Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY (PSP) Phone

From Brazil Sony Ericsson has just introduced the Xperia phone. The phone, though running Android Gingerbread (2.3) does a very neat imitation of the Sony PSP gaming system. It even has a slide out gaming pad rather than a qwerty keyboard.

The device is a smartphone and does all of the things expected of such a phone. It is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and runs Android Gingerbread (2.3) so it has all of the funcationalty you'd expect of any Android smartphone.

But it also plays games.

At launch Sony expects to provide up to fifty (50) games for download and the phone will come with five (5) games pre-installed.

Xperia is not a new line from Sony Ericsson, but this version does away with all of the bad and adds near a near prefect Playstation match for game play. It even has the very familiar Playstation PSP (see third photo) gaming pad.

As mentioned above all of the typical functions of an Android powered smartphone are also apparent. This includes the Google Experience (gmail, maps, google music, etc.)

It has two cameras a rear-facing 5.1 Megapixel with LED flash that can also record video and a front facing 2 Megapixel camera primarily for video chat.

It has the typical assortment of sensors including accelerometer, GPS, ambient light, digital compass, and proximity.

Connectivy to cellular providers is almost unlimited as the phone supports UMTS, GSM, EDGE, HPSA+, GPRS, CDMA One, and CDMA2000 as well as 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi. It will even serve as a mobile hotspot though the number of devices supported is not known.

The phone comes packed with memory with a eight gigabyte card included, four hundred megabytes on-board and a mircoSD slot for an additional 32Gb if desired.

Because the phone is designed to be both a phone and a PSP gaming device the phone supports an eye-popping sixteen million colors on its FWVGA display.

For a more complete list of specifications see the table below.

Messaging
Messaging will include Android Cloud to Device messaging (C2DM), Conversations, Email (POP3, IMAP, SMTP), Google Mail, Instant messaging (SMS), Picture messaging (MMS), predictive text input, sound recorder.

Productivity
Organizer software will include alarm clock, calculator, calendar, document editors, document readers, e-Manual, flight mode, Google Calendar, Google Gallery 3D, infinite button, phone book, set-up wizard, and widget manager.

The phone will come packed with Xperia™ PLAY, Battery, Stereo portable handsfree headset, 8GB microSD™ memory card, charger, micro USB cable for charging, synchronisation and file transfer, and user documentation

I am not personally a big time game player, but I can most certainly see this phone filling a rather large niche market. There are a lot of people out there who grew up with the Sony Plastation and PSP players and this phone will most certainly appeal to them.

Plus, since this phone includes all of the applications that also make it a good business hand-held, the appeal of a "steam-release" business/gaming phone has broad appeal.

As of now no price has been given or even suggested by Sony Ericsson for this phone, but it is slated to launch in mid-March 2011.

The author was not compensated in any way, monetarily, with discounts, or freebies by any of the companies mentioned.

Though the author does make a small profit for the word count of this article none of that comes directly from the manufacturers mentioned. The author also stands to make a small profit from advertising attached to this article.

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