Sony Ericsson got its game on today at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona with the announcement of its Xperia Play gaming phone. It has a long-awaited and much discussed gaming phone will hold the company back into importance for a smartphone market that's been dominated by HTC, Motorola, and Apple phones.
It is powered by Android 2.3 (Gingerbread. If you're used to on-screen gaming controls the play buttons as I am, the physical gaming controllers on the Xperia Play may take some getting used to, but it's a much better experience.
The phone packs a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, and the display is a 4-inch Bravia (480 by 854 pixels FWVGA) touchscreen with an Adreno GPU graphics processor inside. The combined effect of these things is actually quite impressive. The user interface on the phone has the familiar Android feel, but Sony Ericsson has built some of the function areas, like the music player.
Xperia Play owners will get their games from a Playstation store. Games from several key titles will be available, such as EA's Need for Speed, Sims 3, and a world-first multiplayer version of FIFA 10 for mobile.
The Xperia Play is a CDMA phone so while Verizon's network is reliable, it is a 3G network and so is not likely to make the upload speed and low network latency that's favorable on playing online games.
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