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Sony Ericsson have produced a number of handsets over time, the most recent models focusing on Android as a software platform. We all know the Playstation, Sony's gaming console, which is now on its third iteration. Why am I mentioning the Playstation, well; Sony Ericsson have now released the Xperia Play, dubbed the Playstation phone.
How does the Xperia Play shape up? Read on to find out!!
Many thanks to Brando, Sony Ericsson's UK PR company for supplying the review unit on a long-term loan.
What's in the box?
Xperia Play Charge Adapter Sync/Charge Cable In-Ear HeadsetThe Specifications
General
2G Network: GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
3G Network: HSDPA 900 / 2100
HSDPA 850 / 1900 / 2100 / 800
Size
Dimensions: 119 x 62 x 16 mm
Weight: 175 g
Display
Type: LED-backlit LCD, capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
Size: 480 x 854 pixels, 4.0 inches (~245 ppi pixel density)
- Touch sensitive gaming controls
- PSP like gaming buttons
- Accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate
- Proximity sensor for auto turn-off
- Multi-touch input method
- Timescape UI
Sound
Alert types: Vibration, MP3 ringtones
Loudspeaker: Yes, with stereo speakers
3.5mm jack: Yes
Memory
Phonebook: Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall
Call records: Practically unlimited
Internal: 400 MB, 512 MB RAM
Card slot: microSD, up to 32GB, 8GB included
Data
GPRS: Yes
EDGE: Yes
3G: HSDPA, HSUPA
WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot
Bluetooth: Yes, v2.1 with A2DP
Infrared port: No
USB: Yes, microUSB v2.0
Camera
Primary: 5 MP, 2592х1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash, check quality
Features: Geo-tagging, image stabilization
Video: Yes, WVGA
Secondary: Yes
Features
OS: Android OS, v2.3 (Gingerbread)
CPU: 1GHz Scorpion processor, Adreno 205 GPU, Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon
Messaging: SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email, IM
Browser: WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML
Radio: No
Games: Yes + downloadable, motion & gesture gaming
Colors: Black, White, Stealth Blue (for Play 4G)
GPS: Yes, with A-GPS support
Java: Yes, via Java MIDP emulator
- Dedicated game store
- SNS integration
- Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
- Digital compass
- MP4/H.263/H.264/WMV player
- MP3/eAAC+/WMA/WAV player
- Google Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Calendar, Google Talk
- Track ID
- Organizer
- Document viewer/editor
- Flash Lite support
- Voice memo/dial/commands
- Predictive text input
Battery
Type: Standard battery, Li-Ion 1500 mAh
Stand-by: Up to 425 h (2G) / Up to 413 h (3G)
Talk time: Up to 8 h 25 min (2G) / Up to 6 h 25 min (3G)
Music play: Up to 31 h
The Aesthetics
In my opinion, the play is a very nice looking device. The design is very much of the black slab variety, clad in shiny black with metallic silver sides, it is pleasing to the eye. From a front view the device does look incredibly business-like in appearance, but as you may guess, there is more to this little beast than meets the eye.
Top
Looking at the top of the device, we are presented with only the power button to the right hand side.
Bottom
The bottom is completely spartan, there's nothing but a slot that you slip a fingernail into to remove the back of the device to insert your SIM & SD cards.
Left
Along the left hand edge of the play is the 3.5mm audio jack, used to connect a wired headset or other audio cable. This is followed up by the Micro-USB port, which as with most smartphones is used to both synchronise & charge the device.
Right
Moving to the right hand-side yields more interesting results on the Xperia Play. Here we find to large controller buttons marked L & R, left & right respectively. Those of you that have used either a playstation or an XBOX will recognise these as game control buttons. Neatly tucked in between the controller buttons is the volume up/down rocker switch.
Back
Moving from top to bottom on the back of the device, we find a small hole, the function of which I'm not sure at the moment. This is closely followed by an LED flash for the camera and then the camera lens itself. The only other features on the back are the product name range 'Xperia' and the Sony-Ericsson logo.
Front
Again, moving from top to bottom on the front of the device, we find a front facing camera. This is a great bonus as the Xperia Play is one of the handsets supported by Skype for Android at the current time. Moving down we have the Sony Ericsson company name followed by the rather gorgeous 4 inch screen. Below the screen we have something that I have praised before in other reviews, and that is physical buttons!! I do like a good physical button to press. As the device is Android, all the usual suspects are present; Back, Home, Menu & Search.
The Construction
The Xperia Play is heavier in the hand than say the Desire S, but you get used to this after handling it for a while. The device feels sturdy and well built. No squeaking or creaking in my handling tests.
As this is dubbed the Playstation Phone, the device should be capable of taking a great deal of repetitive handling. The slide mechanism was good and solid with a very reassuring action during the course of my review. There was no play at all whilst sliding out the control pad. I have had my grubby paws on the Play for around a month now, and it seems that Sony Ericsson have done an excellent job on the construction as it has easily survived living in my pocket for all that time. The slide is still as solid as when I received the device.
The Screen
As mentioned earlier, the screen is lovely, the picture doesn't really do it justice. The screen is one of the hardest things to convey in any device review. Larger than the Desire S and filling out the device with a very minimalist bezel to interfere with it, at 4 inches, it is both clear and bright. Response to the touch is good, as you would expect with a capacitive display. The screen is one of the best features of the Play.
The Keyboard
The on-screen keyboard itself is visually reminiscent of the iPhone keyboard, but alas, not the usability. The main issue I had was that I couldn't seem to get used to it, with the result being that I made plenty of mistakes. I also couldn't get the haptic feedback to work, which I'm fairly sure didn't help my accuracy. With that being said, it did grow on me a little, but not that much. Whilst my accuracy did improve with use, I couldn't really get to grips with it. I persevered with the keyboard, but in the end moved over to Swiftkey X, my Android keyboard of choice!!
The Camera
(click on images to enlarge)
The camera application perplexed me. I could find no way to to zoom on any pictures I took. I couldn't find any reference to zoom functions on the internet at all, so settled for zoom not being available. There is no physical camera button, I was surprised by how much I missed a physical button to press. Taking a picture on the play requires a tap of the on-screen button, at which point the Play will focus and take the snap.
Connectivity
The Xperia Play comes equipped with all the usual suspects in terms of radio, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth & HSDPA on the data front. As mentioned in previous reviews, I don't get much of a 3G signal at home on my personal carrier of choice, O2, but that can equally said for Orange, Vodafone & T-Mobile as well. The Play excelled while I was on holiday in Spain & France, I got a good HSDPA signal and the mobile coverage in the areas I stayed was fantastic, which isn't bad considering the first week was spent half-way up a mountain on Olerdola, near Barcelona and the second in a remote traditional farmhouse converted into holiday apartments between Toulouse & Carcassone. GSM signal acquisition is excellent, the Play is the first phone that I have actually been able to use downstairs in my house and hold on to a call.
In fact, this portion of the review is being written in Evernote on my iPad using the Xperia Play's mobile hotspot functionality to provide access to my notes whilst travelling along a Spanish motorway en-route to France. Now that's cool & not to mention a good use of time; at this point I guess I should mention that I wasn't driving.
The Bluetooth seems pretty weak. I had issues with it connecting to my Bluetooth Stereo Speaker. This manifested itself as interrupted audio on playback, and the phone was with 2 feet of the speaker. I deleted the pairing, soft-reset the Play & tried again, definitely inconsistent results with Bluetooth that I haven't experienced on other phones.
The Battery
Day 1.
The Xperia Play was taken off charge at 07:40. My day followed the following pattern:
5 text messages send and 5 text messages received. 1 hour of podcast playback on the train into London. Updating this note in Evernote, which was downloaded & installed over mobile data. Multiple Facebook updates. Foursquare check-ins. Tweetdeck use. Unusually, no calls at all! 
The rest of the day came and went; at 22:15 the battery was showing 39% as I made my way back on the train to my resting place for the night.
More podcast playingAt 23:00 I checked the battery level again, which registered 36% after about 15mins of listening to podcasts. 45 minutes later the battery level was down to 30%. At 00:20, I was down to 26% and finally it was bedtime.
Day 2.
I realised at the start of day 2 that the phone had been delivered set to GSM only. So, in the interest of equality, I turned on 3G.
The Xperia Play was taken of charge at 09:45. My day followed the following pattern:
6 texts sent & received. 3 telephone calls, averaging around 10 mins each. Multiple Facebook updates. Multiple Foursquare check-ins. Tweetdeck use. Google+ Updates 2.5 hours of podcast playing in the car, without the phone being connected to power. 1 hours use of Wi-Fi in the morning andWhen I arrived home at 21:00, the battery level was down to 18%
A few more textsAt 23:12, the battery was down to 16%.
All in all, I found the battery life to be very reasonable on the Xperia Play. It always lasted at least the day, which is good news when relying on a phone.
The UI
Sony Ericsson have once again layered their own UI on top of Android. Known as UXP, the UI differs from that on the X10 Mini Pro in that it does not have the four corners functionality for apps, in fact, UXP is quite minimal in its approach. It gives you the standard type home screen to load up your widgets, and with a launcher bar set at the bottom of the screen for your frequently used apps. There don't appear to be any configuration options for the launcher dock, so you are limited to 4 icons.
UXP has a nifty feature to allow the selection of your target home screen. Simply place two fingers on the screen & pinch them together, and this pops up a single screen of widgets from all your home screens bubbling around. Simply tap the widget you want and you are transported to the screen that hosts it. I found that this feature worked well allowing me to jump between screens rather than swiping based on widgets alone.
The Apps
As with most Android devices, the Play comes with a set of applications pre-installed. Many of the apps are common across Android devices, so in this part I'm going to focus on those not usually found elsewhere...
WhatsApp is a messaging application that I have seen in the past. Unusually, it ties itself to your phone number rather than an email address. I haven't used it extensively and for some reason I couldn't get past the screen for entering my name to enable the app to interact with those using the iPhone version....
Sync
Is a service provided by Sony Ericcson. I'll admit to not setting up an account. So I can't really comment on the application or its operation with the Sony Ericsson service.
YouTube
Even though Android supports Flash, I always find the YouTube application yields better results on videos, so I tend to stick to it when viewing any kind of Youtube media.
Playstation Pocket
I had to do a little digging on Playstation Pocket; the app itself didn't really tell me what it is about. Playstation Pocket is a front-end for acquiring Playstation 1 games for your device. Clicking the search icon brought up a list of games, clicking on one of those games took me directly to the Android Market in the Arcade & Action category. Most of the games seem to be priced at £3.99. As I was only reviewing the device, I decided not to purchase!!
News & Weather
News & Weather is an application that does exactly what it says on the tin by providing you with News & Weather. The app is laid out into a weather tab and for news tabs, Top Stories, UK, Sport & Entertainment. It was good to see the application pre-configured for the UK market. In settings there are further headins of World, Business, Sci/Tech & Health. Quite a good range. Tapping on any of the news item links jumped you out to the news website that provided the story. The news data seems to be harvested from a number of places, I couldn't tell what was being used as a stream source.
The weather location was picked automatically for me, I must have been nearer to Marham at the time, as the location now shows King's Lynn when I check the app. In the settings; you have the choice of both automatic location discovery and choosing your location manually.
Postcard
Postcard is an application that allows you to take any of your photos that are locally on the device and send it as a physical postcard to any address in the world. I decided to give it a try.. I picked a photo and went through the process to get a view of what the cost would be. At £1.49 I t decided it was cheap enough to try out. I must admit it was quick and painless to do. The proof will be in the postcard turning up at my house! We shall see, I ordered the postcard on the 29th August!!
It duly turned up a couple of days later, and the quality was extremely good!!OfficeSuite
The Xperia Play comes with limited productivity tools pre-installed. Office suite enables one to open Microsoft Work, Excel & Powerpoint and not to mention PDF files on the device, but open and view them is all it can do. You do not have the ability to edit any documents. Office suite rendered the documents I loaded on to the SD card very well, so definitely no issues with viewing office documents on the go. You can always opt to install another office compatible application set from the Android Market, my particular favourite is Documents to Go from DataViz.
Xperia Play
Xperia Play is the application loaded when you slide out the Play's game controller. It gives you access to both currently installed and further games to buy, essentially a central hub for your gameplay. You can of course load games individually from the app launcher screens. Tapping the More Games tab takes you to titles that are available & tapping any of the games can take you to the Android Market or other stores for games purchases. One of the games I tapped took me to Gameloft's store. I didn't actually purchase so cannot comment on the purchase process itself. Some games are direct purchase, whereas some games such as Dead Space allow you to download a free trial, which in my mind is a good thing.
Voice Search
Well, it's voice search. It works as well for me as any other Voice Search on any other device does. By that I mean not very well!
Media Server
Media Server does exactly what it says on the tin, it turns your Xperia Play into a mini Media Server. I duly turned on Media Server and went to the network area in Windows Explorer, sure enough, after a few seconds, R800i (Must be Sony Ericsson's internal name for the Play) appeared in the network connected Media Devices section... Double clicking on the icon loaded Windows Media Player and the R800i name appeared in the library list. Clicking on the device name then allowed me to view media files stored on the device. I found that I couldn't play them at first. But I soon discovered that there was a notification in the Android Notification pane asking me to approve my Laptop's access to the Media stored on the Play through the Media Server. Once that was done, I could play Music and view my pictures to my heart's content. One of the great things about Media Server is that I could also use the Media Extender capabilities of my XBOX to view the content on the device. I must admit, I was more than well impressed with this functionality, especially as the Play was connected to my network over Wi-Fi.
The quality of audio & video playback was very good. No stuttering or stopping at all.
Playstation Pocket
Similar to the Xperia Play application. Playstation Pocket offers up a selection of Playstation classics for your phone. Crash Bandicoot comes pre-installed and the application offers you a selection of other Playstation original games to purchase. Clicking on the links took me to the Android market. Once again, the fact that I wasn't keeping the device was a deciding factor in my not purchasing any titles, sorry readers!!
BBC iPlayer
I guess everyone knows about the BBC iPlayer. The Play comes with the Android version of the application installed. The app itself on Android seems a little less fluid than the iOS version, but the quality of playback on the Xperia Play's excellent screen is good. As you can see, I watched an episode of My Family.
Liveware Manager
Liveware Manager gives the ability to launch applications when certain types of accessory connect to the device. You can set an application to launch on the connection of a headset, headphones or the device charger. You can also set an application to launch connection of accessories via Bluetooth. I duly selected my favourite podcast application, Doggcatcher, to load on the connection of the Xperia Plays headset. Once done, I plugged the headset in and boom, Doggcatcher loaded without a hitch.
Timescape
The last time I used Timescape was on the Xperia X10 Mini Pro, at that point in time I suggested that the interface may be a little cluttered if you enabled all services. This appears to have been addressed on the Xperia Play. The Timescape app now allows you to cycle through your feeds individually, allowing you to take in a feed at a time. If you still want everything in one list, you can select that option as well. A timescape widget is included on the default home screen, although I could only see that it used the complete view, I couldn't find any way to select an individual feed. Tell a lie, I just discovered that the Widget uses the setting in the Timescape app, so if you select an individual feed there, the Widget will only show that feed on the homescreen.
I couldn't find any way to delete text messages via Timescape. To me, this is a bit of an omission, as it would have been very handy to be able to do that.
Software Update
Just I got near to the end of completing the text for my review, the Xperia Play notified me that there was an update available and ready for download. The update was available Over The Air, so I duly set it going and sat back to watch the TV. The update took about 20mins end to end. The download completed and the Play asked me if I wanted to install, I clicked on OK and the phone then rebooted. A status screen displayed the progress of the update, and when it completed the phone reboot again. The great thing about the update was that the current configuration and my installed applications all remained intact.
The update actually caused me more work, I noticed some UI changes and additional applications that appeared, I'll run through them now:
First thing to note was that a few application icons changed, along with the application names. The postcard application name changes to 'Touchnote', underneath, the application is exactly the same as it was previously.
Timescape Widget
The Timescape Widget that has graced my Homescreen on the Play has gotten a facelift. The rather clunky 'update network status' bar across the top has gone, being replaced by a collection of 3 interesting icons. The heart-monitoresque 1st icon takes you to the services menu, allowing you to configure Facebook, Twitter or search for Timescape extensions. On delving into the extensions, you are taken to the Android Market, where I discovered the extensions are provided by third-party developers as well as Sony Ericsson themselves. Notable extensions were Foursquare & LinkedIn, which I duly tried to install. Unfortunately I kept getting a shared-library error, something I couldn't resolve.
Bluetooth
As mentioned earlier in the review, I had issues with the Bluetooth audio connection to my external Bluetooth speaker. Since installing the update I'm pleased to report that those issues have completely disappeared. Now when I use the speaker, therre are no gaps or breaks in playback, which definitely reduces the annoyance factor when listening to a podcast whilst in the shower!! (What, you mean that not everybody does that?).
New Apps
The Xperia Play update installed some new apps! Read on for details;
Data Monitor
There isn't really much to say on this one. It is an application that monitors your data usage on the device. Good news that one is included by default, but there are plenty in the Android Market.
Friends & Music
This application interfaces with Facebook and lists out those Music & Videos shared by your Friends. Clicking on any of the entries shows you comments & likes, as well as letting you play the media itself. You can also post your comments directly from the app itself, without having to go to the Facebook application.
Neoreader
Neoreader is a barcode scanning application. Simply point the Play's camera at the barcode of your choice and the application allows you to search the internet based on the information decoded. I tried it out and it does work pretty well. Unfortunately I couldn't get a screenshot of the camera scan in action, as each time I tried to take one, the camera part just remained blank.
Music Unlimited
Initially a web-link, which opens a web page giving you information about the service itself and the option to download the Android application. You do need a subscription and the web page mentions both a basic & premium version via Qriocity. Both Qriocity & Playstation Network come under the Sony Online banner. A basic 30 day subscription costs £3.99. You can sign up for a free trial of the Premium service for 30 days. If you don't upgrade to a basic or premium subscription, you only get to listen to 30 seconds of any track that you may select.
Music can be playback through your account at http://music.qriocity.com or on the Android application on your device. The Android app supports streaming over both Wi-Fi & 3G. Unfortunately, unless you subscribe to a plan, you can't actually use the Android application!!
Xperia Hot Shots
Another link to an application in the Android Market. Installing the application was a straight forward as ever. The application itself follows selected tennis stars, strangely all women. You can view twitter posts, videos and game statistics for each player, as well as news, fans & videos. Fans mainly shows how many likes each player has on Facebook. I must admit, this application was not for me!
Get Games
Another type of gamestore application. Pretty similar to the Playstation Pocket & Xperia play applications. Selecting any of the games takes you to a website allowing the purchase and download of them. One good thing is that it does warn you about download costs should you decide to download games over the mobile data connection.
Update Center
The update center application just does exactly as its name suggests. It checks for phone software updates and I will assume that it offers you the options to install said update if there are any. I can't comment any further as the application appeared as part of the update, therefore I've not had a chance to test it as the phone software is now up to date.
The Gaming
As you may have guessed, the Xperia Play is sold as a gaming machine. How does it live up to that expectation..? For me, it did pretty well. But it should be noted that I could be classed as fair-weather as opposed to a hardcore gamer. My game of choice on the Xperia Play was Star Battalion, I do like the space shoot-em up type games, and Star Battalion offered a goodly playtime.
Gameplay on the Xperia Play is very good. The graphics are excellent & clear, easily equaling that of other platforms, although I must admit that I have never played a game on the iPhone 4's retina display, so cannot really make comment on a comparison there. In fact I was totally taken by how smoothly the games played. In the device I had I saw no lag at all whilst playing any of the games that were pre-installed on it.
On my review device, the following games were pre-installed:
Bruce Lee Dragon Warrior
FIFA 10
Star Battalion
The Sims 3
Crash Bandicoot
Crash Bandicoot is one of the games that was originally for the Playstation itself, and plays in the Playstation Emulator that is present on the Xperia Play, as can be seen below.
I also downloaded the trial for Deadspace, which I must say, was a thoroughly enjoyable platform based game.
All the games played out with the same fluidity, the keypad reacted well during gameplay, although I must confess to be absolutely hopeless on FIFA 10. I never could play those football games!! Well, in fact I was pretty hopeless at Bruce Lee Dragon Warrier and the Sims 3. I had a reasonable level of success on Crash Bandicoot and Star Battalion!
As a games machine, I was very impressed with the Play, as I mentioned, I'm not a hardcore gamer, but day to day when I had some time to kill, the Play proved most useful in filling those slots. The 'shoulder' buttons were slightly difficult to access, mainly because when open, the screen is still flush against the joypad, had there been a little elevation a la original Touch Pro II design, I think the access to the buttons would have been a lot easier.
Pro's & Con's
Pro's
Excellent screen Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread Battery lifeCon's
Bulky (But you would know what you are buying with this phone!!) Default On-Screen keyboardConclusion
Even though I'm not a fervent or hard-core gamer, I was very very impressed by the Xperia Play. Not just for the games but also in using it as my day-to-day device. Thanks to Brando, I had the Xperia Play on what I would call a long-term test. I have used the Play as my main personal phone for about a month now. It has been keeping me company day in day out, and in that role the Play has performed well and I have been happy to carry it with me.
The big selling point for me is the big screen, which on the Play is excellent. It's very clear, providing a great media playback & web-browsing experience. The UI is not intrusive and I didn't feel the need to load a replace launcher. In fact, I quite like UXP on the Play, it worked well for me.
I won't make any bones about it, the device is quite thick due to the inclusion of the Playstation controller keypad, the good thing was that I soon got used to the size and it was quite comfortable to just slip the Play in a pocket. I wouldn't say I played games on it all the time, but it was definitely handy in rare spare moments.
The Play performed flawlessly as a phone, the phone audio was nice and clear though the ear-piece, headphones & my in Car Bluetooth kit. The one thing I couldn't really get on with was the default on-screen keyboard, I tried to like it and I did persevere, but in the end I had to change it for a better keyboard. Once I had done that my keyboard experience improved remarkably.
Would I buy an Xperia Play, probably not, but only for the reason that I've already mentioned, I'm not an avid gamer, but it does make the Xperia Arc S appear as a very probable Android candidate for me!!
