PSP Phone: Sony Ericsson Xperia Play

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play is the official name of the long anticipated Playstation phone from Sony and is a hybrid of the Sony Ericsson Xperia range of phones and the Sony PSP.

Sony is going all out in 2011 to make sure their portable gaming division keeps up with the runaway success of other portable gaming devices such as the upcoming Nintendo 3DS and the iPhone and iPad. Sony lost a considerable share of the portable gaming market to Nintendo and Apple as sales of the old generation of PSP units declined steadily over the past few years.

Sony announced the upcoming release and specs for the redesigned PSP2 a few months ago which generated alot of buzz in the technology world and they are set to rock the boat again with the announcement of the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play, the Playstation phone.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play PSP phone features a 4 inch multitouch screen with a resolution of 480 x 854 pixels and will run the Android Gingerbread operating system from Google.The unit will have a slde out gamepad featuring the standard playstation buttons and directional pad as well as two touch sensitive analog sticks. Sony decided to drop the analog nubs that were last seen on the previous generation PSP consoles.

Sony opted for Qualcomms Snapdragon 1Ghz CPU and Adreno GPU graphics processor for the Xperia Play to offer graphicall rich ported versions of their popular games and flagship franchises such as The Sims 3, FIFA 10, Splinter Cell, Dead Space and Assassins Creed. Sony has confirmed that each Xperia Play will ship with one 'legendary' Sony PS One title preloaded, as well as other preloaded games. The Playstation Store will eventually become available on the phone via the new Playstation Suite, but in the meantine owners can download games directly from the Android Marketplace. A launch lineup of 50 games has been confirmed by Sony. The Xperia Play will ship with an 8GB memory card out of the box and is expandable up to 32GB via memory card.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play will launch in March 2011.

Additional Features include:

• 5.1 megapixel auto-focus camera with flash and geo-tagging
  
• social network integration via Facebook, Twitter and Google applications
• bluetooth, GPS and Wi-Fi (with Wi-Fi hotspot functionality)
• built in media player for music and videos
• 3D HD capability at 60 fps
• motion control