicated pad. Not only is the action to reveal it smooth, the pad design itself is excellent. The four directional and four face buttons are almost flush with the pad and laid out in traditional PlayStation style, and the innovative “thumbsticks” are essentially circular trackpads that offer excellent control. This makes controlling games a more intuitive experience than tilting the controller to control a race car, for example. The games themselves are fine, but it is disappointing to learn that there is no compatibility with PSP software, but you can play PS1 titles if you have the files specially converted, although these are expensive.
Play comes bundled with Crash Bandicoot and a host of other updated mobile games, and Sony says another 60 titles will be available soon after the phones launch.
The screen is a 4-inch beauty, with a good resolution of 480×584 pixels which makes images bright and sharp, with a responsive touch screen and a joy to use. As a smartphone, the Play works well, it has the latest Android OS, but it lacks a bit with just a single core processor – we’re already looking at gaming phones with dual cores on the inside. This makes it fine as a smartphone, but you don’t want to compromise on having a good gaming phone or a good Android phone, you want both. Unfortunately the Xperia falls short here, but it’s already dropping in price on contract and pay-as-you-go, and if it’s a gaming phone you want, you can’t do better than this.
No mobile phone is complete without a selection of wholesale mobile phone accessories or two to complete or simply accentuate the look of your mobile phone or simply to protect it from the hazards of everyday use and the possible even unavoidable damage that can occur to a phone even when placed in your pants pocket.