Review: Xperia PLAY

Jenna Pitcher
Thursday, 12 May 2011 11:37

Mobile devices

The hyped Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY, known for some time as the PlayStation phone, is the first PlayStation certified device. So how does the hype and rumours match up to real life performance? 

First of all, Sony Ericsson is on the ball with the PLAY, it will be released with the latest Android operating system, Gingerbread (2.3.2). This is a positive sign. In the past Sony Ericsson have been lax in supporting its phones with Android OS updates, and even released handsets with archaic OS versions. 

DESIGN

Flipped over, it looks like the top of a hot wheels car, plastic roof with four curved bumps either side that housed the various buttons. The thin outer plastic casing didn't inspire a whole of confidence trying to remove it, the action felt like it would cause the delicate piece of plastic to break. The battery does not have to be removed in order to insert or remove the SD or sim card - more phones should have this design feature.

The PLAY is noticeably heavier in the hand compared to most recent smartphones on the market. It should be noted that the 175 gram weight is only a shade heavier to than HTC HD7's 162 grams. The PLAY's weight maybe to heavy for sustained prolonged one handed use (hours at a time), however two handed use will alleviate the strain.

GAMEPAD

The slide out gamepad is the reason for the 62 mm thickness, so it did feel bulky but not unpleasantly so. The back had a curved ergonomic design, so the PLAY was cradled comfortably in the palm of the hand. A tip to the hat to the designers, the device felt superbly balanced when the device was held in landscape, with the gamepad out. The majority of the weight was gently distributed across the index fingers, that left the thumbs free to flit over the gamepad surface. The index fingers rest against the left and right bumpers that are along the edge of the phone - easily accessible.

The gamepad felt metallic, thin and sturdy, and not at all flimsy and plastic. The thinness of PLAY's gamepad contributed to a slightly cramped thumb after a few hours of gameplay, because the thumb and palm heel had nothing to wrap around and rest on. This is a general problem with handhelds, as opposed to console controls, that have a fat curved body so the hand wraps comfortably around it.

The slide out game pad accommodates a directional pad, the Sony standard action buttons and analogue pads. The D-pad and action buttons have great response and aren't squished up on the gamepad and therefore weren't awkward to use. The lifetime on the D-pad and action buttons was a concern; they are a pleasure to use however the trade off off for slimness and mobility may be at the expense of lifetime, they don't feel as industrious as a normal controller. The D-pad can be used to move highlight objects on home screen - there is no auto rotate on the home screen - however you cannot make a selection with the gamepad. But who cares, the touch screen makes this a moot point.

The flat analogue controls - with small indents in the middle to orient the thumbs - weren't as expected in terms of performance. Overall they felt awkward to use, the input didn't reflect the expected output in the game. We thought that this came down to poor sensitivity, but this may vary from person to person. Because of this, the digital controls were far easier to use than the analogue controls. This should be taken with a grain of salt, as it is early days for the device, game developers will release games better suited to the controls - and perhaps start to offer controller settings in the games. All that said, the PLAY's analogue controls are far better to use than the PSP's nubs.

GAMES

 When the game pad is slid out the screen automatically goes to the dedicated game launcher screen. At the time of writing there were 49 games available however more than 50 will be released at launch. The device comes pre installed with Bruce Lee, Crash Bandicoot, FIFA 10, Star Battalion, and The Sims 3.

PlayStation original games aren't native in wide screen, so weren't in wide screen on the PLAY, however the games were playable and would look perfectly fine to the average consumer. Games such as Crash Bandicoot were smooth to PLAY, no frame rate issues or crashes. Load times for the games played were breezy, and never longer than a minute. There was head scratching design decision, SD CARD removal required the games to be downloaded again upon SD card re-insertion. However, progress will be saved from last download.

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