Perhaps one of the worst-kept secrets in the cell phone industry since Gizmodo exposed the iPhone 4 last year, Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Play has been widely documented in the tech press, particularly with a lengthy exposé or two on Engadget -- despite no official word from the hardware makers themselves. But that all changed Superbowl Sunday, with a bizarre ad featuring Google’s Android mascot having thumbs surgically attached in a dark Chinese warehouse, claiming “Android is ready to play.”
While we’re not sure that this Frankenstein-style approach is the best way to promote PlayStation’s arrival on a phone, there’s no denying that gamers will be salivating as they wait for its arrival. But does Apple have anything to fear from Sony’s PlayStation on a phone?
Sony Ericsson has included a slider with the handset, but instead of the usual hardware keyboard we’ve all seen before, the Xperia Play features a PlayStation DualShock-style gamepad in its place, complete with a pair of “shoulder flippers” on the back side to emulate as much of the PlayStation experience as possible.
In addition to the familiar gamepad buttons, the Xperia Play also includes a pair of touchpads in the center. Engadget surmises that these will be “reserved for games that are made specifically for the Xperia Play.” (Engadget showed off a prototype of the hardware on their web show earlier this month.)
Xperia Play has widely been referred to as a “PlayStation Phone,” which isn’t completely accurate, since the device runs Android instead of Sony’s proprietary OS used for the PSP and PS3. However, the company touts that the device is “PlayStation Certified,” which apparently means that enough of the PS experience is available to justify luring in fans of the platform in the first place. Engadget describes the device as being “marketed under the Xperia brand, with a hint of PlayStation here and there,” although it remains to be seen exactly what that means.
On the hardware front, the device is packing a four-inch multitouch 854x480 LCD display, same as the older Xperia X10 which is the foundation of the Xperia Play, but with improvements to the screen’s color performance and viewing angles (which include richer black levels). According to Engadget, the prototype they got their hands on may be running a Qualcomm MSM8655 chipset, but Android reports a “single-core processor inside that clocks from 122.88MHz to 1GHz,” coupled with an Adreneo 205 GPU and 512MB of RAM. Together with the Gingerbread 2.3 OS (see below), the Xperia Play appears to feature some impressive speeds, including “a Bravia engine for improved video playback.”
In addition to the familiar PS gamepad slider, the Xperia Play also includes Android soft keys for back, menu, home and search as well as a power button in the top right corner and a volume rocker sandwiched between the gamepad triggers on the right side of the unit. The device contains a removable 1500mAh battery, as well as slots for both a SIM card (the prototype is packing an HSDPA radio) and microSD card. A rear-facing five-megapixel camera with LED flash is also on deck, although the prototype was only capable of 800x400 video recording rather than 720p, which means that Sony Ericsson is likely still working on their own camera software to take full advantage of the hardware.
Xperia Play runs Gingerbread 2.3, so at its core it’s just another foot soldier in the Android arsenal -- but with a decidedly game-oriented slant. Engadget noted that their prototype was “very snappy and fairly stable for the majority of the time,” complete with widgets for multimedia apps, including a music player and gallery browser.
The Xperia Play is yet another handset with tweaks to the basic Android interface, rather than a pure experience such as the most recent Nexus S. Engadget’s prototype included a preloaded PlayStation Pocket app, which the site claims is a “simple managing tool for downloaded games” -- and presumably there will be a separate Sony Ericsson-managed app store to download such games.
In lieu of having any real games to play, Engadget’s Richard Lai installed emulators for both the original PlayStation as well as the GameBoy Advance and was able to map the gamepad controls for both, with surprisingly decent gameplay on classic titles such as Super Mario Bros. 4 and Ridge Racer Revolution.
On the video front, 720p H.264 video was no problem, provided the file’s AVC profile is no higher than level 3.1, although AVI and MKV files don’t appear to be natively supported in the video player as yet.
It remains to be seen how much of the PlayStation software experience will be available on the Xperia Play, although Engadget favorably compared gameplay on the handset with the PSP Go in terms of hardware build. Given that the handset is Sony’s opening salvo in their new handset war with Apple, we expect to see a lot of games forthcoming for the device -- although it will be interesting to see how much it potentially further fragments Android, since developers will likely have to work in support for the gamepad as well as the touchscreen on other Android devices.
Game developers have flocked to the iOS platform, while Android continues to languish to a large degree in this category. Part of the problem is that iOS device owners appear more willing to pay for games (not to mention most every other kind of app), whereas Android users frequently get a bad rap for being unwilling to support anything but the free, ad-supported model (no surprise, given that Google has made their fortune the same way and have tried to carry that success onto Android).
The reality is, the Xperia Play’s key advantage over the iPhone is a hardware gamepad. For hardcore gamers, that might be enough to justify defecting from iOS to Android, assuming Sony Ericsson will back them up with a plentiful selection of games to take advantage of the slider. However, we have a feeling that it may take longer for Sony Ericsson to gain a foothold than they expect -- which could be a problem, since Apple is all but certain to release an iPhone 5 in early summer.
Thanks to Sony Ericsson’s Facebook page, we now know that an official announcement is right around the corner -- in fact, just a week apart from the Super Bowl commercial teaser, on February 13 at 18:00 GMT (better known as 6pm to you). According to Engadget, the Xperia Play will be one of the first announcements at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, which kicks off on February 14 and runs through February 17.
As far as when the device will be in stores, U.K. carriers including O2, Vodafone, Orange and T-Mobile have all thrown their hats into the ring for a presumed April launch, and the device is already featured on Sony Ericsson’s Canadian site with Rogers pegged as the exclusive provider up north. What about America the Beautiful? That’s anyone’s guess for now -- but we imagine some details will be forthcoming this weekend.
Despite that creepy initial commercial, Sony Ericsson has a faithful army of 60 million PlayStation Portable users who will probably clamor to get their hands on Xperia Play, provided that the initial peek at the device lives up to the hype. It’s simply too early to tell if this will be the gaming revolution that the Android platform has been waiting for, or just another device to threaten the iPhone’s dominance and fall by the wayside as quickly as it arrived on the scene.
In the meantime, keep one eye open when you go to sleep at night -- those Android thumb-snatchers might just come knocking on your door next.
Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter
(Some images courtesy of Engadget)
