The Excellent Sony Ericsson Xperia Play-Much More Than Just A Gaming Phone

Unless you have been living on the moon for the last few months you will be aware that the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play is the long awaited "Playstation" phone complete with slide out control pad and large screen.  Type the name into any search engine and their are countless articles on the phone prowess at portable games, however I want to steer clear of the obvious and focus on the unit as purely a smartphone.  The reason behind this is that the phone needs some pretty impressive specification to handle the gaming features, specification that greatly benefits more general areas of the phones use.  So how does this model cut it as a stand alone smartphone?

Design wise and as you would probably imagine, the Xperia Play is not the most compact of handsets thanks to the aforementioned gaming controls.  At 16mm in depth it is one of the thickest phones currently available with the others dimensions coming in at 62mm x 119mm.  The plus side to this bulk is that there is the room present to accommodate a good sized screen and Sony Ericsson have pulled out all of the stops in this area.  With the screen measuring a good sized 4 inches it is essential that the display backs this up with a decent resolution and luckily Sony have pitched a cut above many of their competitors by offering 480 x 854 quality on the TFT screen.   You would naturally expect a gaming machine to boast a high speed processor, after all games are the one use to place heavy strain on this chip.  Thus a 1Ghz processor nestles amidst all of the other components, driving the phone along at a good speed although the absence of dual core properties is very noticeable, especially given that many competitors models now boast this feature.

When it comes to using the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play you are greeted by a very modern looking skin that overlays the familiar Android operating system.  Some neat touch accompany this eye catching interface including the ability to drag icons around the screen and place them on top of others effectively creating a sub folder.  This enables you to place similar applications and features together and leave your homescreens looking all together less cluttered.  Another great idea which takes a leaf out of HTCs book with their "Leap View" feature is the ability to pinch any of the five homescreens with two fingers and they will zoom out to reveal a neat overview of every available screen.  This offers a neat alternative to scrolling through each page individually.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play may be a great portable games console, but strip it down to its bare basics and you are left with a stylish and powerful smartphone packing some excellent media features together with an innovative and stylish interface.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play and the HTC Desire S are available now.