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South African Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Launch

Posted on 09. Sep, 2011 by Freak_c in News, Peripherals, PSN Network

This week I was invited to the South African launch of the new Sony Xperia Play mobile smart phone. I’m not sure how to categorise this phone, do you place it under smart phone as it runs the Android operating system or do you place it under gaming phone as it houses PSP type controls. I can tell you one thing though I will categorise it under Awesome!

I’ve been a Blackberry owner for the past year now and the reason I went the to the Darkside was for the BIS service and BBM. About 6 months in I had already regretted my decision and wished I went another smart phone route. So I was looking forward to get my hands on the Xperia Play as it boosts two things that I enjoy, firstly gaming, with proper gaming controls and two a smart phone with proper applications.

Before I get into the details of the phone I would just like to say a huge thank you to Craving Novity and Sony for hosting the event, which was a great success. We had some nice drinks on arrival and straight away we were able to get our hands on the phone with the few around.

Now of course the first thing that I did was go to the games. There were the standard set of games that are pre loaded on the phone, which included FIFA 10, Tetris, Crash Bandicoot and some racing game. One thing that I didn’t like was that the game are preloaded but that you would still need to download them via Wi-fi, would have been better if the games were downloaded and installed from the get go. Anyway when playing a game you slide the face of the phone to the side to reveal the controls which consist of a dpad, L1 and R1, the standard playstation buttons (X, O, square and triangle) and duel analogues. Yes two analogues, which are touch based. All the buttons work and feel great you will just have to get use to the analogues but will make gaming more enjoyable. The Android operating system works well as many of you know and the nice thing is that in the app store there will be a dedicated section for the games.

Ok lets get to the details that people are interested in, release dates and to which companies the packages are coming to. The phone will first be released via Vodacom with only the white phone option, however no package details were mentioned at this time. A month later and MTN will then release the Black phone option also without any mention about packages. No word about Cell C or Virgin Mobile. The price for the phone itself is roughly around R7000.00 which isn’t too bad and which will most likely come out on one of the business packages.

In conclusion the event was a great success fun and the star of the show performed brilliantly and I will be looking at getting this phone for my new contract. Below we have the specs of the phone via Gsmarena.com and some images I took with my Blackberry, which most likely would have been better if I had a Xperia Play.

Gallery:

Phone Specs:

General	2G Network	GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
	3G Network	HSDPA 900 / 2100
		HSDPA 850 / 1900 / 2100 / 800
	Announced	2011, February
	Status	Available. Released 2011, March

Size	Dimensions	119 x 62 x 16 mm
	Weight	175 g

Display	Type	LED-backlit LCD, capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
	Size	480 x 854 pixels, 4.0 inches (~245 ppi pixel density)
		- Touch sensitive gaming controls - PSP like gaming buttons - Accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate - Proximity sensor for auto turn-off - Multi-touch input method - Timescape UI

Sound	Alert types	Vibration, MP3 ringtones
	Loudspeaker	Yes, with stereo speakers
	3.5mm jack	Yes, check quality

Memory	Phonebook	Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall
	Call records	Practically unlimited
	Internal	400 MB, 512 MB RAM
	Card slot	microSD, up to 32GB, 8GB included

Data	GPRS	Yes
	EDGE	Yes
	3G	HSDPA, HSUPA
	WLAN	Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot
	Bluetooth	Yes, v2.1 with A2DP
	Infrared port	No
	USB	Yes, microUSB v2.0

Camera	Primary	5 MP, 2592х1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash, check quality
	Features	Geo-tagging, image stabilization
	Video	Yes, WVGA
	Secondary	Yes

Features	OS	Android OS, v2.3 (Gingerbread)
	CPU	1GHz Scorpion processor, Adreno 205 GPU, Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon
	Messaging	SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email, IM
	Browser	WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML
	Radio	No
	Games	Yes + downloadable, motion & gesture gaming
	Colors	Black, White, Stealth Blue (for Play 4G)
	GPS	Yes, with A-GPS support
	Java	Yes, via Java MIDP emulator
		- Dedicated game store - SNS integration - Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic - Digital compass - MP4/H.263/H.264/WMV player - MP3/eAAC+/WMA/WAV player - Google Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Calendar, Google Talk - Track ID - Organizer - Document viewer/editor - Flash Lite support - Voice memo/dial/commands - Predictive text input

Battery		Standard battery, Li-Ion 1500 mAh
	Stand-by	Up to 425 h (2G) / Up to 413 h (3G)
	Talk time	Up to 8 h 25 min (2G) / Up to 6 h 25 min (3G)
	Music play	Up to 31 h

Tags: Sony, Sony Ericsson, sony ericsson xperia play, xperia, Xperia Play