The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play: Where Do You Want To Take Your Gaming Today?
by Brian Dipert on August 8, 2011 1:26 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Sony
- Android
- Xperia Play
- Mobile
I scanned some Xperia Play user feedback posts (which aren't hard to find by this point, since the handset has been available for sale for several months) in the process of doing my evaluation. In some cases, the gaming phone owners were critical of either (or both) the materials used to assemble the handset or their put-together fit. Frankly, I don't see what the big fuss is about, though I realize that other folks with other feature set priorities might come to other conclusions. Glossy black may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I personally don't think it's at all bad looking, although I admit that it more quickly collects visible fingerprints than do other color schemes (as well as being highly reflective, as you may have noticed from some of the earlier product shots I took).
Yes, the silver trim is plastic, not metal, but the materials choice not only trimmed the handset's weight but also reduced its manufacturing cost (therefore price tag) and minimized the potential for interference-induced antenna sensitivity degradation. Had Sony Ericsson put a glass back on the Xperia Play, the reviewers would have grumbled that the company had made an Apple iPhone 4-like non-ruggedness mistake. And maybe it's just me, but the very first thing I do when I get a new handset is to buy a 'gel' case for it, thereby protecting it from scratches caused by keys and change in pockets, inadvertent drops, and other day-to-day usage issues. If you're not a fan of plastic assemblies, the Xperia Play may feel 'cheap' to you, but after you consider the expense, heft and other downsides of alternative materials, you might have at least a partial change of heart.
The Android four-button suite (Home, Menu, Back and Search) at the bottom of the front panel is comprised of actual physical buttons, versus being capacitive touch-implemented. They're a bit 'mushy', as are the volume toggle and power button, but perfectly adequate and preferable to the virtual button suite found on my Nexus One and other Android phones. And yes, they're in a different order than with other Android handsets, but Sony Ericsson can't be uniquely faulted for this discrepancy; Google clearly hasn't made rigid mandates in this regard, judging from the diversity of combinations found in the Android Army.
One physical button that I missed on the Xperia Play is a camera shutter, which the Nexus One implements via its trackball. With the 'stock' Xperia Play, you can only trip the shutter via the on-screen virtual 'button' icon. Enthusiast efforts have transformed the R1 'flipper' gaming button into an alternative shutter; head to the XDA Developers site for more information. Hardware upsides include integrated 'stereo' audio playback (with sound coming from between the two slider layers; the two speakers aren't visible), as well as the ability to access both the SIM and microSD slots without needing to remove the battery.
About that 'flipper'...I'll discuss the gaming-centric control set soon, but the means by which you access the bulk of it (located on the slider's lower layer) is by sliding the Xperia Play's screen up, an action which also automatically launches the Xperia Play application.
While, as noted above, Anand found the slider mechanism to be 'loose', I was quite content with it. It seemed solid, and I was confident that it would remain so through iterative use over time. I could also easily manipulate it with only a single hand; once you get the screen ~halfway through its full travel, it takes over and completes the desired open or close operation all by itself. Anand's fondled far more phones than I, so I'm inclined to defer to his comparative critique, but from an absolute standpoint I found the Xperia Play's slider to be functionally sufficient. With that said, I'll concede at least one of Anand's points; the slider design wasn't as rigid when closed as is a single-element handset...but I've yet to find a slider that can meet that particular design challenge.
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RoninX - Wednesday, August 10, 2011 - link
Maybe they should just release a 3G/4G version of the Vita that makes calls.Then you would get by far the best portable gaming experience without having to carry two devices.
SimKill - Wednesday, August 10, 2011 - link
But then battery life would go to the dogs.etobare - Monday, August 8, 2011 - link
There you make it sound as if xperia play didn't have access to android non-xperia play optimized games... i concur with much of the review but that may lead to confusionMike1111 - Monday, August 8, 2011 - link
A gaming smartphone with fewer, more expensive and worse looking games compared to iOS devices? Why even bother. It's a niche market at best. To have a chance in the mainstream market the successor must have PS Vita-like hardware, graphics and kick-ass games. And should Apple ever decide to make an adequate Bluetooth profile available for (analog) gamepads then the dedicated gaming smartphone market is dead anyway.lowlymarine - Monday, August 8, 2011 - link
I just finished a run of BrowserMark on my Captivate (AT&T Galaxy S) and got a score of over 71,000. Admittedly I'm running at a fairly modest overclock of 1.2 GHz, but unless each one of those 200 MHz are imbued with pure magic, there's no way the likes of the Droid 3 and the Atrix should be doing worse. Similar with Sunspider - my 3193ms result (yes, on 0.9) beats out even the fastest device you've tested. I'm not using Firefox Mobile or something either; this is all with the stock AOSP browser.I'm just curious as to why there's the massive discrepancy in browser performance. My Linpack scores are, while still nearly 3 times what you've got for the SGS (largely attributable to the difference between Gingerbread and Eclair, I'm sure), no where near those of the dual-core powerhouses. I know the second core won't really help them on Sunspider et al., but certainly it shouldn't be hurting them?
Death666Angel - Monday, August 8, 2011 - link
Are you using other/newer kernels and roms? They usually add nice boosts to those benchmarks by either having better drivers, better optimizations or just fewer active programs. :-)Vepsa - Monday, August 8, 2011 - link
I considered getting a Xperia Play, but I decided against since I kinda like having more than 512MB of RAM on my phone. The bulk doesn't bother me and nor does the SoC since I have the same one in my Droid Incredible 2. If the phone had had 1GB of RAM & 2GB+ of app storage I would have probably gotten it. The only thing that will get more games made for them is if more are sold since its an open API.StormyParis - Monday, August 8, 2011 - link
Did someone just receive a new digital camera ? Is there an epidemic of photographic logorrhea I'm not aware of ? Are Ars writers paid a lot more for each picture ? Or is it about the page views ?One could easily cut half the pictures in the article (first page), redo some (you can put 3 phones in a single picture for comparison, yessir....).
This article is giving me a feeling akin to PCmag's infamous "slideshows"
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, August 8, 2011 - link
Fixed :)We have no internal mandates for picture or page count, sometimes it's easier just to string a bunch of images together rather than toss them in a gallery but I've done the latter here at your request :)
Take care,
Anand
StormyParis - Monday, August 8, 2011 - link
Thanks. Am I the only one bothered when there are so many pics in an article ? because, frankly, the numerous screenshots and charts on the following pages also bother me. With Anandtech's already narrow, heavily paginated format, there's lots of scrolling involved already... I find more than 1 pic/page a pain, except when the pics are *really* needed... which they are not, for example, to report a *one-number* test result. It gets even worse when reading the article on my phone or tablet.Personally, I simply jumped to the conclusion after a few pages. I find the galleries you put in the first coupl of pages the best trade off: really motivated readers can see all the pictures, the rest of us can read the article without kilometers of scrolling. <ripoff source="Arrested Development ">It's a nice way to satisfy the "buy" crowd and the "curious" crowd, and we're all buy/curious </ripoff>