Okay Geek Farm
Commentary on Engadget's hands-on with Xperia Play (PlayStation Phone)
Daniel Carey
As of late, Sony Ericsson’s mobile offerings haven’t exactly embraced the highest rung of the ladder, a feat that was continually achieved with several of their feature phones. In fact, we recently dove into the mobile company’s past, present, and subsequent future. But now, one of the devices we talked about — the PlayStation Phone — has finally managed to hop across the pond for a full early access, no strings attached, jubilant preview thanks to the folks of Engadget.
Richard Lai, — who most know as the illustrious Engadget editor renowned for his ability to sleuth out prototype handsets currently not available for the less than super, or in this case, those who don’t speak Mandarin — has gone to the trouble of procuring one aforesaid Sony Xperia Play prototype. And well, it’s awesome. Yes, it is most definitely awesome, but I guarantee, unlike most, I’m more excited over the prospect Sony Ericsson’s finally managed to concoct a smartphone that doesn’t disappoint as badly as Henry VIII’s inability to father a son.
Beginning with its hardware, Engadget has managed to confirm via their own device, that the Play has a 4-inch multitouch display clocking in at a resolution of 854 x 480 pixels. And much like the upcoming Xperia Arc, it makes use of Sony’s proprietary Bravia engine for improved video playback. Chip set wise they were unable to confirm or deny that the Xperia Play makes use of a Qualcomm MSM8655, noting however, that the CPU checks in at 122.88MHz and peaks at 1GHz. Besides the mystery processor, the Play is also coupled with an Adreno 205 GPU, and 512MB of RAM. In testing, this specific prototype model was receiving benchmarking scores of 1,689 on Quadrant, as well as 59fps on Neocore — which ever way you cut the mustard, those are some really impressive scores.
Software wise, the Xperia Play at its core is an Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) handset — which, is also one of the contributing factors behind its more than impressive scores above. While Android 2.3 is all well and good, the real plus, the pure gold dragée on the humble cherry, is most definitely Sony’s custom PlayStation software. Beseeched with the name ‘PlayStation Pocket’, it’s widely believed that this will be used for managing downloaded content such as games, and well, whatever else Sony wishes to throw into their custom Xperia Play store. Alas, currently PlayStation Pocket adds little value (at least for leaked devices) since the server that will be eventually paired with this application is not yet up and running.
Sony’s inhibition to launch Xperia Play services at this fleeting point in time doesn’t really surprise me all that much, especially when you take into consideration the mindset of handset manufacturers. It’s expected that several devices will slip past stringent security measures and make their way into the wild, and well, Sony does have to keep some trade secrets.
Now while the lack of Xperia Play content stores at this point in time isn’t all that disappointing, it does lend merit to several taxing questions: How are games going to be purchased and pushed to devices? How much are games to cost? How will gameplay experience carry across all of Sony’s mobile gaming devices? — These are just a handful of questions geeks and consumers alike have begun asking one another.
That about wraps-up our meta coverage of Engadget’s Xperia Play hands-on, however should you wish to see the full preview, tonnes of photos, more videos, and loads, loads more — you should really consider hitting up the source link below. Subsequently, you could just sit back and reminisce until we see more of this dino-bone-crunching device at Mobile World Congress come February 14 through till the 17th.
