PlayStation phone dubbed Xperia Play, looks decent for gaming

On the eve of what is widely believed to be the announcement of the successor to the PSP, Engadget has somehow managed to get some hands-on time with another upcoming Sony handheld: the PlayStation phone. 

One of the worst kept secrets in gaming, it appears that the PS phone will be marketed under the name Sony Ericsson Xperia Play, and it looks very similar to the Xperia X10 phone. Both gadgets feature a four inch, 854x480, multitouch LCD screen, and the batteries are interchangeable. And, as rumored, the Xperia Play runs Gingerbread (Android 2.3) and features a single-core processor that clocks anywhere from 122.88MHz to 1GHz, an Adreno 205 GPU, and 512MB of RAM.

Since the hands-on took place with a pre-release prototype, there's no word on the quality of the games that will be available, but the preview does look at the hardware from a gaming perspective. Much like the PSP Go (and just like in all of the leaked images) a DualShock-style control pad slides out from the bottom of the device. It features the regular setup of buttons, though there are only two shoulder buttons as opposed to four, and touchpads are used to replace analog sticks. In order to test out the control setup, a number of games were played via an emulator—including Ridge Racer Revolution and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4—and they "all ran pretty well."

During testing, the 1500 mAh battery lasted a full day taking pictures and using 3G data frequently. The 5-megapixel camera's pictures were sharp, but it seemed to over-pigment red colors. The camera had no tap-to-focus capability and could only take 800x480 resolution video, but Sony Ericsson may overlay its own camera software to fix some of these problems.

Since the Xperia Play is a gaming phone, the prototype's lack of games and game delivery system to try out leaves some pretty big questions unanswered, including how filled-out the choices will be and how much games will cost. Keep in mind that this just a prototype; it's likely there will be some changes before it ships, but it's a good bet that the final product will be largely the same. The official unveiling of the Xperia Play is expected at the Mobile World Congress, which starts on February 14 in Barcelona.