Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY Android Phone (Verizon Wireless)

Yes, both worlds but not 'the best of' May 31, 2011

Reviewer:  A. Dent "Aragorn"  (Minas Anor, GD) -

I am not going to spend a lot of time listing 'specs' because Amazon's page has them all, well organized and in detail. Instead, I will discuss our experience with the PLAY from a gamer's point of view because I can't see anyone but a gamer considering this.

BRIEF ASSESSMENT

The Xperia PLAY attempts to combine an advanced Android phone with a portable gaming platform resembling the PSP or rather the PSP Go hoping that the integrated whole will turn into something more than the sum of its parts but, in my view, what we get is a good, solid gadget that fails to come close to 'best in class' in either the smart phone or the portable gaming platform categories. There are many smart phones that outperform it (better, faster, dual-core CPUs) and outfeature (4G, HDMI, DLNA support) the Xperia PLAY and, while it superficially resembles the PSP Go, the PLAY only accepts games specifically converted to work with it, meaning that you'll have to buy them again and, at least at the time I am writing this review, it can't access Sony's PSN store. While you can play Android games, you will need to find 'PLAY optimized' titles if you are to take advantage of the PSP-like game pad.

THE GOOD

Again, neither the phone component or the PSP-like transformation are bad, they are quite good and here is what I liked about them:

- Android 2.3. It's not the latest in Android but I was assured that upgrades are forthcoming.
- Decent battery life. Sure, you can't play or stay on the phone forever but unless all you do is play and stay on the phone all day one charge per day should be sufficient.
- Good 'game pad' integration. You go into 'game mode' the moment you pull out the pad.
- Bluetooth, GPS, Wi-Fi available and working well. Also a microUSB port.
- Very nice stereo speakers. They work well with the games and, as a bonus, you get better than decent sound in 'speaker phone' mode.
- A couple of very nice preloaded apps: Kindle, Google Maps, YouTube, Skype Mobile,Twitter and Facebook integration.
- 8GB microSD card included but you can replace it with a larger one, of course.
- PSP Go like controls including some innovative implementation of the 2 analog joysticks as touch-pads.
- Lots of preloaded games (I will list them at the bottom of this review)

THE BAD

- Single-core CPU makes it a relatively slow performer as a smart phone.
- Lack of HDMI port and DLNA support makes it a poor multimedia gadget.
- The display is not that bright, probably to conserve battery life.
- The cameras are okay but barely so and the flash is not that bright.
- The touchpads meant to replace the analog joysticks are not always responsive.
- As a phone, it's a little on the bulky side.
- Not all Android games can be played in the game mode. It's confusing and it can be frustrating.
- Can't play PSP or PSOne games unless adapted, meaning that you need to buy them again.

RATING

I am going to give the PLAY 3 stars which means "it's Okay". It's an interesting concept and it works to some degree but someone who wants an Android phone and a serious portable gaming platform may be better off with an actual Android phone and a PSP or a PSP Go. I am giving it 3 stars and not 2 stars because my kid (the one who didn't have a PSP) decided that it was good enough for him and he's using it now. Thanks to the large number of preloaded games and to the availability of some PLAY-friendly Android games we didn't have to buy any old games again yet.

___________________________________________________

These are the game that came preloaded:

* Adrenalin
* Asphalt 6
* Bruce Lee Dragon Warrior
* Crash Bandicot
* Madden NFL 11
* Star Battalion
* Tetris (Android mode only)
* The Sims 3

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>> Brush your teeth, it's the law! <<

The Best. June 15, 2011

Reviewer:  Y. Martin 

I have had my phone for a few days now and I love it. I can work and play on it and the battery holds up. It's not too bulky and the touchscreen is very responsive. This is my first smartphone and I don't know how I'v managed without one this long. Sony did a great job with this phone.

Excellent smartphone, excellent gaming device August 30, 2011

Reviewer:  theshonen8899  (California, USA) -

I was stuck between choosing this or the Droid 3 and considering the Xperia Play was $0.01 and the Droid 3 was $150 at the time of my purchase, I definitely do not regret it; this phone is absolutely fantastic.

I initially thought the size and weight would be annoying considering other smartphones are thinner and lighter but I definitely appreciate the bulk. The phone is thick but curved perfectly to fit in your hand. This makes holding it feel remarkable compared to other cardboard-like smartphones. It's also more heavy than other smartphones, but not too heavy at all. It strikes a sweet spot for me where it's heavy enough to feel substantial and not cheap but light enough to not be a pain to hold for long hours.

I've heard complaints about the brightness of the screen so I was very worried about that before receiving the phone. I'm not sure if they've update the screen or something but this phone's screen is definitely not dim, it's actually quite bright. I've definitely seen brighter displays but this display is excellent and I've never felt the need to turn the brightness up higher.

The main problem with the display isn't really the display itself, it's the auto-brightness. It works very well most of the time, dimming the display when the lights are off or turning it up outdoors. The main problem is when you're viewing it at a specific angle where your head is blocking the sensor of if you're under the shade outdoors. It can get frustrating and one can only wonder why Sony Ericsson didn't include an option to turn the sensor off. Hopefully they update the phone to add such an options but for now, it's a slightly annoying problem.

If you're looking at this phone then your main concern is definitely the gaming experience. Now if you're intentions are to buy this phone only for the pure Android gaming experience, I think you're out of luck. Playing Asphalt 6 with a real controller is a blast, but that's pretty much the only Android game that has gotten any real use out of the controller. Playing FPS games on a smartphone is only slightly less annoying than normal, and that's is because of the touch analog pads. These pads are not optical sensors like everyone thinks, they are just capacitive touch sensors just like the ones used on touch screens. The silver dots in the middle are just pieces of plastic that let you know where the center of the pads are.

This is problem because the touchpads are just as janky and worthless as touch screen controls. The only real advantage is that you can actually see what is going on on the screen. This is a shame to me because I really love the analog stick on the PSP Go, and I wouldn't have minded the extra bulk to have had two of them either.

Even more importantly, there are few games on Android worth playing to begin with. Sure there's Angry Birds, Plants vs Zombies, and Cut the Rope, but those games are good because they were designed for a touch screen, none of those utilize the added controller.

What makes this device really shine is the emulators. Given that you have purchased the games earlier, downloading the ROMs and playing them on the Xperia Play is absolutely excellent. What really shines is are obviously the Playstation games, and since Sony Ericsson doesn't seem to be in a rush to haul in Playstation Suite games, you'll have to resort to emulators like FPSE, PSX4Droid, and recently Yufan Lu's PS Suite emulator hack to get these games working. When you do get them working, they play remarkably similar to the Playstation games you know and love. Considering the fact that Playstation has an enormous list of gems like Final Fantasy, Chrono Cross, Xenogears, Vagrant Story, Parasite Eve, Grandia, and so on, this phone can really blow any other smartphone's gaming library right out of the water. This isn't even including the games you can play on the SNES, NES, or Gameboy emulators.

Overall this phone is exactly what Sony Ericsson has been advertising it as: A smartphone with everything you need and the one thing you want. It's a great smartphone in it's own right, even if it doesn't have a dual core processor or 4G and with emulators, it's an absolutely phenomenal gaming experience. My hopes are high that Sony releases more official Playstation Suite games (which we should see after they release their PS Suite line of tablets), but as for now, nothing on the market can even compare to the Xperia Play's gaming experience.

A lot of skewed reviews, to be sure. September 5, 2011

Reviewer:  M.D.C. "The Franchise"  (San Diego, CA) -

Touted the "PlayStation Phone" by those that don't know any better, the Xperia Play is a Sony Ericsson phone that is loaded with Gingerbread (2.3) Android. It has the distinction of being the only current phone to be blessed by Sony to play certain PlayStation games. Of course, the media and consumers jumped on the assumption - flawed though it was - that this must be an evolution of a PSP. Trust me, it's far from that. In fact, I would liken it more to the N-Gage, but without cartridges, just so happens to be Sony rather than Nokia.

As a phone, the Xperia Play (XP) has its pluses and minuses. I was actually (unlike certain others) impressed with the general build quality. Apple has gotten people hating plastic, which is unfortunate, because plastic done right can actually result in a solid device (see any of the HTC phones). The build of the XP is a hybrid of plastic and metal, and it feels solid to the touch. The idea that the screen flexes when pressing it is quite ludicrous, and I would submit that the user ended up with a lemon, but I digress. The slider technology makes the phone quite a bit thicker than other candidates in the phone lineup at Verizon, and it is this which may be a turn-off to some shoppers. Anyone who has used a Sidekick will know what I'm talking about, because it's basically the same thickness. The XP is quite a bit smaller than other phones though, fits in the hand nicely, and has a nice grip. To its detriment, the power button is extremely recessed in the top and difficult to press one-handed. Not impossible, but it was annoying.

Much has been made of the single core-ness of the XP, and I will tell you this: The single core only matters when typing. That's it. Anything else and the phone is quite fast. It renders web pages and applications faster than even my HTC Thunderbolt which has a faster processor. Typing is where it all breaks down though - the keyboard cannot keep up with the fastest of touch typers. I'm not like the younguns of today in terms of texting or screen typing speed, but I can hold my own as I knock out a business email quickly on the Thunderbolt. Doing the same exercise on the XP was absolutely frustrating, as the accuracy went straight to hell under the same conditions, and in some cases, just didn't do anything at all as it struggled to catch up with my fingers. It's a bit ironic - the whole reason I'm even trying this device is because of the horrid nature of touch gaming, and yet, its touch typing is so bad. Regular touch navigation was fine, in fact it felt a bit better and more reliable than other touch screens that I've used, and I've used a lot. There are certain screens that just "Feel Right" and the XP's is one of them...just not for typing, unfortunately.

The screen brightness is perfectly fine when in normal lighting conditions. Outside, forget it. It's not that it isn't bright enough, it's that it can't overpower the natural lighting of the outdoors like some other devices such as any of the Samsung AMOLED screens. The screen is also not polarized, and screen protectors for anti-glare may actually make the effect even worse. It's true the screen brightness and detail is less so than that of the HTC Thunderbolt or other devices, but again, in normal lighting or darker lighting this isn't that much of a big deal.

Audio quality was a mixed bag. When gaming, the audio is fine, but when trying to do what the thing was designed to do (be a phone), it falls short. The speaker is of average loudness, but on the other end the quality is terrible...as if you're speaking through a HAM radio or something. It wasn't nearly as clear as I expected it to be given what I know of Ericsson phones of years past, and mind you, I was standing in a dead-silent room for the test. I didn't get a chance to test wind noise, because I was so disappointed with its performance even disregarding wind or other interfering factors.

The phone's strongest attribute is simply its battery. Even on good brightness with wireless and GPS on, the phone managed to do 3-4 days on standby easily. With regular usage (which in my testing is gaming and email), it still managed to last 1-2 days without needing a charge. Compared to the Thunderbolt which required rooting and a custom ROM to last the duration of a day with GPS off and email only (GPS on results in a loss of 6 hours), I can only imagine that the theory about 4G burning through the battery even when not in active use must be true. Additionally I believe the XP has a larger battery to begin with, because it would take me adding the extended battery to the XP to get to the same or roughly the same thickness. Still, I was readily impressed by the battery performance of the XP. If it weren't for the touch typing issue, I would switch immediately, but I depend too much on email; so much so that this is an instant deal breaker.

I know people are wondering about the gaming. And I will tell you that gaming is the one area where I believe the Xperia Play has the most issues. It's not the device's fault though, rather the games themselves. You see, when you slide out the XP, it will open the game interface. There are a number of games already included with the device, some of which are of basic fun (Bruce Lee). The problem here is that most people will buy the XP thinking that these physical controls should automatically work with every Android game out there; they don't. In fact, in Verizon Wireless' V-CAST Apps, they have screened out Android apps that have been specifically configured for the XP. This list is tremendously lower than the full list on the Market. Others may or may not work depending on how the game was created. I'm an RPG gamer, not an FPS gamer, not a fighting gamer (anymore). TO me it seems a no-brainer to have an RPG on a device like this, so I fired a couple up.

Gailardia is basically a Dragon Quest/Warrior rip-off, down to the core. Maybe that's why I love it so much. It works perfectly with the XP.

Zenonia is basically a hybrid of Secret of Mana and Tales of Destiny. Not a bad game, not overly advanced, but it has charm to it and it's price is quite right (less than a buck for each episode). Doesn't work well with the XP's controls; there are times you will press a direction key and nothing will happen, or he'll be walking and then suddenly stop for no clear reason. Or certain buttons won't respond. You also can't navigate 100% of the menu using the physical buttons, forcing you to revert to touch.

Symphony of Eternity is the one with the most potential, think Final Fantasy 1 rip-off with superior graphics. Took a long time to get to control, but then I noticed that buttons only worked outside of battle. In battle I was forced to use the touch screen, defeating the purpose.

It is this inconsistency of support (let's call it gaming fragmentation) that really hurts the overall experience. I know that the game developer must write the game to map to the physical controls in order to make them work, and a lot of these games were in existence prior to the Xperia Play, but certainly there must be some sort of compatibility mode that is available to make it work better. The only other alternative is to download specially written APKs that allow you to play some of these games directly with the Xperia Play, or be charged again by Sony to play their versions which are already written for it.

It might seem like I'm down on the device, in truth I'm rather disappointed, but it's not the device's fault. Rather, I feel that something like this should have come out a lot earlier in the development cycle for Android, such that game developers would have felt inclined to write specifically for it, and then maybe it would have more appeal. I also feel that this is really what the PSP Go was meant to be from the start, but obviously that plan fell through. I don't know now what the future holds for the XP...my guess is that it will be relegated to the same fate eventually that the N-Gage ended up in. It's hard to recommend the XP over other devices even if you're a gamer because of the aforementioned fragmentation. It's not a bad device, it's just not a great one.

Going on 2 months now July 16, 2011

Reviewer:  JT 

I picked up the phone when it first came out but wanted to see how it held up before writing a review.

Basically, this is the best gaming phone out right now. If you are a gamer, get it. If not, get something else.

Games that use the controls are a completely different experience from using the touch screen. You will never want to go back to using the screen as a controller once you've used a real controller. In any FPS that mixes Play users and Non-Play users, you can tell who is using the Play, they are the ones getting the most kills. It is sort of like when they mixed Computers and Consoles in that one FPS, they had to separate the servers because the people with the better controllers always won. So if you see me (or my kid using my phone) on your favorite phone FPS racking up the kills and making you cry, you'll know why.

Speaking of the controller, I have zero problem using the touch pads. You have to remember that you are not pushing a joystick around, you are putting your thumbs around the circle (more similar to on screen Android gaming than the 3DS/PSP joystick). The other buttons are just as the buttons should be. Nothing special or noticeably bad about them. I haven't talked to my son about the controllers, but he hasn't mentioned anything either way and he spends more time on handhelds/consoles than I do, so the gamepad can't be too bad compared to them. One semi-interesting note, I have tended to open the gamepad when texting just so I can get a better grip on my phone. It seems easier for me to have my thumbs more vertical when texting than horizontal.

Hardware wise it is an about average android phone with a game pad. What more do you need to know?

I haven't had a problem with not having a dual core CPU, you might, but I haven't seen any issues. Same with the GPU. In 6 months the latest won't be the latest anymore either. That is a hamster trail that I stepped off of quite a while ago. Now I use what works for the games I play *right now*.

Sure it isn't a 3DS, hardware wise or AAA game selection wise. You know what, I don't carry a handheld with me everywhere. It isn't a replacement for a handheld, it is replacement for my non-gaming phone. People really expect me to carry around an android phone and a 3DS? Get real.

Yes it is thicker than a phone without a dedicated game pad. You know what, IT HAS A GAMEPAD. It isn't crazy that having a game pad makes it thicker and heavier.

If you want to re-live any of your old console games via emulation, this is the phone to use. It is incredible to me that all those emulators run on a phone. The only slight hick-up is save states. Since I'm most often gaming on my phone between things rather than using dedicated time, I don't always have time to get to the latest checkpoint or finish my last virtual quarter. So hopefully some of the better emulators will get save states working (again).

My father (who we were recently visiting) is not a gamer and has an Atrix. It is a good phone with latest and greatest everything. Faster CPU, more memory, more ports, etc, don't know about battery life. None of which are visible when actually using the phone. My son loves my phone, hates my dads phone. My son is a gamer. So if you are an 'Angry Birds' only person, get an Atrix, if you plan to game and don't mind having your kid ask to use your phone all the time, get a Xperia Play.

All in all, it is not the best phone out there. It *IS* the best gaming phone. So it gets 5 stars for doing what it does better than anything else on the market today.

Did I mention that it has a gamepad? It seems like 1/2 the reviews I read tend to forget this. The gamepad *IS* the selling point (or not selling point if you don't game) of the entire phone. Chop off the gamepad and it isn't a Play anymore, it is a vanilla Android phone like all the rest.